This is written at the request of some readers who want to see more posts outside of comics.
I spent last weekend in southern California at the wedding of one of my oldest friends. A Hindu/Jewish feminist-updated fusion wedding, a harmonious polyphony that seemed pretty appropriate for southern California, especially since one of the officiants appeared to come straight out of The Long Goodbye by way of The Big Lebowski.
I and most of the other groomsmen spent about half the weekend taking rather peacockish pride in our kurtas, long, collarless shirts/robes ideal for dancing, looking austere, walking menacingly, kung fu fighting, entering the Matrix - all manner of manly endeavors, not the least of which is standing at your friend's side as he is married. Leave all the fussing over pictures and decorations to the bridal party; as a man you can tell yourself that, although the prospect of a band of raiders swooping in on horseback to steal the bride is distinctly unlikely in the year 2005, you and your kurta'd posse are ready to kick some ass if and when it happens.
The kurtas also lent an immediate solidarity to a disparate bunch of groomsmen. One guy walking up Los Robles in a black kurta looks pretty weird. Three or six are total badasses. You have no idea how badly I wanted us to stumble across some sort of crime in progress so we could spill out of our kurtamobile and demonstrate our distinguishing gimmicks.
Besides stoking every adolescent male fantasy of redemptive violence (is this really not about comics?) the wedding also afforded a chance to catch up with old friends, something I'm lucky enough to do fairly often, and a chance to settle into a real, sustained groove during the dancing, something I haven't had for years. (You would think that Nashville, Music City, would have at least one decent club whose idea of "disco" isn't playing the electric slide three times in two hours... no, actually, you wouldn't, would you?)
Unfortunately every period of intense emotion, every suspension of mundane time is followed by that inevitable descent back beneath the clouds - literally in this case as my return flight landed at BNA. I've been settled back into my normal routine for a couple of days now but I'm still feeling a sort of jet lag, an emotional disconnect equivalent to the ache that I picked up from hiking up and down Mt. Hollywood but didn't even notice until I was back in Nashville.
When I first moved out here I decided, or I told myself, that Nashville was a Los Angeles in miniature. That the two cities had a lot in common - the decentralized western organization, the local entertainment industry that attracts legions of young hopefuls. You just have to ignore the factor of seven (or ten, or twenty) that makes it look so much smaller coming back from the real thing.
Almost anywhere would, but Nashville even moreso. The downtown now looks like a jumble of toy blocks, discarded by some child who's hoarded all the tallest, shiniest buildings a couple thousand miles to the west, and as I drove home after my class Monday night the sudden absence of palm trees swaying against the horizon was gut-wrenching. The local hills I glimpsed from the plane seemed petty and embarrassing, but even the Appalachians and the gorgeous Cumberland plateau have a hard time competing with the San Gabriels looming over Pasadena or the Santa Monicas folding into the sea.
I first visited Los Angeles eight years ago this week, to see the same friend. The spring of 1997 marked the beginning of the most (first?) exciting time of my life, and as the memories blur and run together it becomes harder to sort out which parts of that transformative season happened before the trip and which happened after. Southern California sits at the center of it all, a wonderland of eternal springs and so many beautiful women that you'd even see them at the bowling alley. California arranged itself to appear extra Californian that week; immediately after all the Oscar frenzy, the Heaven's Gate cult decided to kill themselves and ride out the millennium on the back of Comet Hale-Bopp.
I wrote something about it back then, although it didn't amount to much more than a plagiarism of Soul Coughing's "Screenwriter's Blues." (There was a journal too, long since lost and that's not much of a tragedy, nothing but bad imitations of Irvine Welsh - but what do you want, it was '97 and I was 24.) It's been long enough since the last trip that I was able to rediscover many of the things that had so charmed me the first time - the view from Griffith Park, the lights of the planes lined up for approach at LAX, the richness of Los Angeles' early modernist architecture, half Tenochtitlan and half Metropolis. No matter how apparent the costs are, I know I want more of this only half artificial paradise. I'll be driving back this summer.
It was, in short, the least noir Los Angeles experience ever. If I'm looking for disaffected loners drifting despondently in a place of sun-baked corruption, I can find that better right here in Nashville.
