(Sunset Junction Festival, Saturaday, August 23, 2008)
I’ve been in Los Angeles for three weeks now, actually two because of the week away in Colorado. There are a lot of differences, the big ones are too obvious to mention and I was prepared for them anyway. It’s the small ones. Bananas ripen fast here, the water feels different, it makes my hair coarse. In the Bay, I had ant and spider problems. Down here it is cockroaches and wayward grasshoppers. I haven’t seen a cockroach since I was a teenager in Riverside.
Judy and I had a pleasant drive down from Northern California. I shared my last day in Berkeley with Cody’s. A bank took over what was left of the store and sold everything for 40% off. I purchased some Proust, Pinter screenplays and a Richard Brautigan collection I’ve wanted for some time. We left late in the afternoon and experienced a slow sunset as we made our way down the 5. The car was always shady inside, never hot. We got into Hollywood by 11pm, unpacked and went to bed. The following afternoon I drove to Riverside, grabbed my brother and headed to San Diego to pick up my new car. In the last stretch on my way back to Los Angeles there was awful traffic (a Sunday!) on the 5 in between Oceanside and San Clemente. It was such a strange place for traffic. I sat listening to Exile on Main Street over and over again and got home later than the drive down from the bay.
I spent most of the following week finalizing any paperwork needing to be done, mostly loan forms, for graduate school. The money I made over the summer in Berkeley is quickly disappearing. It’s a strange feeling. Once that money is gone the next for years (for the most part) will be loans and scholarship. I don’t really know how to feel about that.
I’ve been exploring Los Angeles little by little. I favor the Los Feliz district over the others I have visited. Had I decided on AFI, I would most likely have lived there. Judy and I went to the Sunset Junction festival, explored Silverlake and saw Broken Social Scene. The Central Library is amazing, but strange like most things in L.A. It’s enormous, storing probably the biggest (public) collection I’ve ever seen. Their DVD selection is great, but has to many “Video Home” films, super low budget Mexican action films. These films are great but it’s weird to see more of these than Criterion releases. The covers to these things were printed off of an inkjet in someone’s bedroom. Everything is categorized and shelved in a strange way. They don’t even bother alphabetizing the music section. We got lost. The library itself is inaccessible because it is in Downtown, where no one really lives or goes, and there’s no affordable parking. It’s a beautiful place and I could easily spend an entire day there if it weren’t so difficult to get to. I checked out La Cienega by Lucrecia Martel, hoping she would be in Colorado the following week, along with another Bukowski novel, Factotum. Everyone should read Chapter 16 of Factotum, if nothing else by Bukowski. It is four pages of brilliance.
I’m starting to settle in with my new living situation. I can’t really settle in because I let the sublet-er borrow my dresser, so all my clothes are stacked in crates next to my bed. I see and interact with the neighbors a lot, which is different than the Bay. The Bay has a larger general community; everywhere you went everyone seemed to be on the same wavelength or outlook on the world. But there I never interacted with my neighbors on a daily basis. L.A. seems to have strong local/neighborhood communities but with no general, larger unity. There are always children playing outside my window. We say “hi” and talk a little.
September 18 will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. When I started it, I knew I would eventually move to Los Angeles but not in the way I eventually did. As difficult as it was, I’m glad for the last year I had in the Bay. I spent a lot of time by myself and with those few remaining friends in the area. It could be the last time I live like that; and that makes me sad.
I'm officially on the UCLA Film Directing email list. It's giving me a peek into the world I'll soon be immersed in. People I don't know asking for production designers, PA's, sound designers, etc., for films I don't know.
I got my Los Angeles County library card yesterday. Hopefully I’ll get to use it a lot and it’ll be as good to me as my Berkeley card.
