Brave New World
Wilshire Boulevard runs the entirety of Los Angeles, from the city to the ocean. When it curves into downtown, it’s more than six lanes wide, bordered by the tallest skyscrapers in California. At night, they’re backlit against the sky so that when you run, like I do, down the completely empty sidewalks, above the packed 110 freeway and down into the glass canyon, it feels like the city parts at your presence.
At first, I thought this was an example of the soundtrack delusion. A way to use glamour or juxtaposition or association for a false sense of self-importance. Then I realized that it is the opposite. It’s the same feeling that you’d get rising in the morning in a penthouse apartment overlooking the city, or the one you can understand if you’ve ever pulled into the driveway of someone’s mansion, yes, but it’s there for anyone.
A student or a two-million a year bank executive have equal access to the same feeling – the one that we seem to be subconsciously pulled to, like it is fulfilling or innately purposeful though we know, deep down, that’s just an illusion. So maybe the flutter you feel when the street cleaves through the heart of the city isn’t something to scorn, maybe it’s something to embrace.
Getting your fix cheaply, quickly and naturally, in a weird way, might be a kind of freedom.
Experiencing the sublime is one of the reasons why life is still worth living for.
Superbly illumantiing data here, thanks!
Doesn’t the LA pollution bother you or your lungs?
That reminds me of part of the Epicurean Four Part Cure – “What is good is easy to get”.
These experiences are always there if we look for them.
Good reminder.
Andrew
I think I know the feeling–hard for me to put into words.
Watch the first minute or so of this clip from Almodovar’s “All About My Mother.” I get that feeling at the first helicopter shot of Barcelona (the soundtrack helps, delusion or not).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6o62hySbDM
I think it comes down to the feeling of going from closed space to open space, of instantly curing claustrophobia.
I’m curious that you associate this feeling with “a false sense of self-importance.” To me it’s the opposite, the liberation you feel when you all of a sudden become very small.
When I lived in L.A. and drove down Wilshire, I always had this image of the Eagles Hotel California in my head. Driving down Sunset I’d imagine the soundtrack from the Doors. Driving down PCH, I’d get into this Beach Boys groove. Regardless, L.A. does have those tracks of road/highway/freeway/etc that seem surreal.
Actually the problem with smog in LA isn’t with your lungs, it’s that you get dust and shit in your eyes. It is better at night though.
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”
Ayn Rand felt the same way, but perhaps for different reasons.
I walked the Santa Monica stairs today (for the first time) with an ipod and had to take it off. It was getting in the way of the “freedom” of sound…waves crashing on the shore, people running, birds, dogs and the gang of cyclists’ spinning bye. It changed the way my heart was beating, the way I looked at people walking over the PCH and the way I was looking at how the Malibu mts met the early calm shore line and the gray sky.
This is my favorite post of yours.
It might be condescending and pretentious of me to say this, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m going to be honest. Sometimes I write you off as sort of naive and immature – which I’m not proud of – and I’m usually disabused of this notion if I read some of your posts. Anyway, this post, more than any other, makes me think you’ve matured a lot more than I give you credit. I guess it probably has a lot to do with the high degree of respect I give anyone who considers “acceptance” one of the most considered and appropriate responses to our internal issues. So even though it doesn’t really mean a whole lot, I say kudos to you.
No, that’s very nice. Thank you.
Perspective is everything. Look at everything around with wonder, for everything around us is no small feat. Everything has value, even those things which we brand ‘gross’ or ‘annoying’. You never know what you got…
I think I’m starting to get all these things that you say. Everything is coming together. I can’t say that I understand it all yet, but I’m definitely moving forward. You seem like a really happy person: congratulations.