Los Angeles. It's another world, that strange anomaly among American cities, and it doesn't apologize for itself.

In some ways it represents the future; 2014 was the first year in which a larger percentage (50.2) of American children under five were of ethnic descent. That's exciting for the United States, but for L.A. it's old hat. The largest major American metropolis where English isn't the dominant language, the city's percentage of ethnically descended young children is a staggering eighty-three percent. In that regard, L.A. is what the country will look like in fifty years.

In other respects, it's grotesquely antiquated. Look at the grimace on any urban planner's face when you mention Los Angeles. By far the country's worst example of urban sprawl, a staggering thirty percent of the city's land mass is given over to automobile use.* One and two-story buildings stretch out as far as the eye can see, and nobody but nobody can get around the sea of brake lights. Alfa Romeos and Pintos sit through the stuff together. Unless you live along one of the rail lines, the place is endless, in terms of both space and time. The marine layer in the mornings and the smog in the afternoons exacerbates the distance visually, the vapor giving size and heft to the vastness.

The City of Angels isn't really about the past or future, though, or even the present. You've heard the saying, and it's true: it's where people go when they have an idea and yes, a dream. Dreams are what the city is founded on, and the common element in the beating heart of every Angelino.

You go there because you believe. 

It might be possible. It could happen– stardom, wealth, status, recognition, or– more modestly but no less massively– steady income, naturalization, certification, family, treatment, opportunity. Love. Self-realization on some level. Every good thing in life is predicated on a maybe, and the ones naïve and brave enough to try– some of them– will be the ones who actually make it. 

I wish sometimes I were as strong as they.

I'm alive because my Korean grandfather had the will and resolve to start a new life there under enormous hardship, with every guarantee of failure and nothing to his name but a set of mouths to feed. My friends move there, or move out of there (you move out of LA, not away from it), as I have done more than once, as they wrestle with how they see themselves. I love the city desperately, that old human tornado, but I can no longer bring myself to live there. 

LA also contains everything that comes with dreams: fear, loss, hope, disillusionment, tragedy, frustration, anger, anxiety, confusion, and crushing disappointment. 

As much as there are dreams in that vast array of lights, so too is there reality. There's a woman I knew there whom I love immensely, a degree of sentiment I cannot overstate, but with whom I can't share a life. Things make sense in my dreams, but dreams aren't where I live– and reader, understand that this is coming from someone who believes in magic, who goes around trumpeting the idea that realists are forever doomed to mediocrity because they lack the vision to see greatness!

But I can't deny reality, and the fact that I am all I can offer. You know this feeling, I'm sure. The best I can ask for is what I have already received: the gift that she'll always be part of my character. I don't believe you'll ever read this, my dear, but if you do, bonne chance. You deserve every good thing in life. 

Our dreams contain giants, versions of ourselves we know to be possible. I would ask all of you a favor, if I could, and that is to keep chasing those other dreams, even when the one in front of you is ended. When one dream gets broken, don't abandon the others too. There's a difference between giving up on a dream and giving up on the idea of dreaming. The former is a necessity we'll all do at least once; the latter is how people grow old, wooden, tired, bitter. Don't go there. You don't have to go there. Pick up the pieces. The other dreams are different, and in them the notion of bettering ourselves, realizing ourselves, lives on, and on, and on.

Another favor, not as crucial but recommended no less enthusiastically: go see La La Land! Watch this trailer, please, and then go see it. It's the film of the year by far, both aesthetically and in terms of content. It's about everything you just read, and it's not a mere celebration of following your dreams, but more fundamentally a commemoration of the very act of dreaming itself. We do these things because we believe, and that alone is worth is extolling, regardless of the outcome.  

---

La La Land:
The teaser above was not in as heavy of rotation, but I love it. Here's the first teaser, and the domestic full trailer. Note the rich colors: shot on 35mm film!
Damien Chazelle on La La Land: 'Los Angeles is full of people chasing dreams' (The Guardian)
La La Land writer-director Damien Chazelle on subverting the things he loves most (The Verge)
Emma Stone and Damien Chazelle on the Magic and Alchemy of ‘La La Land’ (Variety)

L.A. land use:
*14 Percent of Los Angeles County Land is Dedicated to Parking (Curbed). Key quote, from Donald Shoup: "You can't have the number of cars we have in L.A. without our parking lots, and you can never create urban density with the parking lots we've built."
-The link above is just about parking. If you want the really exhausting stuff, try this 2012 report: Transportation Land Valuation: Evaluating Policies and Practices that Affect the Amount of Land Devoted to Transportation Facilities (Victoria Transport Policy Institute).

