LOST ANGELES
11/03/2003Been browsing the L.A. Times. Looks like there’s an interesting class on Los Angeles myths at Pasadena City College… Sounds like something I would actually enjoy. The title of the course is “Los Angeles: Transition and Erasure” and is meant to reveal “the tragic qualities of Southen California life.”
Beautiful SoCal, with perpetual amnesia, so full of small cracks and fissures that only reveal themselves with a closer look. I describe my home region as deeply dysfunctional, with a schizoid pathology and contrariness that extends to all aspects of life. And yet I revel in it all - the vast emptiness, the alienation, the forgetfulness. I feel like I’m constantly looking for the California that gets swept away along with all the rubble from the latest earthquake or ashes from forest fire. I never find it, only careless traces. It’s what keeps me coming back.