2009 Los Angeles
While the city was busy we wanted to rest
She decided to drive up to Observatory crest
We'd just saw a concert and heard all the best
So the only thing to do
Was to drive up
And watch the city
And watch the city
From Observatory crest
Captain Beefheart Observatory Crest
I am standing at the Griffith Observatory in LA where James Dean vented his teenage angst in the film Rebel Without a Cause. Captain Beefheart’s song Observatory Crest is playing in my head. I am trying to make sense of this sprawling city that in some way I have always known. It seems so much less than I had imagined and I like it all the more for that. Actors in batman costumes Elvis jumpsuits beg tourists for photographs. Famous actors’ handprints outside the famous Chinese Theatre are pressed and scratched into the dirt. I note the smallness of the palms of these giants of the silver screen, giants of my youth spent curled up on the sofa never happier than when I was watching the afternoon matinee, watching Buster Keaton, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant. People on buses look pensive and tired and this place of dreams is just another city and the reality behind the Silver Screen is a shabby one, built on hard graft in pursuit of fame. I have the same feeling I did when I saw Toto revealing that the powerful wizard behind the Emerald city was just an old man pulling levers.
In Venice Beach I swap the flat expanse of the city for the flatness of the Ocean and the warm light of the lonely winter beach. I draw at the foot of the lifeguard huts of Baywatch fame, sadly neglected by fair-weather beach babes and the Hoff. I draw the locked up huts anyway.