L.A. language and demographics: 
-New Census figures show nation is following Los Angeles in diversity (Press Telegram)
-New data shows more than HALF of Los Angeles residents speak a language other than English at home (Daily Mail)
-​Demographics of Los Angeles (Wikipedia)

"Hey, he's smoking crack! You need to get off!"

That's the African man seated across from them, noticing something amiss. Crack cocaine has no odor, but this fellow is primed to pay attention; he's a nighttime security guard on his way to start a shift, already slipping into observant work mode. I hadn't seen a thing, and was grateful for his pro-active stance. None of that Seattle Freeze disengagement here. 

I took his side on the matter, speaking loudly to the father-son pair who were about to do the deed. It was mainly the middle-aged father who was in need, beads of sweat on his bald pate, with unsteady hands holding the materials. The son– I really hope that wasn't his son, just a younger accomplice– was more put together, having the advantage of a newer body on his side: less years of abuse. 

Tone of voice is everything. In certain circumstances, like this one, it's the only tool through which you communicate respect. That key difference can completely change which universe you step into next. I spoke loudly and firmly, but kindly. The voice of a friendly babysitter, but with more bass: 

"Okay no smoking on the bus you guys, that's bad manners. We're not gonna call the cops, that takes too long. Thank you guys, 'ppreciate it."

Incredibly, they were sitting right up front. The sweat-dripping father seemed relieved and grateful, returning my sentiments with thanks of his own, as willing to show me respect as I did him. The idea of not calling police seemed particularly appealing, not just for him, but for everyone else too. He thanked me several more times. The son helped him off the bus later on, taking a moment to thank me as well.

Ibrahim, another man who looks middle-aged but is probably younger, is known by many drivers for his tendency to smoke illegal substances on buses. He has the damaged and blistered lips one gets from overexposure to the high temperature of crack pipes, and frequently falls into coma-like napping episodes from being zonked out on "spice," a relatively new street concoction (it looks like pot. It isn't. More here).

Ibrahim almost never abuses himself on my bus, though. I take that as a sign of respect, and I am grateful for it, for partly my sake but more importantly that of his body. 

He got on once, more excited than usual. We bumped fists as he exclaimed, "hey. I'm leaving soon! In December!"
"What? where you goin'?"
"I got permit for translation my language. In Yakima. You know?"
"Yes, Yakima!"
"They won't give me here, only in Yakima."
"Congratulations!" 
"It was three people in line,"
"But now it's you, it's almost you!"
"Yeah! 'Cause I don't speak English very well, but they can help me." 
"It's good, it's great!"
"Yeah!"
"It's good to know you!"
"Yeah! I go sit!"
"Okay!"

Somebody needs to be nice to this guy. Where else will he find role models? What great possibilities lie within him, thoughtful and considerate as he has it in him to be? What roads is he passing by, and which still lie in his grasp?

Surprise me, Ibrahim. I think you have weathered tougher things than I, and it may one day be me asking you for help. 

"Heeegghhh," he said.
"Aw yeah," I said. 

Just pretend you completely understand the guy, is what I told myself. Most of communication is body language anyway.

When we got to the next stop, he did the same thing all over again. To clarify the situation, I asked, "you want this one right here?"

"Uuuugghhhmm," he said in return. He pondered Third and Columbia as one ponders the River Nile, a place of mystery and intrigue possibly too beguiling to enter timidly.

One headphone hung out one of his ears, and the other swung from a spare ear lobe. His head similarly lolled on and around the region of his upper neck. He wobbled about like a human slinky, and my old modern dance friends would've loved studying his movements, considering his center of gravity, a center which came from a plane invisible to all others. His mini-garbage bag chinked and crinkled with what sounded like a half-dozen beer bottles. A young man, bony and dark-olive skinned, enveloped by a loose black and olive jacket, him woozy and stretchy in the way where you're starting to wonder how long it's been since he's made direct eye contact with anyone, when was the last coherent sentence.... 

