“According to legend, Oscar Wilde’s last words were ‘Either that wallpaper goes or I do.’ He actually said, ‘This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do,’ and he lived a few weeks longer....”
Los Angeles Times
“...and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives...”
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I selected the Oscar Wilde anecdote and the Harry Potter quote because they both represent, in similar ways, what Los Angeles is to me. Los Angeles is to me what L’Hôtel’s room wallpaper is to Oscar Wilde. Los Angeles is to me what Voldermort is to Harry Potter. I cannot exist in this city for long.
I’ve had the privilege of living in multiple places and each location has facilitated learning more about myself. For me, moving to new places isn’t so much about starting over but rather having the opportunity to explore the layered componets (geography, set-up, people) that make up the new site I inhabit. My last venture was in the Midwest and I absolutely hated it. I kept a countdown to mark the days I had left until I completed my M.A. program and would then be able to move away. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to survive. I am proud of myself for sticking it out.
When the opportunity to move to Los Angeles came along, I was very excited because Los Angeles had much more to offer me than Indiana ever would. At the same time, I’ve never been a fan of this city nor ever had the desire to make this place my home. I grew up behind the Orange Curtain and rarely ventured into LaLaLand. I had no curiousity or need to. Los Angeles represents traffic, overcrowding, and fakery. Sure you can go to the beach, catch a show, eat food from all over the world, run into a celebrity here or there, and never really have to worry about packing an umbrella. But that’s still not an incentive to stay in this place. What also annoys me about Los Angeles is the people who live here. I especially get annoyed at the amount of people who move here from other states. I may never identify as an American or United Statesian but I sure as hell claim Southern California --although I never claim L.A. and never will. The transplants from other states irritate me because they tend to act in a way they think encompasses “eLay” and give themselves an air of culture or knowledge that they didn’t (and don’t) know jackshit about. Just take a walk around Santa Monica. Yuppies walking around in workout gear on Sunday mornings, making their way to organic brunches as they tote around their ugly kids in Baby Björn carriers. And even though these people are not from California, they have absolutely no shame or hesitancy to claim Los Angeles. It’s disgusting!
The media also tends to portray California, and Los Angeles in particular, as a place where individuals can start over. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho for example, Marion Crane leaves Phoenix to escape to California. In the first season of American Horror Story: Murder House, the Harmons move to Los Angeles to escape the family drama they created in Boston. All the characters on the show come from the South, the Midwest, or the East Coast in hopes of starting over or making something of themselves in Los Angeles. Their motives have an underlying eerie Manifest Destiny mentality that can still be seen nearly every time someone moves to California. One episode in particular, Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange) confronts Joe Escandarian (Amir Arison), a developer who is planning on purchasing the Victorian mansion in order to knock it down and build condominiums. Constance is enraged and tells Joe that he can’t just come in and build over other people’s history. At the same time, Constance is from Virginia and came to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming a movie star. As an outside settler, who is she to critique who is building over history? Yet, that has been the tendency in the history of “settling” California and Los Angeles: dismissing what is already there and playing out a fantasy of what these people imagine “eLay” to be.
Hence why I can never live here for a long period of time. I cannot simultaenously exist in/with Los Angeles. We are fighting a duel and it is I who must go. But I'm not going to Let this City take Me down with it.
Everything you said about L.A., I completely agree. I'm not from here and will never claim L.A. as my home. It's interesting that someone from so close to L.A. feels this way. Original Angelenos seem to defend this city at all cost. But being from Orange County must have made a huge difference. I also think it's interesting that several of us have negative feelings towards L.A.