Write a commentAs I’m writing this, the last of the historic and horrific Los Angeles fires have finally been extinguished. A bit of rain, far less than we typically get this time of year, has quenched the dry brush and doused the remaining embers. I was lucky. My house was never in any real danger, largely thanks to the wind’s direction, though for several nights I could see the fires in the distance from my porch. They were close enough that, for at least one night, my friends and I had packed go-bags in case we needed to evacuate.
This isn’t about the fires, nor is it about the brave men and women who fought them. It’s about what came after. A lot is said about Los Angeles, most often by people who don’t live here, likely have never even been here, and are often just trying to score cheap political points. They have this idea that L.A. is filled with shallow, vacuous people. It is, after all, the land of Hollywood, sun, and beaches. That perception is as lazy as it is inaccurate. Greater Los Angeles, the metropolitan area that best describes the “city” and what you’re imagining when you think of “L.A.,” is home to over 18 million people. As much as it’s a “company town” for the movie industry, only a small fraction of the city’s inhabitants actually work in Hollywood. Really, it’s a city as varied as the myriad people who live here.
Those endless cultural differences are reflected in the diversity of the music. From Capitol and A&M to Warner, L.A. is as much a music town as it is one for movies. Bands as varied as the Beach Boys and N.W.A; Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers; not to mention artists like Snoop Dogg and Weird Al are from here; and Joan Jett, Frank Zappa, and countless others came here and found success.
And of course, the songs show the infinite personalities of Los Angeles. “I drive on her streets ’cause she’s my companion. I walk through her hills ’cause she knows who I am.” “I’d be safe and warm if I was in L.A.” “Ventura Highway in the sunshine, where the days are longer, the nights are stronger than moonshine.” “I am going to Los Angeles to see my own name on a screen, five feet long and luminous.” “It’s a long day livin’ in Reseda. There’s a freeway runnin’ through the yard.” Fun fact: there’s no freeway in Reseda. “No matter what you say about Los Angeles, it’s still the only place for me.”
Randy Newman nailed it best 42 years ago. I’ve approached “I Love L.A.” from all sides in my 25 years living here. It’s catchy and fun, of course, and a superficial listen makes it seem like it’s entirely positive for everything that makes L.A. great: “Roll down the window. Put down the top. Crank up the Beach Boys, baby. Don’t let the music stop.” It’s always nice here, right? So that’s why “Everybody’s very happy ’cause the sun is shining all the time. Looks like another perfect day.” Newman is from here, so he loves it, right? We love it, right?
But of course, if you dig deeper, knowing Newman’s penchant for satire and sardonic lyrics, you might ask: is the real meaning of “I Love L.A.” that it’s actually not great? That under the glamor and beauty, it’s secretly . . . rot? “Look at that bum over there, man. He’s down on his knees.” The streets he mentioned, Century, Victory, Santa Monica, and Sixth Street, weren’t great places in the early 1980s. And of course, “Santa Ana winds blowing hot from the north” is sung as a positive, but the harsh, desiccating Santa Ana winds are almost never pleasant and, in fact, were the main cause of the fires that destroyed huge parts of the city this year.
Here’s the thing about “I Love L.A.”: Both aspects, both ways to interpret it, are true. Los Angeles contains multitudes. Los Angeles is multitudes. Aldous Huxley described L.A. as “19 suburbs in search of a metropolis.” He meant that as a pejorative, yet he was born in England, and you know where he chose to spend the last 26 years of his life? Here. One hundred years after he first said that, it’s even more so now—bigger, broader, and even more diverse. He was wrong then, and would be wrong now, to think of that as a negative. L.A. is one of the most ethnically and culturally varied places on Earth. The melting pot of melting pots. People from all over the world choose to move here, one of the last lit beacons in the darkness and fiction that is the American Dream. They choose L.A. because, unlike anywhere else, it seems like anything is possible here. Where a small-town outcast can become a movie star, start a band, build remarkable buildings, cook legendary meals, or anything else.
I know because that’s exactly what I did. Like millions of others, I packed up everything I owned, left everything I’d known, to seek fame and fortune in the City of Angels. What I found was different from what I’d dreamed and yet somehow better. There’s kindness in this harsh megacity, a feeling that we’re all in this mess together. We all know the traffic is bad, the summer heat can burn, and everything is expensive. We also know that you’re never more than a few minutes from every type of food imaginable. That the winters are mild, and you can surf and ski on the same day.
And when something terrible happens, we band together like any other community. While the fires raged, shelters all over the city had more donations than they knew what to do with. People opened their homes to people and pets, strangers and family. The news far too often focuses on the negative, feeding the outrage machine that fuels ratings, yet there are always helpers, especially here. L.A. is not perfect—nowhere is—but at the heart of L.A. is a bunch of people just wanting to live their lives, who care about their neighbors even if their only interaction is a wave when taking out the trash. It’s not a city that lends itself to casual enjoyment from visitors; it’s too vast for that. It’s not for everyone for the same reason. It’s not a city that can be fully understood without living here. Even after 25 years, I often feel I’ve barely scratched the surface.
But if you do move here, as so many have, after a few months or maybe a year, suddenly it all clicks. You find your community in this city of countless communities, this city of cities with more people than 46 states and 128 countries. Sure, sometimes it can be a bit much. Sometimes there is pain and fear and suffering. But there’s also happiness and, under soft sun and cool breezes, hope.
From the South Bay to the Valley, from the West Side to the East Side, I love L.A.
. . . Geoffrey Morrison
