046 ☼ To live & thrive in LA
or any city for that matter
Greetings from the coin laundry mat where I await two loads of laundry on a crispy Sunday afternoon. I’m rereading Marguerite Duras’ banger of a book, Writing, which describes, in agonizing detail, how lonely is writing and how empty is the house a woman writes in alone. She writes, “My room is not a bed, neither here nor in Paris nor in Trouville. It’s a certain window, a certain table, habits of black ink, untraceable marks of black ink, a certain chair. And certain habits that I always maintain, wherever I go, wherever I am, even in places where I don’t write, such as hotel rooms—like the habit of keeping whiskey in my luggage in case of insomnia or sudden despair.” For most of this book, Duras describes the loneliness of writing and the houses and desks that contain it. There’s no way around it—writing can be excruciating solitude and to live and work as a writer is not the glamorous lifestyle people online make it to be. This passage to me reads as an ode to the loneliness a writer carries around with them like a deep pool to be plunged into wherever one finds themselves writing.
So here I am at the laundromat with a spare diet coke, rethinking my entire life as I seem to do every day, an endless task that I wish I could chill tf out on.
Today I questioned a pandemic phenomenon of socially broken contracts and interaction, i.e. we seem to be in a dearth of connection and sociability. For example, I still get nervous to shake a stranger’s hand or give a hug when previously that came naturally to me. Despite being a homebody, I have finally admitted to myself that I am a social creature, however introverted. I need people and I need to be “on” if only for a few hours, whatever that entails.
Leaving the house started to become difficult for me when I lived alone in Long Beach. But once I moved to NYC, it felt like a homecoming. I loved yelling with strangers, loved asking a stranger point blank for help, loved sitting on a sleepy morning subway commute with folks across generations, not just my peers. By the end of 2019 though, leaving the apartment became increasingly difficult, so much so that I was becoming paranoid. My psychiatrist (I had incredible insurance during grad school) put me on a big dose of Prozac which immensely helped and inadvertently lead to me quitting drinking; a miracle in many respects.
The last two years have proved to be very interior/work from home type of years. I stayed in one spot. I worked on getting stable financially and mentally. I continued to struggle with social media. LA in particular (and maybe you experience this in other cities, would love to hear what readers think), is a city of desperation and I think part of that desperation is not knowing where anybody or anything is. It takes a remarkable effort to get anywhere here, whether that’s by bus, metro, but more realistically, a car. It’s a city that scales with privilege where experience and access is tiered by class.
In other cities, the anxiety is externalized so you leave your house and become consumed into a crowd among the masses, you have initiatives and small tasks like making it to the subway on time, running up stairs, battling crowds and heavy doors, you are Walt Whitman’s dream of America creating self-esteem through esteemable acts which culminate in your survival of the city. You suffer for a purpose and that purpose is the city and the people in it.
The sprawl of LA has rewards and the people you meet become precious—I label my friends’ houses on my google map to see what kind of shape they make, to see what kind of trips I’m carving across town, one has to etch themselves into a city that’s constantly shifting and pretty opaque. I suppose I flow into traffic the way I flowed into a crowd in New York; anonymous but in public, a liberating feeling. LA is a car city, therefore it’s a teenage city and finding my kind isn’t as easy as hanging out in a Target parking lot. Or maybe it is, again. The pandemic took our memories and sense of time for a ride and I don’t think we’ve recovered as much as we’ve pretended it didn’t happen. The administration codified a trauma response. I feel strangely about time.
I shamelessly posted my thoughts to inst*gram and I collected responses (below, with consent), since everyone who responded had such edifying and insightful things to say, with a variety of California timelines and arrivals. To be sure, I think the recent vibe of alienation has more to do with what’s happening in the world and the last decade, not necessarily a city issue. But it’s the specific combination of this time and this city. I hope the empathy coming out of these messages reaches you whereever you are.
“The most common suggestion i see from people - mostly online - is to get a hobby that requires regular, consistent social interaction, like a tennis club. i admit i’ve never tried this, but since my interests are mostly within the arts, i’m not sure what that would really look like - a book club, maybe? but even then, it is just so geographically challenging in LA that the commute across town could make it inaccessible. mostly i just go to shows and meet people and never see them again because we are so spread out.”
“I think surviving in LA is an esteemable act.”
“I totally understand where you’re at. Its the downside of this place. It’s an introverts, isolationist & a sycophant’s paradise. Healthy community… it’s … you literally have to build it. It doesn’t exist.”
“Even when we are [alone], we have forcefields of folks. Just hard when we are feeling lonely and unwalkable to remember.”
“I think I’ve lived here for 12 years and I feel as if I am just now starting to find the places I want to be and the communities I want to be involved in.”
“Feel all this so deeply. Especially after having a kid, studio community has eased it a bit but even there, my schedule is so different from most bc of childcare. It’s tough, come over?”
“My tip is pretty lame but walking as much as possible and kind of adopting a neighborhood that is fun to walk in, in addition to your own neighborhood. And also I think this is why hiking is almost painfully popular because ppl will talk to u on hikes and u do get the intergenerational thing on the trail albeit not in the epic sense of the subway.”
“I’ve been here for almost 7 years now, and I don’t think LA clicked for me until after year 4…even with the built in social boost of having gone to college here! I love this city like crazy now, and I have so many people to be grateful for here. totally remember feeling exactly the same as you. It’s such a tough city. As for LA survival tips…I think the only way I was able to start making connections was to be annoyingly persistent at asking strangers to hang out. Really tough as an introvert.
I really had to teach myself to see the uniqueness of the city, too. Actually went and read Mike Davis, got into Huell Howser, LA Plays Itself, kept up with the news all the time…and that made everything so much more fun, to ground the world around me in history…but that shouldn’t be necessary to make a place liveable!”
Would love to hear about how you’re handling since-pandemic loneliness or if you’ve experienced a social renaissance. No recommendations this newsletter, but stay tuned for some fun cultural round-ups from movies and art I’ve seen this summer. ☼ ☼ ☼
Love this and juice