A hesitation from Josh. “We watched cooking shows. I’m not sure that counts as bro-ing out.”
“On the radio once, someone said he and his buddies broed out listening to Morrissey. I think our Cutthroat Kitchen marathon is a contender.”
I miss LA, that’s the thing. I always miss LA when I go, and it’s not just because Josh is there. That’s a big part of it. I always miss Josh. But it’s this whole mélange of things. Riding down the freeway, blasting Josh’s music, the wind in my hair because Josh has a jeep and that’s awesome. Looking up at the Hollywood Hills and imagining what it’s like to live up there. Walking over a mile to get to an open Starbucks because that’s what addiction is. I have other friends in LA I didn’t really get to see this time (though they saw me; Dave White drove by me while I was on my way back from Starbucks and then texted me). Palm trees. I don’t know what it is about palm trees. I go to Disney World all the time, and the place is lousy with palm trees, but it’s different out in Los Angeles. Everything is different in Los Angeles. That’s a cliché, but clichés always come from a place of truth.
I keep trying to pin down what it is that I love about the place so much. The way I’ve explained it is, “It’s fascinating to me to see so much sincerity going into building something so artificial.” But that’s not quite fair. Sure, there’s a lot of LA that’s fake. The whole movie industry is telling lies for fun and profit. You have to pay to get your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But there’s an essential realness to the whole place, something I keep thinking I understand but then don’t, like string theory. My concept of what the place is, what it means, keeps shifting. It’s not like how I love Boston, where it’s in my blood, where knowing its buildings and streets and people is part of my DNA. It’s not how I love Athens, GA, where I can go there and feel bohemian with my buddy Joe, and everything I do is like being in college, from the rock shows to the late-night Waffle House marathons. It’s not like how I love New York; so many of my best friends live there, and there’s a routine there I love falling into, and it’s bright and shiny and there are always new places to eat.
There’s an inherent mystery to Los Angeles I keep falling in love with. Josh took me to the Chinese Theater to see a big explody sci-fi movie, and the movie was great, but there was something about being inside this grand movie palace, with its giant screen and rich red velvet curtains. I was dwarfed inside in the best way; humbled, to be sitting there with my buddy and scarfing Red Vines and watching Tom Cruise go back in time over and over. There’s a majesty, a mythos, that I built up in my head about Los Angeles before I ever went and which hasn’t fallen into tatters as I’ve visited more. I don’t know if that’s a me thing, by the way, or if it’s just the way some people are: the way I can see something over and over and over and never get tired of it. I always seek nuance and newness inside the same. I keep going back to Back to the Future. Dad bought the videotape way back when I was a lad and we watched it every night for about two months after dinner. And sometime in the last few viewings, I noticed that Twin Pines Mall had changed to Lone Pine Mall, and I got super excited and pointed it out to my Dad, and there was much rejoicing. There’s always something new in LA, and there’s always something strange, and I hear some people go crazy out there, but I think that’s part of it.
I have this attachment to … I really want to say melancholy, but that’s not quite it. It has something to do with how I view myself as a writer, and how a writer is “supposed” to feel when he sits down to create. I’m always trying to tap into this … ugh, I don’t know, subtle desperation? Is that it? I’m not saying I want to suffer for my art (I’ve done plenty of suffering); it’s more that I want to feel constantly unfulfilled, always craving, always needing, always trying to be the absolute best and knowing I never will be. Not, you know, in life, just in my writing, just as a writer. I had that feeling so often when I was a teenager and stories were shooting out of me daily, like I’d opened a vein of creativity or something. And I’m not saying that the neverending half-depression I wandered through as a teenager is necessarily healthy or a requirement for my writing. I don’t really know what I’m saying.
Except that LA makes me feel that way when I’m out there, and that I like feeling that way. I like looking down at the lights of LA from the Hills. I like driving through the Valley. I love listening to music from LA, or about LA. I like seeing Oliver Hardy’s name on the Walk of Fame. It’s weird out there, but I’m weird, so it matches.
I have this plan for next November, a few months after I turn 40. I want to go out to Los Angeles and just write for a week. Spend a whole week just writing. Why November? Because that’s when people do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I haven’t done it in awhile, and I thought it might be fun to write an LA novel while I was in LA. Can I write 50,000 words in a week? Maybe not, but it might be fun to try.
This was stream of consciousness and it started out structured. But ah well. I haven’t pinned down my actual thoughts on this, so writing about it was never going to make total sense. My heart is from Boston but my soul’s from LA.
No comments:
Post a Comment