Les La L'Anniversary Blues

A year on (this past Monday), celebrations and regrets are a hair-weave; subway delays and winter slush a fade. Though talking back to the East Coast, or seeing the Apple flicker as some producer’s chosen backdrop on my telly, ushers in a deep unease of the soul. Eemmeegrant 4 Life indeed.

A lot of the things proselytized about this place are true – snobbed-up, media-fed EC’s may only be exploring one small strip of the sprawl, but some generalizations are dead-spot accurate. That I’m not of this place is apparent and somewhat reassuring (that nobody else is, totally besides the point – “of course they belong, darling.”) Although, I too have purchased a tracksuit...umm, to blend in.

But this place does contain vast multitudes and that, la muchacha, is its main attraction, the dizzying possibilities is one helluva great redeemer as Deities go. You bang your shin on a 2000-year-old redwood, watch a sunset over the Desert peaks or swerve not to hit the coyote with the balls to wander round Franklin during Friday rush hour, and the word “opportunity” gets redefined. So what if some of the philosophers here are less Ninja and more Barney fucking Fife – and thus even harder to respect when their triumph is my cold porridge. Dealing with that motherfucker is how we do -- or learn to. Cause you are never too old.

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More on writing from LA: Bernie Weinraub does not go out a sucka, but does question his higher purpose. (from the NYT).

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“Folk songs are evasive - the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that’s exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn’t be comfortable with it any other way.” – Bob Dylan, "Chronicles - Volume One," p.71