Business trips give me a view of other big US cities (besides NYC), and I am writing and posting this on a plane 30,000 feet in the air (thanks to Virgin America and in-flight wifi) gazing down at the dusty geological crags that make up the American West, and I am thinking about Los Angeles, and I am having a little crisis of loyalty to New York.
Like many I have accepted the prejudices of Woody Allen, canonized in Annie Hall: that LA is a land of meretricious shallowness where people go when they have surrendered their integrity; when they are tired of fighting the good fight; when they are ready to surrender to the Mephistophelean call of pleasure; when they are ready to bite on the Lotus. In the 80s and 90s, when the movie business was cooler than technology, this used to be associated with the film industry, and the get-rich-quick culture of the deal and the hustle. Hence Woody Allen’s counterpart, Tony Roberts, who gave up theater for TV. “I did Shakespeare in the park, Max. I got mugged.”
But this week my work friends summed up Los Angeles, and why they live there, in a word: SUNSHINE. More than one person said this, as the word that captures the essence of LA (or southern California in general). And when they said the word, they broke out in toothy grins, the way someone might say CANDY. Sweet. Fun. Good. Pleasurable.
I spoke to delightful movie people, who joked openly and comfortably, if not happily, about the vagaries of the movie biz. No more whining about how crazy the business is blah blah blah. More importantly, I spoke to people from other industries: advertising, consumer goods, cars.
And those people said it, too. SUNSHINE.
CANDY.
So the fearsome question, to this 20-year New Yorker. What if LA is not a lotus? (An addictive and fatal drug.) What if LA is candy? (Just… fun.)
And by extension…
What if I don’t have to stay plugged into my personal brand of self-loathing, thanatos, and visionary psychosis, in order to write, to be me?
What if I unplugged and ate candy? What would happen? Is this what happens at forty? You reach the peak of the fulcrum, and have nothing but momentum and flight to soar down over the other side. You are liberated–maybe through hard work and the assistance of professionals–from the ghosts and demons of your first years. You begin to doubt the tales of hell. Maybe hell doesn’t exist. Maybe Woody Allen was wrong and Tony Roberts was right. Maybe it’s possible not to nurse your neuroses, and still be an interesting and worthwhile human being, and plow your field of talent (such as it is), fruitfully.
I am coming back to New York proudly today. I am going to pull behind me, on the tail of this airplane, a long strip of sunshine, a white-yellow-gold ribbon of silk that will whip in the wind, and will be my banner. Wherever I be, here be candy; wife, child, child, and beloved friends, take this and eat it; I may be the last learn; but we are not obliged to add to our own sufferings; it’s a bad habit; when the sun shines, bask.
