Whispers from the West

(On the way into LA...blurry, delusional, just like the last leg of the road trip)

Lingering in Los Angeles

The City of Angels is, apparently, the City of Dreams. Flocked to by thousands of hopeful whatevers year after year, this place is a repository of unachieved aspirations. Investment bankers go to Wall Street, wishing for wealth (and up until last year, usually made a buck or two). Techies, Taiwan. Fashionistas flock to France. But it’s the dreamers who come to lala land. Hollywood. Starlets searching for roles. Writers pray for a pair of executive eyelids to land on that script, the screenplay that will change it all, if only someone in a suit could see it. Paper stacks of pilots are piled in dumpsters and washed-up one-time actresses serve burgers in Burbank.

A cab driver put it pretty succinctly the other night. He said something like, “everyone comes here thinking they’re going to be a star…that’s why there are so many people in Los Angeles.” Maybe it’s a city of delusional, and deluded, daydreamers. But it’s place of escape from the banal bankers and uptight antics of the East coast (Toronto INCLUDED).

I think, in life, those of us who are dreamers, will have a tougher time. No automatic employment after education or test to take to make you a professional. But I think it’s more exciting this way. And apparently, so do a lot of folks out here.

There is something special about this city. Something contrived; something contradictory. The Hollywood sign, for example, is meager and almost dilapidated, but still, it can sort of take your breath away. Because it IS Hollywood. Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The City of Dreams.