California is on fire and there's no end in sight.
It feels like it just doesn't stop. The fires, the traffic, the homelessness, the drought, the heat, the tension. I was in LA last spring and that was on my mind: the fucking fires, the traffic, the helplessness. Every day had this low-level mixture of sorrow and dread underneath the smiles. It felt like things were tipping over into something inexplicable and terrifying. Prior to that, my last time in California was in November 2018. I was workshopping a play in San Francisco and, once again... the fires in the hills, the traffic, the aggressive rampant homelessness was on my mind throughout my stay. Panic has a funny way of normalizing itself into a culture living on the brink: apocalyptic humor is the norm. Jokes, jokes, more jokes about end-times.
Growing up in Miami during the 80s, I recognized that feeling. As a child, I remember all the weeks of smoke and ash on car hoods, the face masks, the drought, the doom. Nature was screaming at us: this is not sustainable. We were living in a land of fire, traffic, overdevelopment. The macabre fear of tipping over into an abyss led to the 1980s Miami image that was exported around the world: sexy, tacky, bloody, absurd, cocaine-induced, machine-gun-toting, neon-bright, nihilism.
When I visit California I have that same Miami feeling of yesteryear: sex, sun, violence, and a scorched land that is screaming.
It feels like it just doesn't stop. The fires, the traffic, the homelessness, the drought, the heat, the tension. I was in LA last spring and that was on my mind: the fucking fires, the traffic, the helplessness. Every day had this low-level mixture of sorrow and dread underneath the smiles. It felt like things were tipping over into something inexplicable and terrifying. Prior to that, my last time in California was in November 2018. I was workshopping a play in San Francisco and, once again... the fires in the hills, the traffic, the aggressive rampant homelessness was on my mind throughout my stay. Panic has a funny way of normalizing itself into a culture living on the brink: apocalyptic humor is the norm. Jokes, jokes, more jokes about end-times.
Growing up in Miami during the 80s, I recognized that feeling. As a child, I remember all the weeks of smoke and ash on car hoods, the face masks, the drought, the doom. Nature was screaming at us: this is not sustainable. We were living in a land of fire, traffic, overdevelopment. The macabre fear of tipping over into an abyss led to the 1980s Miami image that was exported around the world: sexy, tacky, bloody, absurd, cocaine-induced, machine-gun-toting, neon-bright, nihilism.
When I visit California I have that same Miami feeling of yesteryear: sex, sun, violence, and a scorched land that is screaming.
No comments:
Post a Comment