NYC or LA?

Young artists ask me: NYC or LA? There's no solid answer.

 LA has 500 times more opportunities for TV and film. There are more resources and more smart people so it's a great chance to make a name for yourself. But you will not make your masterpiece in LA. Sorry. It won't happen. You can work, earn a lot of money, climb the professional ladder, you can start a family in LA, buy a home with a backyard, you can even become sickeningly rich and live a content life...as long as you don't expect to improve your craft as an artist. You will not. LA is an industry town. There is no hub, there is no centralized shop in which people hone themselves. If you are in LA, you craft your art on an island. If you're lucky you have a few friends you can rely on but there is no community push for new narratives. Whatever skills you have coming into town, you will pretty much maintain. No one EVER gets better in LA. They just maintain where they were before going there. Now if you are a genius before you arrive to SoCal, then congratulations...you may be able to crank out a few RAGING BULL's or GOODFELLAS from your past experience. But everything in the town is built for commerce, speed, comfort. These are not words associated with great art. Everything in the town is built for highway living. And it's not their fault. This is not the usual East coast slam of LA LA land.  

If you go through art history there are periods in time where art explodes in a particular region. Russian novelist in the 19th century, 17th century Dutch painters, Hollywood movies (mostly from Jewish immigrants) in the 1920s-1940s, NYC theatre in the 1950s-1960s. There is nothing inherently evil or awful about LA. The town is filled with very smart people. Resources abound for young artists...and yet it's almost impossible to find groundbreaking work. According to Western Art theory, this makes no sense, right? After all, masterpieces come from singular geniuses and LA is filled with them. But the idea of a singular genius crafting gems is not only outdated its a destructive model. 

Masterpieces usually happen in clusters because a community of artists feed off each other. It's a little like how Silicon Valley is the space needed for the synergy of technological innovation. In Shakespeare's time he had Marlowe and Ben Johnson and numerous other writers who were probably writing at or above their level who we will never know. London theatre had that same Silicon Valley energy. Were there probably some very good writers in Dublin or Manchester? Of course. But a good writer can't grow by themselves. Even if they had access to the finest books in the world, it is almost impossible for an individual artists to elevate to that rarified air of genius work. Shakespeare's plays took other people's work and elevated them. He didn't start from scratch. King Lear was a popular drama before Shakespeare tried his hand at it. He fed off the energy of the time and observed what went right and what went wrong, and then sought to improve that with his version. 

Right now something is happening NYC theatre when it comes to black playwrights. We are feeding off each other. The work is astonishing because it keeps elevating off the last person. The same is true for new musicals. In the era known as 'post Hamilton' there has been a noticeable shift in what is allowed on stage. From this new freedom, artists are competing, riffing, challenging, and pushing each other in this field. It's not like genius musical writers just all grew up in the early 2010s. They raised each other up. 

NYC is dirty, filthy, and dangerous. It has been that way for about 300 years. But it can still attract an almost miraculous kind of artists who travel from all around the world to be put in a cage match of wits. 

It's sad. I wish masterpieces could be made on luxury cruises and luxurious resorts. I wish masterpieces could be made from the fat, happy, family men and family women who have big houses. Life would be so much easier if all you had to do was provide people with decadent resources and wait for innovation to sprout. 

In Buddhism it's the same thing. There are saints and great masters during different periods in human history. And they usually happen in clusters with other masters. 

Now this isn't a knock on LA. Most people don't care about masterpieces. Hell, most people don't even know how to define great art. It's irrelevant. The average consumer and audience member wants something pleasing and simple. Industry towns are perfect for making pleasing, simple art.