A Hymn for Better Days
Some weekend Los Angeles nights are so lonely.
I think it's the prevalent belief that there is nothing outside of Here; that all that exists is the shallow dome of flashing spotlights, stylized aesthetics, and empty babel. That the faraway, blinding light of Possibility crushes the spirit of freedom, independent thought, and self-actualized integrity. Sometimes I feel that Los Angeles is a void, sucking everything in its path into its meaningless sense of self-importance. Somehow, I get this feeling most of all when in a group of wide-eyed, pretentious film students, endlessly involved in their own melodrama. (And something inside me gives me peace, knowing I should not have gone to film school; and even though I didn't fit in at theology school, it was the right place for me to be, for exactly that reason: I could stir people up, instead of join in a chorus of unmelodic, self-involved misery.) I'm not sure what it is about This Place, or why it feels different in Berlin when I meet for a drink with film lovers and talk about zeitgeist and philosophy, or in Paris, where politics and sex seem more serious and important topics of conversation than they actually are; but I only get this feeling here, this feeling that everyone is full of nonchalant apathy, even when it comes to things they pretend to care about. That everyone knows so much about everything that it's such a yawn to recount it all; that it's somehow more satisfying to forget than to remember, to care, to believe. Yes, I guess it's the apathy that I hate so much, because it makes one so.... jaded.
I think it's the prevalent belief that there is nothing outside of Here; that all that exists is the shallow dome of flashing spotlights, stylized aesthetics, and empty babel. That the faraway, blinding light of Possibility crushes the spirit of freedom, independent thought, and self-actualized integrity. Sometimes I feel that Los Angeles is a void, sucking everything in its path into its meaningless sense of self-importance. Somehow, I get this feeling most of all when in a group of wide-eyed, pretentious film students, endlessly involved in their own melodrama. (And something inside me gives me peace, knowing I should not have gone to film school; and even though I didn't fit in at theology school, it was the right place for me to be, for exactly that reason: I could stir people up, instead of join in a chorus of unmelodic, self-involved misery.) I'm not sure what it is about This Place, or why it feels different in Berlin when I meet for a drink with film lovers and talk about zeitgeist and philosophy, or in Paris, where politics and sex seem more serious and important topics of conversation than they actually are; but I only get this feeling here, this feeling that everyone is full of nonchalant apathy, even when it comes to things they pretend to care about. That everyone knows so much about everything that it's such a yawn to recount it all; that it's somehow more satisfying to forget than to remember, to care, to believe. Yes, I guess it's the apathy that I hate so much, because it makes one so.... jaded.