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May. 30th, 2008 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fjIt happened every time I drove on Sunset Boulevard. Not Hollywood Boulevard, not the squares, because those look in reality so tacky and run down compared to what you see on TV. Not in West Hollywood, because you don't see that Starbucks across from the 24 Hour Fitness much in popular consciousness either. Not just a palm tree in North Hollywood, or anything in the Valley, because I had never, and still haven't, seen Valley Girl. It happened on Sunset, when I tuned on to it from the 101. Every time. At night.
The shape of the tall palm trees and how they related to towering billboards, the chasing neon signs, the architecture I had seen a thousand times over my life from establishing shots, the shape of this wide road, Donna Summer's "Sunset People" starting to play in my head, and my brain goes "Holy shit, you live in Los Angeles". This is an amazing feeling for a middling Euro boy.
It's not going home. It's like stepping into the UFO you have heard about all your life. One of the values that are important to me Helen helped me tease out was that I want a certain level of glamor, of interestingness in where I live and what I do (although we should get in touch again to nail it down better what that means). And living in Los Angeles, yeah, even with its challenges, really had that for me, being from far and having grown up Gen X TV, in a way that Boston never did. Fuck hell yeah, I was there now. Sunset Blvd. Every time. It made me constantly miss the supermarket I should have been looking out for to turn into Poinsettia.
I get it now in London too, in spades. It's not The River. It's not any bridge, or Regent street, or Carnaby or Seven Dials or Soho, although I like going to all those places. For some reason it happens now every Thursday or Friday, after having stepped out of the Heathrow Express train from Heathrow to Paddington Station, having walked off the platform into the station, my back straight, backpack pulling my shoulders back, walking briskly after all the sitting, going down into the tube station to take the Bakerloo line to Lambeth North. I take my wallet, where I have just put my Oyster card and Tesco Clubcard and British Pounds back in from the compartment I keep them in my backpack in when I am in Germany, out of my pocket and without changing my stride, slap that wallet on the round yellow reader so the RFID chip in the Oyster card can be read and the gates can swing open and I can go home. Because home is in London, you see. I live in London now. Holy shit fuck yeah.
The shape of the tall palm trees and how they related to towering billboards, the chasing neon signs, the architecture I had seen a thousand times over my life from establishing shots, the shape of this wide road, Donna Summer's "Sunset People" starting to play in my head, and my brain goes "Holy shit, you live in Los Angeles". This is an amazing feeling for a middling Euro boy.
It's not going home. It's like stepping into the UFO you have heard about all your life. One of the values that are important to me Helen helped me tease out was that I want a certain level of glamor, of interestingness in where I live and what I do (although we should get in touch again to nail it down better what that means). And living in Los Angeles, yeah, even with its challenges, really had that for me, being from far and having grown up Gen X TV, in a way that Boston never did. Fuck hell yeah, I was there now. Sunset Blvd. Every time. It made me constantly miss the supermarket I should have been looking out for to turn into Poinsettia.
I get it now in London too, in spades. It's not The River. It's not any bridge, or Regent street, or Carnaby or Seven Dials or Soho, although I like going to all those places. For some reason it happens now every Thursday or Friday, after having stepped out of the Heathrow Express train from Heathrow to Paddington Station, having walked off the platform into the station, my back straight, backpack pulling my shoulders back, walking briskly after all the sitting, going down into the tube station to take the Bakerloo line to Lambeth North. I take my wallet, where I have just put my Oyster card and Tesco Clubcard and British Pounds back in from the compartment I keep them in my backpack in when I am in Germany, out of my pocket and without changing my stride, slap that wallet on the round yellow reader so the RFID chip in the Oyster card can be read and the gates can swing open and I can go home. Because home is in London, you see. I live in London now. Holy shit fuck yeah.
