It's Monday, almost 9 o'clock in the evening; I am sitting at LAX waiting for the BA red-eye flight to board. For those not familiar with Tyler-Brulé-speak, this is Los Angeles airport. First, I will make a statement: LAX is so third world, that I will explain why: Los Angeles is a city built on a pop up philosophy of gypsum and Olmypus. Consequently any permanent buildings (which would imply built to last) quickly crumble. LAX is in the advanced stages of depression, a board informs me that a $273 million refurbishment is underway - about time too!
This is not a city of permanence but let's be fair to the Angelenos, this is the city of fire and quake, the city could burn or fold at any moment, of course we built fast and cheap they holler, like are you kidding me?? But this is not, I don't think, why the city looks like it does - as though it were being propped up by a makeshift wooden frame, assembled by some underpaid (yes, third world) short man who is about to pass out as a gust of Santa Ana, crisp and unforgiving as the desert, hits him in the behind.
It is the obsession with youth and morphed beauty and immortality, it is the fear of impermanence that makes Los Angeles impermanent - the kind of city that you thought only existed in a hangover childhood fantasy, a sprawling playground where you are never asked to grow up, where you are encouraged to remain frivolous, childish, and so, tragically, freakish.
No doubt about it, the glamour and allure of Los Angeles is absolutely skin deep, but this does not in any way make it less appealing.
Perhaps there should be a manual for survival in a city as beguiling and seductive and perilous as this, but that would take the pleasure out of the play, here in this scorching maze of tarmac and faux sophistication where anything really could happen.
Yes it's true - everyone you meet really is an actress, yes it's true - everyone really does have a script they're been working on, and yes you do spot celebrities (even ones that you've never heard of) in restaurants, nail parlours, nightclubs and private pool parties in the hills, in airport lobbies (one of the great ex-supermodels is on this flight, she looks fabulous).
I am sad to leave; only this morning as I drove down Sunset Boulevard, I saw a sign on a prefab pink motel that read Nomads Welcome.
It was meant to be playful but it struck me as melancholy; thinking of all those people sitting in pokey rooms, waiting for a big event or cosmic shift to change their fortune, thinking of how close I could get to checking in...
Perhaps America is a restless creature, a vast home for the vagabonds, but spend a month living in Los Angeles, and you will be filled with the sense that here, more than anywhere else, is where the dreamers flock - to a city built by dreamers for the manufacturing of dreams, leaving many a casualty.
Los Angeles - it beckons you to stay with its kooky fun, perma-sun and fabulous margaritas, with its promise of fame and fortune and recognition, but it is time to go, time to return to the continent that aches under the weight of her aging spine, and yes, I am looking forward to the familiar scent and sound of the old world, which I have never yearned for quite as much as I do right now.
This is not a city of permanence but let's be fair to the Angelenos, this is the city of fire and quake, the city could burn or fold at any moment, of course we built fast and cheap they holler, like are you kidding me?? But this is not, I don't think, why the city looks like it does - as though it were being propped up by a makeshift wooden frame, assembled by some underpaid (yes, third world) short man who is about to pass out as a gust of Santa Ana, crisp and unforgiving as the desert, hits him in the behind.
It is the obsession with youth and morphed beauty and immortality, it is the fear of impermanence that makes Los Angeles impermanent - the kind of city that you thought only existed in a hangover childhood fantasy, a sprawling playground where you are never asked to grow up, where you are encouraged to remain frivolous, childish, and so, tragically, freakish.
No doubt about it, the glamour and allure of Los Angeles is absolutely skin deep, but this does not in any way make it less appealing.
Perhaps there should be a manual for survival in a city as beguiling and seductive and perilous as this, but that would take the pleasure out of the play, here in this scorching maze of tarmac and faux sophistication where anything really could happen.
Yes it's true - everyone you meet really is an actress, yes it's true - everyone really does have a script they're been working on, and yes you do spot celebrities (even ones that you've never heard of) in restaurants, nail parlours, nightclubs and private pool parties in the hills, in airport lobbies (one of the great ex-supermodels is on this flight, she looks fabulous).
I am sad to leave; only this morning as I drove down Sunset Boulevard, I saw a sign on a prefab pink motel that read Nomads Welcome.
It was meant to be playful but it struck me as melancholy; thinking of all those people sitting in pokey rooms, waiting for a big event or cosmic shift to change their fortune, thinking of how close I could get to checking in...
Perhaps America is a restless creature, a vast home for the vagabonds, but spend a month living in Los Angeles, and you will be filled with the sense that here, more than anywhere else, is where the dreamers flock - to a city built by dreamers for the manufacturing of dreams, leaving many a casualty.
Los Angeles - it beckons you to stay with its kooky fun, perma-sun and fabulous margaritas, with its promise of fame and fortune and recognition, but it is time to go, time to return to the continent that aches under the weight of her aging spine, and yes, I am looking forward to the familiar scent and sound of the old world, which I have never yearned for quite as much as I do right now.