Sitting at brunch on my first expedition to West Hollywood, watching patrons linger by the hostess podium: shoes that probably cost $6,000, a three-piece sweatsuit, a handbag that looked like an original Mondrian. Or, Sunday Evening at the pre-pandemic Grove. Exiting a valet hall made principally of dark wood and marble, wending through thick crowds of lipstick and perfume. Men with beards and olive oil skin fitting silk lapels in Zara and taking a dash of umbrage as our paths inadvertently cross. Up and over somewhere, larger-than-life images of Jordan Peele and Jessica Biel (I think it was her, though I can’t imagine what for). The former, standing with command that comes from being seen as one of the only people who can make a movie people will watch without borrowed and laundered characters; the latter, wearing some dense and opulent color pattern on a silk collar. This much maligned and exoticized province of existence known as Southern California has its culture flowing out of culs de sac and soccer fields and its other scenes of the original late 20th-century American life. But it’s also here: in temples to art, celebrated by glamor.
I relate and support making a God out of art and culture; for raising up those to make it, for treasuring the process of creativity and its concrete outputs. But I wish they did not have to cover themselves in glitter. If only their power and success did not make them feel required to dress as baroque nobility. If only they could burrow into experiences to give meaning to life beyond the story of the world, but didn’t make “relatable” comments on Instagram, while wearing silk colors -- a head fake to participating in everyone else’s world, while confirming that they don’t.
Because the sheer number of people; the spurt in the fountains; “Sexy Back” bumping out of Sephora; a knot of people with cell phones raised pressing in to glimpse a probably-famous person like they’re a black hole collapsing into a Singularity of recognition; all make me think, for the first time, is this place me? Can I handle this?
This is Los Angeles, my loving home. But in addition to the backwash of a wave crashing from the rest of the Earth, the world’s loose parts and aspirations, it’s a socially enacted ritual to the self, wrapped around the art at its core again and again and again until it’s something else entirely.