As summer fades into autumn in the Northeast, I have to wonder how people in Southern California know that time is passing.
Time for a new face-lift? Time to trade-up on your car? Time for yet another divorcee to move to Marina Del Rey? Time for a celebrity divorce after their dog-and-porney show Hollywood "marriages" that are lucky to last a year?
I hate what I love about LA, which is its constant social experimentation. But experimentation seems to devolve into naked narcissism. To which the inhabitants of Lotus-Land say "so what?". The cult of you has only been reinforced by Facebook et. al., where your life becomes distilled into a greeting card. Hallmark is being blown away by millions of people's advertisements for themselves.
The word I want to avoid, since it's been used by so many social observers, is "phoney." Is it phoney if you believe it yourself? Is the new you so oppositional to the old one that it amounts to putting on a Halloween mask for the rest of your life? Or does the mask become you? (apologies to Jim Carrey).
The Venice boardwalk is a wondrous thing, but it's also absurd. So many people trying to be different and special that they become a parody of themselves. Self-absorbed LA narcissists! How unusual! Then again, it's a supposed response to the social conformity of the places many of the boulevardiers came from, a chance to open your wings. Just try not to hit the next guy doing the same thing.
I'm obviously conflicted about the place and American society in general. Think I'll rebel against mainstream mores by walking up and down my street in a man-thong.
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1 comment:
you lose all sense of time out here it's true. It took me a few months out here to figure out why what happened a week ago seems so far away and then i remembered that it's because every day looks exactly the same. It takes away all sense of time.
And yet, you get used to it.
Good line about Facebook and Hallmark, btw.
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