Los Angeles

 

Los Angeles, city of the doomed
Los Angeles, city of the doomed
Well I loved you once but I gotta go yeah

 

San Francisco, city pretty by the bay
San Francisco, city pretty by the bay
Well I loved you once but I gotta go yeah

NOTE:  Unfortunately, I am unable to post an audio link to "Los Angeles,"  the Gene Clark song which was first released several years ago on the A&M Flying High collection in the UK.  It's a splendid, highly unusual song.  Both the recording and the thoughts expressed in the song feel unfinished, unresolved, which suits the song's mood, but might also account for Clark's decision (if it was indeed his decision) not to release it.  The song's final verse has the girl in the song trying to decide whether San Diego is the place she should remain.   

I myself love Los Angeles, the city.  It's been a big part of my life since my first, rather belated, physical visit (by which I mean to say, that I, like so many people grew up on television and movie images of Los Angeles in such abundance that they constituted a definite aspect of daily waking and sleeping reality) in May, 1979, when I traveled there with my father and viewed  the city's culture through the twin lenses of his business interests, which were focused on the garment industry and real estate investment, and my own more music industry-oriented concerns.  Raymond Chandler culture entered in also and meeting a new ocean was, as it should be, a life-changing experience.  

San Francisco came later for me and I think I will try to tell that story another time, although I would be remiss in not mentioning the artichoke fields of Castroville and the garlic pastures of Gilroy.

"Refuse From A Silver Phial"  (link) is a great Gene Clark/Los Angeles song, so I've posted it here as compensation for the missing "Los Angeles."  Sleeping in the guest room tonight with Andy (home from back surgery and confined to his crate), I was thinking about it all night, rolling around on the daybed, restlessly and incoherently.  With his unselfconscious, bright optimism, Andy's story is pretty much the opposite of the one Gene tells in this haunting masterpiece about the girl with the mind "that slept inside tomorrow," seeking "not to be a victim."

Gene covers the whole state of California in "Los Angeles," but the Kansan's range as a writer was about as big and wide as the Pacific, his adopted waterfront.  Painting with prepositions, Gene created irresistible, inexhaustible mystery maps.

Where Am I Going?

        Lately, I have been asking myself this (complex and confusing) question.

        To clarify my thinking, I begin by asking myself, "Where am I not going?"

        I don't think I will be returning to Washington, D.C.  I have a mixed-to-bad history there, the monuments generally leave me cold (not the personages memorialized, however), and I go around-and-around on the Beltway, invariably ending up in the Pentagon parking lot, shaking and sweating, on the verge of fear.

 


        Tripoli (see above and below) is fascinating and appeals greatly for many reasons, but at least for now seems to be out of the question.  (Tunis also; I have a friend who was on his way to spend the rest of this winter there, but now finds himself unable to do so.)  

        Philadelphia, a city I have loved, seems permanently afflicted with a weakened pulse.  One-party political rule over a prolonged period (it doesn't matter which party is ruling) will do that to a place.  So, while I am in Philadelphia at the moment, Philadelphia sometimes seems not to be here.

        Manhattan betrayed us all by becoming tres ordinaire -- just another big, ugly mall, but one with no free parking.   Contrary impressions, if any, are the result of the city's television omnipresence, the blinding agents the mayor adds to the water and, sadly, pre-9/11 nostalgia.  Science can disprove these. Keep away, I say.

        This "water hole" in Ottawa:

 is to be avoided unless you wish a one-way express ticket to:

     
        !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



         On a more positive note, I would very much like to journey with my family to:       

 

      Santiago (and the rest of Chile) and finally to --

        Crete.

        I am currently planning a trip to Los Angeles to visit old friends and familiar places, revive memories and show Jane the La Brea Tar Pits.

       

        

        I will always return to Los Cabos filled with Hope and Joy because Los Cabos has always given me such Hope and Joy.      

      Loch Ness is good, always.

        Xanadu (aka Shengdu, a possible future UNESCO World Heritage Site) sounds nice (on John Speed's 1626 map below, it is located near the Cathayan metropolis of Cambalu, in modern Inner Mongolia) and like a worthwhile destination.  ("Where did you go on your last vacation?  Oh -- Xanadu.  Yes, that one.)    We have wanted to visit Mongolia since 1998 when we read about it (specifically the Yurt Room lounge in the Ulan Batoor Holiday Inn) in Fodor's China.   The Yurt Room seems to have closed since then and Ulan Batoor has modernized to the extent that a very attractive Louis Vuitton store recently opened there.  Unfortunately, that decreases my interest in visiting.  I would hate to think of Ulan Batoor becoming another Manhattan.

        
            Kubla'i Khan (1215-1294)

        Street Scene  -- Ulan Batoor

               Eadward Muybridge, Camel Racking (Please click on image for animation.)