"Blues from Laurel Canyon" is a John Mayall and the Blues Breakers album he did around 1968 or so. In his typical chatty narrative, he claims that he’d “never seen a better crop.” Considering the ladies in the neighborhood. I always hated that line. A few minutes ago I made the first-in-a-life-time , uneventful turn on to the Laurel Canyon exit from the 101. This is “Studio City” which much have something to do with movieland. I’m just watching the life outside the window. There’s a guy who’s probably a decade younger than John Mayhal, which means he’s still in his seventies, sitting on Ventura Boulevard and Vantage Ave with a tourquoise Strat that looks not unlike my own. He’s wearing dapper little hat and a young lady, just stopped, deposited coins in his box and chatted for a while.
Freeways, man. Highways, and interstates, and state routes. This is such a celebration of a particular American epoch: Post war. The freedom and the tyranny of the automobile: In LA there was no apparent reason to say “no” to the next highway, to connect the next ex-burb and as a result no urban core ever seemed to coagulate. I was at the beautiful Huntington Library, Gardens and Art Gallery and it was astoundingly beautiful to traipse from “desert” gardens to Japanese gardens to Australia gardens. But I couldn’t escape the feeling, even though the hum was faint and nearly drowned by the calls of birds I didn’t recognize, that we were surrounded on all sides by highways, liquid veins of humanity that punctuate and human notion of “natural.”
I’ve enjoyed this brief visit to California. I always do. It is one of the most wonderful places on earth to visit. But I wouldn’t want to live here. I never enjoyed living in this state. If you had “obscenity-thou” money, perhaps it would open like an orchid, but at a baseline, I’d miss the seasons and I’d hate the freeways. Highways are important to New York City too, of course. But they are so obviously an after thought. Something bolted on, rather than essential to the initial build-out.
“This is Happiness” by Niall Williams has forced me to slow down. I was reading it quickly, following broad brushstrokes and it dawned on me, when I considered the dense, ironic pace, that I’d been missing nugget after nugget. No, there isn’t any filler. Every sentence is thoughtfully crafted. It’s more like reading poetry thank ‘move-you-from-this-idea-to-this-scene’ scaffolding. Once I slowed down, it occurred to me just why my stepmom was so enamored with this tale. I have a long flight home tonight. A ‘redeye’ as they say. I'm off to sleep early and when I return from oblivion we are already landing in Newark.
Friday 03/06/20
No comments:
Post a Comment