As a child of Los Angeles, I could not
possibly ignore even a sliver of truth regarding my home city. But these
sentences are more than just a sliver of truth—they capture the reality of an
outlook that many of the millennials growing up in the endless summer of LA
have adopted as a promethean chip on their shoulder. Those of us who have
reached maturity in that city, those of us who have lived upon that glorious
coastline for the majority of our lives, believe Los Angeles to be a swirling
stinkhole of plastic glamour, gridlock traffic, and smog. Her sunsets are lost
to eyes that have seen smeared reds and purples painted across the sky every
single day of their lives.
The bottom line is that no one knows what
they have until they’ve lost it.
And just like William Finnegan, there are
thousands of Los Angeles babies that are yearning for fresh air and adventure,
when they need only look out upon the sea of shining vehicles along the 405 to
realize that they are indeed, in a city of angels.
How do I know this?
From experience, of course. I was one of
the many who packed my bags, looking elsewhere for beauty, wisdom, and not to
mention, uncrowded surf. I started small and made pilgrimages up to Yosemite,
to Big Sur, to Joshua Tree. Then I became brave and hopped ship for New
Zealand, land of greens, golds, and grays. But New Zealand was not far enough
for me. Would I ever be able to escape the barbarism of Los Angeles? I moved to
Iowa, and that did the trick.
Most people do not know where Iowa is on
a map, many do not know it is a state in the United States. Her earth is the
womb of corn, beans, and hogs. The people are proud and united, under the
enchantment of a universal collective mentality. It is difficult to be
different, but they are strong in their uniformity. Walk into the wrong bar,
vote for the wrong politician, be vegetarian—all these things could ostracize a
person. But fall sick with pneumonia and you have a person by your bedside for
the rest of your life, walk into a library and you will be served tea at the
local book club, stumble across the town bar and you will never buy a drink.
Just like any place, especially Los
Angeles, Iowa suffers from two very different sides on her seemingly homogenous
coin.
Now I am a pilgrim of Los Angeles,
suddenly aware of what I left behind. She’s vicious, but she’s home and I love
her. Finnegan also captures this delusional reality (perhaps the affectation of
the city): a disastrous love, a love that will grind your fingernails to a nub,
but you will never quite be able to let go. While he understands this love in
the context of waves, I understand mine in the context of a city:
“No, I mean the beautiful violence of
breaking waves. It is a constant. In small waves and weaker waves, it’s mild
and benign, unthreatening, under control. It’s just the great ocean engine that
propels us and allows us to play. That mood changes as the waves get more
powerful.”
It does not escape Finnegan’s gaze that
Los Angeles, too, is a violent place. He indirectly compares the city to a
mother eating her children. He directly compares the city to a serial
killer/rapist who smothers young boys with beach towels. John Wayne Gacy was
known as “The Killer Clown”, a man who murdered teenage boys with a tourniquet—a
device that was made to prevent a person from bleeding out. If subtle, there is
irony in that murder instrument. And just like Gacy, Los Angeles supplies both
medicine and destruction.
We watch Los Angeles undulate with social
revolution, with media, with environmental activism, with traffic and we are
alone. Residents are steamrolled by the actions of the city. We are subject to
her whims, to her trends. No one quite controls it, but everyone has a hand in
it. This is why we love it. We are each a single cell in a throbbing city and
we each think that we are playing our role in the universe. We comment on art,
we comment on waves, we comment on sunsets. We push our ideas out into the
open, where they are often ignored, but always accepted. The city of Los
Angeles is constant in her tremor and she gives us purpose.
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