Dreams For Sale
Charlie: ‘Dave told me this awesome thing about LA. He says the whole town is like this blank canvas and whatever you bring to it that’s what it is. It’s just this random collection of neighbourhoods where it’s always sunny and basically reflects wherever you’re at back at you. So if you’re happy LA’s great, if you’re not LA sucks but it has nothing to do with Los Angeles because there’s no such thing’ Happythankyoumoreplease 2010
The scent of honeysuckle was strong on the breeze this morning as I dropped my daughter off for an hour under a grey sky. Rain is arriving back in LA tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier. For a while a pervasive sense of numbness had me fooled into thinking I’d finally acquiesced to the perma-sunshine of the West Coast and would be able to bask contentedly in its monotone glow for evermore. It took only one morning of rain a week or so back to shock me out of my slumber; reminding me that there is life out there yet and someday soon the world will resume its spinning.
For today we took ourselves southwards toward the beach in Orange County. The air kissed us with chilled lips. Strolling through the fresh breezes amongst shells, pebbles and scattered seaweed I inhaled that priceless sense of happy freedom that we have drawn upon during this past year. Dogs galloped, gambolled, barked and grinned- streaking joyously through the water and across the empty stretches of sand. Gazing out at the waves I remembered why the ocean with her thousand voices is the perfect antidote to the dynamics of city life. I never leave her shores in quite the same way as I arrived.
Los Angeles has been much on my mind recently. I’ve been musing, smiling or grumbling about this city we all hate to love or love to hate depending upon the day, time or mood we happen to be in. Many people have many opinions on the city of angels. I found the essay Rethinking Los Angeles* which I read recently illuminating in its analysis of the city and its various aspects.
‘How do we begin to understand Los Angeles..? Most world cities have an instantly identifiable signature: think of the boulevards of Paris, the skyscrapers of New York or the churches of Rome. But Los Angeles appears to be a city without a common narrative; nomenclatures such as “Hollywood” or “Beverly Hills” are universally understood as fragmentary distortions of some broader, more opaque canvas”
I’ve tentatively begun to think that Los Angeles is rendered such a perfect receptacle for the dreams of so many as the reality undergoing such distortion through fragmentation is itself nothing more than an impressionist painting. Attempts to grasp a fixed portrait of the city will end only in failure.
When I wonder how this Protean behaviour is possible, I return to the lines quoted at the beginning of this piece. These words from the movie Happythankyoumoreplease have remained with me since we moved to Los Angeles in 2017. I think that what the character of Charlie is describing here, whether he knows it or not, is that Los Angeles is a place of non history in terms of Western culture. This lack of cultural rootedness, contrast LA to London for example where you can touch walls that were built by the Ancient Romans, allows the city to escape definition; it is not bound by a past of thousands of years.. For its inhabitants this creates a myriad of mixed consequences. You can dream big in Los Angeles, transcend your limitations and become a superstar, or so the dream that they sell goes anyway. However you can also become overwhelmed, terrified by the vast anonymity of the territory which surrounds you. I’m often reminded of this when I witness some particularly egregious act of self centred behaviour or aggression. People in this city live in fear much of the time, whether they are able to acknowledge it or not.
In the few years that I have lived here, I have veered between love and loathing of Los Angeles. I have become aware that when I return home to England and Europe my internal dimensions settle; I am steadied immeasurably by the support which a rooted place provides. However as time passes, I see the value in mastering the skills necessary to live in a place which leaves one entirely free to create the shapes and patterns within which one can thrive.
Image courtesy of Ed Heckerman
*Rethinking Los Angeles, Greg Hise, Michael J. Dear and H.Eric Schockman
