The Final Night
Now that Thirty Day LA is over, I still don’t know how I really feel about the whole thing. I thought I might feel anything from relief to sadness, but I guess I’m just too tired to fully process the experience. I have so many thoughts swirling around on not just what I did, but how I feel and what I’ve learned of the city itself. It was a long month that somehow seemed to fly by.
It was just a month ago that I was at the Getty Museum’s Off the 405 event. Sitting at the table next to the long rectangular fountain pool surrounded by music, art, and architecture, I felt my usual uptightness flow away with each swig of alcohol. The scene was lively: a crowd of people encircling the dancers in front of the DJ stage, families engaged in their own conversations over the music at the tables, exhibit-goers passing by in their Sunday best on a Friday night. Normally I’m rather laconic, but when I’ve had a couple drinks in me, I get an overwhelming urge to talk to people. While the rest of our group was off doing their own thing, my fellow alcoholic friend Lefty and I drank vodka tonics and discussed our disillusionment with the city. We both felt like LA had nothing left to offer for us. Lefty hoped to save enough to move out to New York by the end of the year, and if I didn’t get past the interview round this time for AFI Conservatory, I’d get out of LA as well.
Feeling lonely, unhappy, and uninspired, I took on Thirty Day LA in an attempt to shake up my dissatisfaction with my life in the city. I went to my first karaoke dive bar, then I went to my first jazz festival, then on a fishing boat for the first time. I blew half of my budget for the month in one night of partying in Hollywood. Nevertheless, I got excited. I had one too many drunken excursions, starting off well in my hipster tour of Silver Lake but ending badly in downing rum after drinking beer at Father’s Office. I made my first bike commute to work, which was the best combination of no-cost, outdoor-exercising, scenery-watching, planet-saving, fun-filled activity that I did the entire thirty days, and it was something so completely simple. My spirits were high as I went to a couple farmers markets and attended a free Shakespeare production. Then I attended a tofu festival and a hard-rock concert which weren’t as thrilling. I indulged my loneliness in three days of going out by myself: to a bar, to a restaurant, to an outdoor concert at the pier, which somehow made me feel slightly less lonely. I joined a massive midnight bicycle ride through the streets of Hollywood. By then, I was running on mostly fumes. On four hours of sleep a night, I went on a karaoke dive bar tour, a birthday rich bitch beach tour, then a jazz club, a Griffith Park night hike, a Santa Monica bike tour, and a Jurassic 5 beach concert. Short on cash and sleep, I was losing energy and motivation going into the last week. But I cured that by proceeding to drink two nights in a row: first at a bar where I saw Leanne Tweeden, then at another karaoke dive bar where I drove everyone out with my obscene rapping.
On the day before my last day of Thirty Day LA, I sat at Don Antonio’s over a plate of $1 tacos with WrathOfDrunkenness. We talked about plans for the evolution of this blog in the upcoming months, but my mind was more on my last day of Thirty Day LA. I had absolutely nothing planned for it. One thing I learned over my activities was that when I planned things out beforehand they worked out the best. Before my adventure started, I had grown too accustomed to doing things last minute and having them work out. I felt like I needed to start planning, which would help me move forward with my life as well. I was concerned that I was already reverting back to my old ways.
But like usual, things somehow worked out. I went on Ticketmaster Thursday morning and amazingly was able to purchase two tickets to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert at the Forum in Inglewood that very night. I emailed Lefty to go with me on my last Thirty Day LA outing since he was there at the first one. Despite being tired and withdrawn from work, he said he’d go.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of my favorite bands. I don’t know all that many bands, being so musically-uneducated and so completely far away from the indie music scene that dominates this city, but I don’t care, the Chili Peppers are awesome.
If you let go and let this music take you by the hand it will take you flying through skies of sound. It will zoom you up well above outer space and it will show you around planes of existence that do not share the laws and conditions of this reality. And when it brings you down to earth it will dig deep into that shit. It will also teach you to fall back without landing on your ass and to fall forward without falling on your face. Let go and you can be two places at once, you can be as big as the whole universe and as small as an atom simultaneously. You can unite with a star or a plant. You are everything you see around you and the ideas in this music may get you to start realizing what a great power that can be. – John Frusciante, March 2006
Before the concert, Lefty and I hung out in the parking lot next to my car drinking 32 ounce Miller High Lifes, the champagne of beers. They were disgusting but effective. The concert was supposed to start at 7:30PM, but it was already 8:30PM and people were still driving in. LA people are late to everything, including concerts. Even though my perspective had changed to a degree over the past thirty (or so) days, we once again talked about our disillusionment with LA. I am starting to understand that my disillusionment is something that will always be a part of me, regardless of whether I live in LA or not.
After we finished our beers, we tried to get inside to the concert. The Forum is old and poorly designed, so it took us almost an hour of walking around to pick up our tickets from will call and find our seats. We completely missed Mars Volta. After downing a couple shots and drinks, we were good and hyped. The lights went down, the crowd erupted, and the spotlight shone on Flea, shirtless as always, then Chad Smith, then John Frusciante, then Kiedis. Flea started it off with a bass funk riff and the show began.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers concert:
- I didn’t recognize half of the songs as they played a lot of stuff off their new Stadium Arcadium album
- All the songs I did know I had at one point known how to play on guitar
- For the encore, they played my favorite RHCP song Soul To Squeeze, which I once performed with GuitarHero when he was on the guitar and vocals and I was on bass. I called GuitarHero and left a message by holding up the phone, but all he ended up hearing was me singing the whole time
- The best part of the show was after Kiedis and the drummer Chad Smith ran off, when John Frusciante and Flea remained on stage and spent ten euphoric minutes jamming amazing riffs before they exited
- And as quickly as we got hyped when they came on stage, our high came down as the lights came up
It was a great way for me to end Thirty Day LA. If only everything in LA could feel like such pure, simple joy. As we idled in the parking lot of the Forum waiting for the line of cars to exit, I finally understood why I am so disillusioned with the city. It’s not because of the people or the fakeness or the lifestyle. It’s because the city is so huge and I want to take part in all of it, but I can’t. The mental blocks that limit me within the confines of my comfort zone are like the traffic jams that keep me on the Westside. I always wish I was doing something else in someplace cooler and more exciting. But this time, sitting in traffic with Lefty as things seemed to come full circle, I didn’t wish I was anywhere else. I wasn’t sad that the concert was over, nor did I dread having to work the next day. After a memorable thirty days I realized I still had a whole city left to explore, but I no longer needed to be in a rush to find my place. I would find it eventually. On my final day of Thirty Day LA, in a continually changing city with more to offer than I could ever hope to take advantage of, in a place where love and heartbreak seem just a moment away, in the capital of American culture that promises millions of dreams fulfilled, I realized that I had finally found my home, for better or worse. And it only took me seven years to figure it out.