I try to find humor in every situation, no matter how bleak. As the old adage goes, funny things happen to funny people. Why? Because we’re stalkers. We watch, wait, and then snatch the moment when it trips into our traps. I’ve often wondered, is my need to provoke chuckles lodged in my DNA, born out of the persecution of my ancestors in earlier centuries? I think of the great comedians who came from tortured backgrounds. They had to laugh or they’d die.
Sometimes I think I’m masking a tragedy of my own making. Let’s face it, I’m not Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky; I worry about everything. But I’ve finally come to embrace my creative abilities.
My memoir, Welcome to Fabulous Angeles, is the story of lost time. It charts the course of a wayward Westside teen who believes in a birthright of bliss. As an adolescent, I convinced myself I should engage in activities that brought me joy, not resign myself to a life of misery merely to make money. What good are materialistic things when we’re all going to die? Why pull a paycheck to purchase a car that primarily existed to get me to work, or worse, to pay for long-overdue psychotherapy? I wanted to feel free, find fun in the many passions the Good Lord had gifted me: music, sports, community, a spiritual connection, and meaningful artistry.
Familial authorities often lambasted me for my withdrawal from the “real world.” In that, we agreed. I used to have a button pinned to the bulletin board above my desk that said, “Reality is for people who can’t handle drugs.” Like many kids my age, I thought, what’s so great about your reality, anyway?
In the sixties and seventies, we fought against the establishment. We felt like rockets in the space race, pushing past boundaries. We fought “the Man” because he told us we had to wake up from our foolish idealistic imaginings. But we had our weapons of parental destruction: the Beatles, FM radio, protest anthems, and psychedelic art. We sold ourselves on a vague but omnipresent immortality. We were validated by the excitement of new waves: political dissent, alternative lifestyles, free love, civil rights, environmental protections, and mysticism from the Far East. The wardrobe on the streets proved we’d been transported to revolutionary times: hippies flashed beards and beads, and women wore miniskirts and bell-bottom jeans.
Yet members of the Greatest and Silent Generations snipped our wings and then scolded us for not flying. As a result, millions of us went on to spend most of our lives stuck in a state of unconscious grief. With the publication of my memoir, after years of painstaking research and writing, I can testify that it’s never too late; don’t give up on your dreams.
I liken myself to a slow-growing winter-blooming inkberry. Native Americans mashed the inkberry into a strong medicine that treated colds and fevers and colored fabrics with its purple juice. The toxic shrub tolerates both sun and shade and can grow over five feet tall. It covers a wide swath across the Atlantic coastal plain.
Likewise, I’ve been influenced by LA’s inversion and marine layers and its soft lambent light. I’m a product of my environment, living in the image-making capital of the world, and of a singular zeitgeist, sprouting in post-mid-century. Perhaps that’s the answer to my earlier inquiry: It’s the Hollywood showman in me. I get a kick out of cracking people up. And, yes, it takes me away from the demons that pop into my head like it’s an Airbnb in Studio City.
I’ve got no room in my heart for resentments, regrets, or self-pity. We’re all here on planet earth in this sacred second, and I’m grateful to find a sense of balance and equanimity. I’ve learned what I needed to learn to get to this place of relative peace. And it’s nice to taste the fruits of victory. But in my case, each bite is bittersweet.
Am I alone out here on this limb, or do others feel the same way?