This green light at the River Nile wouldn't last forever. "You wanna step out here? Or maybe you wanna go up the street with me?"
"Huuggh. Yugh."
"Yeah yeah, let's go up the street," I replied amiably, closing the doors.

When we arrived at Seneca he paused climactically on the edge of the doorway. People behind him, waiting to exit as well, were watching. Others outside waiting to board likewise had their eye on him. He squatted. He tensed his knees. Then he went for it, leaping as strenuously as though he'd read my mind regarding the Nile River analogy, diving down a full... ten inches, landing from great heights, spreading his arms out wide with high drama, for balance. Then he walked away.

As soon as he was out of earshot, the young black American man standing next to me, the mid-aged Asian woman in the chat seat, and the crisply dressed Caucasian thirty-somethings boarding all stood looking at each other for a second. We were united in each offering our own complimentary versions of questioning hand gestures, hilarious frowns, and raised eyebrows. What just happened? Who was that? More importantly, what was that?

By now we were all chuckling. The young man said, "everyone's got they own problems."
"So true!" I exclaimed.
"Some are just more entertaining than others!"
"I'm just trying to work up to that level of entertainment!"
"Ha!"
"We all have our own issues. I know I got mine."
"Me too," he said. 

Don't we all. Maybe pretending to jump from a great height when exiting a city bus isn't the worst way to navigate through this crazy world.

I've been thinking a lot about endings.

Two people I know and the dear friend of another are wrestling with fatal illnesses. Together, they encompass three vastly different generations, the upper and lower age limits of my friends, and it's hard not to think of the two younger ones as having received a premature fate. But in the cosmic sense, does a few decades really make a difference? Couldn't we say all deaths are premature, as easily as we can pronounce all deaths perfectly timed? Isn't it a bigger deal that they, for a week or a half-century, actually existed? 

“Music is all I understand, because you don’t need words or experience in order to understand it. It just is,” says a character in Paolo Sorrentino's 2015 film Youth. We all find music that resonates on a fundamental level, and for me the list is large. The Bach keyboard concertos; toccata & fugue in D; Handel's Opus 4 No.6 for harp; Lana Del Rey's voice; the Kenny Drew piano solo on Coltrane's "I'm Old Fashioned;" Sigur Rós' Untitled, especially the second half; Arvo Pärt; any Roger Waters guitar solo; Eno's "Ascent;" and Radiation City.  

I first heard Rad City when installing my first major solo art show. Maybe that's where the positive connotation comes from. My friend, who ran the place, had them on. For me, hanging an exhibition is a favorite part of the gallery process. You already have the show; you've executed the work; now you're banging nails into the wall, aligning straightedges in the company of friends, exchanging small talk and silence at your own pace. The first couple times I saw them live it was by happenstance I was alone, but I soon developed a preference for going solo. It's so much more intense of an experience. I want to feel something in this life, and the potency of hearing that music, so special to you, with no intermediary… do you know what I mean? The sheer immediacy of it all, intoxicating.

I don't want to describe their sound too much; better rather to imagine whatever music accomplishes the same for you. I will say they've been described as what happens "after your parents' record collection spends some time on the Event Horizon!" There's a sixties lounge vibe, in concert with ethereal voice work and rich, precise harmonies. Consider the conversation between the bass and drums here, the compellingly opaque writing here (an element I've found in more than one Portland band), or the specificity of atmosphere here. Note also their use of silence. In the way we discuss Thelonius Monk "leaving room between the notes," Rad City doesn't overload the sonic landscape. They leave space for their sound, room to feel. Songs and short films can more ably rely on mood to sustain their effect than a number of other art forms, and their music traffics heavily in that; something deeper here, just beneath the depth you can touch, lyrics and sounds which feel like a memory even as they're happening. Music, the solution we've come up with for articulating the thoughts that exist before language. 