I lived in Nashville for 3 years, and it is, far and away, my least favorite place that I have ever lived. I liked the countryside some, and there were a few things to recommend the place, I guess, but between the parochialism of the people where we lived (some of our neigbors in Thompson Station wouldn't talk to us because we didn't go to their church), and the agressive homogenious gentillity of the place I worked (Vandy Med Cntr), I couln't wait to get out. I've liked every other place I've lived better (and that includes Philly and Baltimore, which many people badmouth but I loved, New Orleans, Berkley, New York, and Las Vegas - all were great in their own way).
You seem to like Nashville (this post nonwithstanding) and I would be interested to see you post your love (or maybe just like) letter to the city (provided you haven't already done so) so that I might reevaluate my negative experience in a new light.
Posted by: Todd Murry | March 24, 2005 at 07:17 PM
I heard that LA was kinda like Nashville . . . with a tan.
Posted by: Jake | March 24, 2005 at 08:05 PM
And cleaner air.
I do like Nashville, but it never comes off as well the day after a trip to someplace like DC or Los Angeles.
And I love Philly and Baltimore, by the way, warts and all - at least the warts are all right out there on the surface. I miss hearing that Bawlmer Merlin accent.
Posted by: Marc | March 25, 2005 at 10:01 AM
The Willie Nelson museum in the back of a smoke shop is one of the best places on earth. You can't love country music and not love Nashville, but I prefer living near Hollywood.
Posted by: Charles R. | March 26, 2005 at 03:17 AM
It is, however, pretty easy not to love country music. Although you can hear much better and more varied country here than probably anywhere else.
Haven't checked out that museum...
Posted by: Marc | March 26, 2005 at 11:19 AM
As the LA-ite, I must say that LA is just okay. It definately has its moments, but I still love DC more.
Albeit, my apartment here would be double the price for a similar location in DC.
And you can't beat the weather. (Even if it rains on your wedding).
Posted by: kan | March 26, 2005 at 12:04 PM
"pretty easy not to love country music."
That saddens my heart. You communist?
Posted by: Charles R. | March 26, 2005 at 12:40 PM
Yes. And by refusing to buy Toby Keith's album, I clearly hate our troops.
Posted by: Marc | March 26, 2005 at 06:39 PM
That ain't country. Hank, Lefty, Willie, Merle, Loretta, Dolly, Townes: that's country! Toby Keith is watered down pop music, closer to American Idol. All that time in Nashville, tsk, tsk.
Posted by: Charles | March 26, 2005 at 08:54 PM
There are hundreds if not thousands of people right here in Nashville who feel exactly the same way and will tell you so as they happily fling themselves into the maw of the industry that produces the music they loathe. The knowing disdain rarely rises above a barely audible mutter, but everybody cheers a seller.
Between Los Angeles and Nashville this one is pretty much a draw, I'd guess.
Posted by: Marc | March 27, 2005 at 12:17 PM
Well, this certainly explains the love of Mike Davis' books, leaving aside the fact that their great in their own right.
Funny; I spend the last couple of days in Toronto, basking in the weather and the fact I could walk, walk places, the used bookstores, the record stores. And then I came back to Floria. And asked myself, again, as always, why I live here. Then I thought about how hard it will be to leave.
Every place I've ever lived--every place worth living, anyway--has made me crazy and happy in equal measure. Anyway, nice post, and nicely timed.
Posted by: Dave Intermittent | March 28, 2005 at 10:00 PM
Thanks, Dave.
Posted by: Marc | March 29, 2005 at 03:39 PM
So good to see you again. Scrambling down from Mt. Hollywood was just fantastic. Seeing you all in Kurtas was a lot like seeing the Matrix for the first time.
Posted by: utforsker | March 31, 2005 at 05:03 PM
Another oldschooler heard from, and for the first time on IANTB no less! Yeah, the scramble was far and away the non-wedding highlight of the trip (down much, much moreso than up). Hope to see you at the reception - I'm still figuring out just how long I can afford to be away from Nashville during what is, technically, our final exam week.
Posted by: Marc | March 31, 2005 at 07:25 PM