| LA is an abbreviation and stands for Los Angeles located in Southern California, which is often abbreviated to Socal. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years. People always ask me: “What’s it like living there?” and I often say: “It’s great. I can see the Hollywood sign from my studio. The sun shines everyday. That is why the windows in my studio have blinds on them, to block out the sun. So, I really can’t see anything from my studio. As Hollywood ignores me, so I ignore Hollywood. I actually once lived in Hollywood, next to a power distribution station that was next to a movie studio lot. That didn’t help either. I think it is because Hollywood does not really exist. There is West Hollywood, that is an incorporated city, but Hollywood is really just a neighborhood of LA. Now I don’t even live in LA anymore, I live in View Park, which is an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County. We don’t get the LAPD, an abbreviation for the Los Angeles Police Department, but have to call the sheriff in Marina Del Rey, which is by the beach. We’re not even close to the beach, we’re closer to the Baldwin Hills Oil Field. Hundreds of wells on nearly 1,000 acres, the largest contiguous oil-producing site in LA. Does this help us to get a discount on gas? No. We only get a letter assuring us that they do not do fracking. Can you believe that? We have small earthquakes quite often, but in my studio nothing has ever fallen over. Our house is bolted to the foundation, so it won’t just slide off the hill and I can take a nap during the day. It is quiet, but I can always hear cars. Sometimes I hear airplanes or a helicopter, but cars all the time. Except when I am in the car. Nobody really knows what that sounds like, because they always have the radio on or pay attention to the road, which is good, I mean, they should pay attention to the road and not text or anything. In LA you spend a lot of time in a car. But you never just take a drive in a car in order to listen to it, like you would listen to a piece of music. That would be quite conceptual, like John-Cage-kind-of-conceptual. And he was from LA. Of course you can record your road trip, let’s say a complete LA drive from point A to point B and then listen to this while driving in a car from point A to point B. Not quite sure why you want to do this, but you can do this. Just ignore all this culture here and listen to the car like it is the real nature of LA. You’re not breaking the law and it’s a free country and you can do whatever floats your boat, except there is no boat involved here, but you get my drift. After all this is LA.” |
