Los Angeles 2017

The last time I negotiated flyover country to get here was about 10 years ago.   The history of this California leviathan continues to mystify.   Disjointed architectural creations, rendering this place of 10 million people less humane than New York, Paris or even Miami, demonstrates how a city without a plan can spread like the proverbial serpent.  Eight heads, a freedom of creativity stultified by an overabundance of poorly planed neighborhoods, an urban sprawl that sees no possibility of rectification.

Walking on Sunset, one sees Mel's diner next to a steel and glass concoction of architectural ambiguity that eschews the context of the neighborhood.   New apartment houses, with infinity swimming pools and Jacuzzis, placed outside spectacularly outfitted gyms, sit encased in glass with views of the city below from near the Hollywood hills.   The mansions of Beverly Hills and the Hollywood hills rising above the plebeian Taco stands and hotdog emporiums as testaments to the less impressive duplicates populating the heartland and even Tijuana.

The young and beautiful congregate here to have their dreams dashed in a whirlwind of  pitches, auditions with no call back in sight.  Aspirants from Nebraska, Kansas and the heartland vie for fame and fortune with about much opportunity for success as playing for The New York Yankees or in the NBA.

Actors, dancers, singers, writers with inherent talent who do not get the break of being discovered at the lunch counter of Schwab's drug store.

People, who as Emma Stone said at her Oscar acceptance speech, that she was there through the enormous confluence of good luck and a screenplay that was just perfect for her to dance with Ryan Gosling, although neither of them danced even close to Fred and Ginger and could not sing as well either.

How many of these people who follow their dreams are chasing an illusion that will always be unrequited, as though some missing ingredient in their talent had held them back from breaking trough the barriers they were sure that would crash before their young limber feet.  Many of them succumb to the realities of life, bringing with them some form of Post traumatic stress disorder, depression as they pass through their 20s, 30s and 40s with diminishing hope each year.

Some of the fortunate, the intelligent manage to transition into some normal employment where a steady pay check does not compensate them for their ruminations of failure--the acceptance of their ordinariness.  They were not the next Streep, DiNero, Nicholson or Apetow. 

And then they, often late, realize that it will not come and that they must find something to do with their lives, searching for life choices increa

singly more difficult to come by.

How many writers spent years submitting screenplays, only to have them shelved and never made into a motion picture, the system grinding them up like some poor hamburger meat at the Whole Food Butcher shop.  These are children who have led lives of privilege, starred in high school plays, edited their high school newspaper, got accepted in elite schools, were star athletes, successful in every endeavor they ever tried suddenly realizing that the right stuff is not easy to obtain or to have recognized.   Who has not seen talented violinists and cello players on the street corner, playing for nickels, dimes and quarters who but fortune, could have made the big time?

How many parents, in a dilemma of how to be supportive to children following their dream, yet agonizing at the delusional lottery tickets to fame and fortune sought by their children, most of whom are doomed to finally accept their not hitting the lucky number?