Going back the conference “Myths of L.A.,” I remember some of the speakers talked about how Jung had the realization of the city as the self. Think about it.
Los Angeles, perched on a far cliff of western civilization… personal myth can emerge… or be crushed. In many ways, California is an imaginary place. It exists in the mind first… the dream of the West, movie stars, freeways, fast cars, the epicenter of noir, gangs, and polarized racial communities.
There’s something altogether unbalanced, even distorted about it. The atmosphere is magical, yet tricky, deceptive. There’s a collision of angles.
L.A. romanticizes and defies any understanding of what a city can be. At once liberated, on the edge of our changing consciousness, with its ravishingly beautiful flora and fauna, larger-than-life celebrity sex — then, alongside that — hell, earthquakes, fires, frightening neighborhoods in a vacuous, shallow cultural wasteland.
Add the military-trained gladiators of the LAPD cutting a swath through a “The Day of the Locust” potential for riots and destruction. And hovering over all of it, a beautiful blond woman’s red botox-lips, the smog her delicate eye-shadow. And any moment perfect white teeth will gnaw the Pacific plate.
I love L.A.
I agree that LA is a ‘Legend in your own mind” kinda place, but you left out what used to be the middle class – not glamourous, not glitzy, not gang like, struggling. People who spend over half a mil on a house, work in average often mundane jobs, could live much higher on the hog almost anywhere else and yet…they remain in LA. What’s that all about? What’s their dream? Can it really just be the weather that keeps people tethered to this mysterious land?
being a right coaster, and with very little LA experience, it seems that folks in LA stay in LA because its the best choice in the state/area. folks on the east coast can live in NYC, get tired of it and move to Philly, Connecticut, or baltimore, or boston or DC. All have a different vibe, different energy level but are different states. what other state can you move to near La that offers the dynamic similiar to LA?
Many dont move and live the hum drum life that we see all around us. its certainly not the weather that keeps you tied down seacacus. just sayin…..