I like the stuff, in other words. You know when you come upon a new song you can't get enough of, and you listen to nothing else for a week, and then the moment comes where you move past the beat and finally notice what they're actually singing? In that fateful moment of registering the lyrics, you will either like the song more, or less. Hopefully the former. You can't go back on that comprehension. That magical moment of understanding happened to me with one of their songs while watching it live for the first time. Sublime doesn't even cover it.

After developing an acquaintanceship with the band from going to entirely too many of their shows, they invited me down to Portland for their big headlining concert, their last for a while as I understood it, perhaps because of the holidays, a show on their home turf, where they'd really pull out all the stops and play the stuff that normally never gets played. They did pull out all the stops. The venue was the famed 92 year-old Revolution Hall, and the presentation and execution of the music had a size to it, a heft you could barely take in, it was so beautiful. My friend and I stood in awe. 

Partway through the night, singer Lizzy Ellison announced this was their last show. 

I've been thinking a lot about endings. One year ago, as most of you know, I survived the Paris terror attacks, and have been reflecting further of late. Three relationships which have figured largely in my life reached their closure in different ways this year. And as mentioned above, a few of my favorite people are not long for this Earth. I stood in the front row, listening as Lizzy explained why, explained how things need to move on. "I hope you can respect that," she said.

The Hall was a room of a few hundred friends and family. The setlist wasn't a string of hits, but designed for people who already loved the music and knew it well. Many in the audience knew the band personally, and the band itself is comprised, Fleetwood Mac-style, of a couple of couples. Love was in the air, love of beauty, truth, human connection and honest feeling. Imagine your favorite artist, their works formative and rejuvenating for you, in the midst of offering their best art ever... and then sharing this would be the last time.

I realized then I needed to do what needs to be done always, in every good second of our lives: be here. Don't document it, analyze it, worry about it, mourn it; all that in good time. For the precious last minutes of the beating now, just be. I took no pictures, no video, recorded no music. Just drink up as much as you can, live in these final hours as deeply as possible, that you might know them to have been real. This night happened once, and you were there for it. Lizzy and Patti on either end of the stage, singing at each other. Cameron deep in the zone, speaking with his guitar. 

Cameron later on, waving to the crowd at the end, realizing this is it. The look in his eyes was one I've known myself: the surprise and realization that epochs, no matter how long or storied, can end in seconds. This wave, this clapping audience... this is it, bigger than we are and so fast, the chapter's final sentence, slipping out of our fingers already, elusive.

Really though, could you ask for anything more?

---

Update: further thoughts on difficult times....

I think it's important to keep in mind that although Mr. Trump is racist and sexist, not all his followers are racist and sexist.

​You're a resident of Gary, Indiana, who's just been laid off from a job at the local steel mill. Your father's farm in Chesterton is long gone, and you're wishing your wife's family's hardware store didn't have to foreclose a decade ago. Walmart isn't hiring, the neighbors are on meth, and you have three kids at home, not all of whom have shoes. 

Only one of the presidential candidates is saying something about tax cuts and families. You see rural white poverty around you every day, and you notice liberals only ever talk about poverty in an inner city context, or with reference to the global south. You wonder why they never talk about rural poverty or mention places like the Mississippi Delta, the Ozarks, Appalachia, the Dakotas… you didn't finish middle school, but you suspect the rural poverty rate is higher than it is in cities (it is*), that the study of sociology has an urban bias (it does**), and you feel forgotten as you look at the abject living standards in your trailer and compare it to the left-wing lives portrayed on your neighbor's TV. Only one candidate is bothering to reach out to you. Do you care that he makes disparaging comments about demographic groups you've never even met? That's meaningless noise. Of course not. The government hasn't been helping you for years, and looking at your malnourished children you know you need to cast a vote. For change. 

I suspect scenarios like the above are more prevalent among the Trump voter turnout than the idea of a wealthy, uneducated teeth-gnashing white man who's always hoped for a Klan revival, regularly beats his wife, and enjoys spraying epithets on all VW beetles that have pastel colors. The desperation, living conditions, and chronic lack of education in middle America doesn't justify voters' mortifying tolerance of selfish hate, but it explains their willingness to subjugate it in importance. They're frustrated with America's deadlocked governmental infrastructure. Aren't you? Their vote for someone different and new stems from a similar place as my own vote for Obama in 2008. It isn't the same thing, but you see the similarity of desperation. There's a problem with the system, and your two candidate choices are someone from within that system, and someone outside it.    

