A little bit in love with LA
Wednesday, January 29th 2022
Today I fell a little bit in love with LA. Why, I don't know. Starting the day in Downtown was okay. It's beautiful, just to look up. The sunlight hits the skyscrapers in a unique way - yellow and without contrast. However, it's a different story when you look forward and see what happens on eye-level. You stumble over the amount of homeless people on the street. To keep it fun, it's the trick to go inside. To enter the Last Bookstore or enter the Board. Inside, life is friendly.
Walking down the street in Melrose Hill was a different story. I felt happy. I wasn't scared, I was confident. The pavement was still rocky, the warehouses were still ugly. Still, there was something about the sunset coloring the skies pink. Like the promise of something better looming over me.
At night, I attended a concert with a friend. It was the Punch Brothers in the Theatre in the Ace Hotel. This venue was impressive and bolsterous - many times more striking than our precious Paradiso venue. As I'm unfamiliar with American architecture and have enjoyed a classical education, I was rather puzzled by the style. I saw some hints of corinthic pillars, though they were decorated from top to toe. It would probably be the closest to baroque or rococo, but then the Americanized version of it.
When the concert started, I was once again reminded of the American cheerfulness. I've never heard a crowd cheer so loud at a banjo and a mandoline. They also cheer differently. They scream low "Yeahs" instead of high "Whoo's" and instead of yelling "We want more", they whistle.
The last song of the concert ended with the main question of this week. They played Julep, which has been my lullaby for the past five years. It's the song I play when I need reassurance. It reminds me that everything is okay, that I'm right where I'm supposed to be. That's quite the accomplishment, to soothe a restless person like me. So maybe I should read it like a sign, that LA is a good place for me.
Still, it's too much to ask from a song to determine your life path. For now, I just see LA as a puzzle I want to solve and I’m passionnate about it. My first impressions have led me to believe that it's everything the Netherlands isn't; it's nothing that the Netherlands is.
