Ace of Spades
Posted by brian at 05:53 PM on January 30, 2006.
Metallica's "Orion" from Master of Puppets has been my favorite song for the last couple of weeks. The second movement is heavenly. After the music fades, a mysterious bass groove comes out of nowhere, then BAM! siren-like guitars burst onto the scenes, as if they're screaming in pain. It just keeps building up, getting progressively more complex with each bar, and then all of a sudden it turns into something like a heavy metal waltz. Then the guitar solo pushes it up another level, with the amazing bass solo placing the cherry on top.
Metallica died with Cliff Burton.
LaLaLand
Posted by brian at 08:17 PM on January 13, 2006.
Kerouac knew Los Angeles, because he was able to see it for what it truly was.
While I have mixed feelings about his work, he remains my favorite accidental intellectual, because nobody distilled Los Angeles like he did. In his observations on the city, he let his words think for themselves, and they somehow constructed the essence of the illusion. He wasn't the first to say it, nor am I the first to comment on it, but he was the first to bring me to the conclusion here, 3,000 miles away.
Kerouac knew how to render Los Angeles without falling into a spiral of confusion, because he knew that it was all just a giant illusion, a mirage in the middle of a desert, and that knowledge alone kept him grounded enough to survive. Other great writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Paine among them, were too enamored with the glitz and glam and choked on the smog. They all left LA as failed screenwriters.
Oddly enough, that essential "Hollywood moment," where the attractive male protagonist and the sultry lead girl stare at each other and exchange faux-meaningful glances, can move you, me, and the Average American Audience to tears. This can later turn out to be an integral part of our universal memory, the overlap in our Venn diagrams of experience, as we recollect that pivotal moment in the theater. It is Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh, it is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and everyone in between. It is movement, it is statis, it is the heartbeat and the lull that punctuates and partitions our lives.
This is what Kerouac saw: two real people portraying fake people that are based on real people that may or may not have existed. As Clark and Vivian avoid botching their pseudo-meaningful lines, Rhett and Scarlett share a moment when infinite fake emotions are expressed in stillness in a colorless world, we the audience are moved to tears and make that moment real. Clark could fucking care less, but Rhett gives a lot more than a damn, because the genuineness in the way he says his fake damns crosses the border separating the real actor from the fake. As the audience sits transfixed on the still face of Rhett look at the still face of Scarlett, there is a projector in the back whirring furiously at 24 frames per second. Ironically enough, the stillness, the suspense, the resulting catharsis are all the result of the machine running itself ragged.
The Hollywood moment blesses and curses Los Angeles with a skittishness that intimidates the analytical writer. Now you see me, now you don't. LA is the city that isn't really a city, because most people refer to the county, unless they specifically refer to downtown, except that downtown in itself is a contradiction, because only a true city can have a true downtown. It's impossible to locate Los Angeles. You would have better luck trying to find lost angels among the traffic that clogs the 101 and 405. As far as you and I are concerned, we are both from LA, despite Mapquest's insistence that we live forty miles apart, a distance that can take anywhere from 25 minutes to two hours to traverse.
Ask any Angelino to describe their hometown. You will always see the same adjectives/nouns thrown into the mix. "Laid-back," "chill," or for those of us in the Valley, "whatever," all of which are attempts to connect the vague, abstract, and vaporeal to the specific, concrete, and real. However, it is this ambiguity that provides the psychological blanket that can survive the earthquakes of San Andreas and the winds of Santa Ana.
Perhaps this is why both the fakest and most genuine people I've met are from Los Angeles. Some people can never see past the Hollywood sign and remain mesmerized for a lifetime. Others observe, enjoy, and may even embrace the illusion, but remember that there is a projector with an endless reel of film in the back of the room.
Don't get me wrong. I love Los Angeles. I love its diversity, its food, its music, its people, its culture. Both you and I know that I, too, am whirring away at life at 24 frames per second, if not faster. I feel at home there, because there is this citywide understanding that, whether they whir like me or not, we can all accept the illusion of Los Angeles.
In LA, I can whir through the scenes of my life, usually good, sometimes amazing, sometimes soul-crushingly painful, at the speed that I want, with nobody behind the curtain besides myself. Nobody is there to stop me or push me on, and that's the way I like it.
Maybe you really understand, or maybe you're still caught in the lights. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, as long as you let me have my city, my neighborhood, my life, my home.
Good morning.
Posted by brian at 02:33 AM on December 27, 2005.
There is something about this moment, about being here right now, at this particular intersection of Yesterday and the Infinite Tomorrow that has me struck before it, breathless. I don't know what to say or do but look up and lose myself in the spears of light, the shimmering warmth, and the primal energy flowing from my head to my soles to my soul.
Thank you, I want to whisper.
And I do.
Observation
Posted by brian at 05:28 PM on March 9, 2004.
People always say that you find things "in the last place you look,"
but I realized today how stupid that is. Only idiots go looking for
something after they've already found it.
* * *
+ More:
inspiraznz.net has now expired, which somewhat explains this
validated template and a new color scheme. Go me.
+ In case you care, I won't be on AIM until April 11.