What I'm trying to assert here is twofold: not all Trump supporters are hate-fueled animals. However, in casting their vote in the name of self-preservation, they have endorsed and enabled hate of the most egregious, un-American type.

The hypothetical teeth-gnasher described above didn't comprise the entire Trump vote, but it has now been unleashed because of it. The bump in hate crimes since the election is worse than what happened after 9/11, according to the SPLC, a body that tracks such items. Gallup reports 42 percent of Americans afraid as a result of the Trump win; it's not hard to see why, as incidents numbering in the hundreds of harassment, swastikas, vandalism, whites-only enforcement, corralling of blacks on social media for future attacks, street threats toward Muslim women and their families, a push for lynchings, and worse… with only a passing denouncement by Mr. Trump ("stop it"), who told 60 Minutes "it was a very small amount" and "he had only seen one or two instances." Do you think Obama would have spoken like that if hundreds of hate crimes were committed in his name? Any other president? Two sentences on 60 minutes, followed by the hiring of white supremacist Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist.

What to do?

Be nice to people. Being kind has always been a necessary and satisfying obligation for us social creatures, but in 2016 in the United States it is something more. It is a matter of national urgency, a moral imperative we owe our fellow Americans. Folks like yourself– that is, women, rape survivors, gays, poor people, dark-skinned Americans from all over the world, Muslims, Native Americans, immigrants, Jews, trans folks, the disabled and more– are feeling a distinct lack of love right now.

I was at a rally last week, called Love Over Hate. The mood was calm, accepting, peaceful. The afternoon light was fading into evening, and several hundred people of all the backgrounds above, and others (plenty of enlightened white males out there too, don't forget), coalesced as one in the twilight. People didn't look or talk like each other, didn't dress the same, weren't similar ages, and no one cared. You felt safe there, appreciated.

I hope the future feels like that.

We get there a step at a time. By leaving a bigger tip for your waitress. Waving hello at the fellow on the exit ramp, even if you don't have anything else to offer, because acknowledgment is the biggest offering. Pay for your gas inside, so you can give the man at the counter a smile. He'll feel better.

These are the restorative acts we need now.

----


Further Reading (includes links above):

Indiana:
10 Worst Places to Live in Indiana (Road Snacks)
10 Small Towns In Indiana Where You’d Never Want To Live (Road Snacks)
Indiana Crowned Meth Capital of United States (TriState)

More on Gary, Indiana, which has a poverty rate of 38.7%:
Gary...May Cut Off Services to Nearly Half Its Land (Business Insider)
Where Work Disappears and Dreams Die (The American Prospect)

Rural Poverty:
Rural Poverty: 11 Myths and Realities (Sullivan County)
**Why the Left Isn’t Talking About Rural American Poverty (In These Times)
Some Reasons behind Societal Neglect of Rural Poverty– and Rural America (Non-Profit Quarterly)
The Particular Struggles of Rural Women (The Atlantic)
*Rural Poverty Decreases, Yet Remains Higher Than The U.S. Poverty Rate (Housing Assistance Council)
The State of Rural America in 2015 (Modern Farmer)

Trump:
7 Key Takeaways from Donald Trump’s 60 Minutes Interview (Time)
Donald Trump won’t take a salary as US president, and other news from his “60 Minutes” interview (Quartz)
A White Nationalist Who Hates Jews Will Be Trump's Right-Hand Man In The White House (Media Matters)
Behind Trump’s victory: Divisions by race, gender, education (Pew Research Center). Note the enormous education gap. 

Hate: 
Hundreds of Hate Crimes Have Been Reported Since the Election (NY Magazine)
Racist Incidents Are Up Since Donald Trump’s Election (Time)
Post-election spate of hate crimes worse than post-9/11, experts say (USA Today)
Spike in hate crimes prompts special NY police unit (CNN)

Jon Stewart!
Some highly compelling insights from a reflective Stewart: Jon Stewart on President-elect Trump, hypocrisy in America (CBS)