The YZA

I’m in Los Angeles, and I won’t sleep. Driving here at night is the ultimate automotive fantasy, better than driving in New York. Winding roads cliffside, big vistas, ocean views and few other cars in the way. I hate reliance on cars, but while we’re driving ourselves into living in an anachronism, I might as well do it right. California is the ultimate car culture, and they do it proper here: four lane highways in the middle of the desert, six lanes in the city, low population density to guarantee civilian street parking, and many, many gas stations. There are so many badass old cars on the road here, too. I never cared much for cars as a kid in the 80s, but it’s probably because new cars have been ugly my whole life, through the present, where most new cars look like a cross between a spaceship and a jellybean. The old cars are on the highways, cruising at 85MPH like all the rest, preserved thanks to lack of rain and snow-melting salt.

Living near Joshua Tree has been really eye-opening. Our town of Yucca Valley is a mix of military families (there is a base nearby where I’m sure they train for all possible desert warfare scenarios), obese lower middle class working folks, sun-damaged desert derelicts and artists, and white trash Meth addicts (they gay Meth heads are on the southern side of the park in Palm Springs). We’re a happy family: I get stares from everyone, big Arab beard and long graying hair. I look like a mountain man, but maybe from the mountains of Afghanistan. That, combined with my Gap sweater and fancy New York shoes, I’m not sure anyone knows what to make of me.

It’s been a treat not having internet at home. If I’m going to waste time, I’m going to do it while doing something productive, like reading or watching the scarce few movies Netflix sends me. Driving down two miles of dirt road from our house to town takes about 10 to 15 minutes, and rattles the BMW coupe I’m driving quite a bit, so the decision to go down for groceries or entertainment is a relatively big one. My communications with friends have suffered a little, but anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a prompt communicator. If I didn’t advertise it so well that I was going away to “The DESERT”, most people who didn’t hear from me for another three months wouldn’t know the difference. Besides calls to my family, I’ve called exactly one friend in New York, and received one phone call from another friend. I did get a fancy new phone though (DROID, by Google, also by Verizon, also by Motorola), and in addition to allowing me to make a receive calls, it’s also a GPS navigator, a photo and video camera, an MP3 player, a web browser, and everything else. So, I can post photos to Facebook and Twitter and feel good that there’s at least one-way communication. Also, Google now formally and officially owns my life, and I am strangely proud.

Not being in New York has been very healthy. Last week, there was a report issued that New York State has, on average, the least happy people in America. I think I will agree with that conclusion: most of my friends back home are pretty down in the dumps, and I’d say I’m no different. It’s a disgusting rat race of desperate comedians and musicians and bankers and advertising execs all being paid way less than they should be, struggling in the hopes that someone notices them. Compound that with the unending stream of “news” from Facebook and Twitter accounts about peoples’ performances, TV shows, successes (and sometimes failures), promotions, etc. and it feels like you’re smothered by insecure, unhappy people promoting themselves mechanically and unendingly. Everyone’s got something to say, but I can’t understand it if you all talk at the same goddamn time.

The quiet is nice in the desert. The winds blow hard some nights, so hard that it keeps me up and frightens me more than a little, but I’ll take that over not being able to hear my own true thoughts among the pollution of the blog-o-sphere and actual physical atmosphere in New York. California certainly has its share of pitiful self-promoters and misguided corporate attempts at creativity, but it’s also got so much more: beautiful, diverse landscapes, lots of space for people to live and make art and noise without splashing piss on each others’ shoes, and a lot of good weather. New York State has the City… and some apple orchards somewhere upstate.

I have been a little obsessed with John Lennon lately. Sure, it’s a little late to discover him for me, but better late than never. First off, it should be obvious to anyone who has listened to his first solo record (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band) that his best work came after he left the Beatles. Second, I have to admit that I am more than just a little sad about his passing. For a giant like him (and he really was a giant, as a humanistic human, as an activist, and as an artist) to be gunned down by a mentally disturbed nobody saddens me beyond belief — to tears, even. I’ve been listening to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band for a few years now, thanks to my buddy Robby Grant, but I recently watched the rock n’ roll movie A Hard Day’s Night, starring The Beatles, and I never knew their young personalities before that.

To think that all was good and well in 1963 (when the film was released), the band was so excited for their success, for their future, and so good-spirited about it too, and that all would be so different only seven years later. Anyway, I’m not going to go on giving a history of The Beatles or John Lennon, but I just thought I would make it clear that Xmas with Yoko and Sean in 1980 (only weeks after John was shot down) could very possibly be the saddest Christmas thought imaginable. Sure, there are probably more terrible circumstances than the death of multimillionaire musician and activist, but the world lost a huge positive force the night he died, and I’m sure the reality of that truth was especially brutal and discouraging on Christmas eve. Don’t forget to Imagine all the people, living life in peace, motherfuckers.

I think I’m going to quit playing music for a while.

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