driving down the sinuous dusty snake we call sepulveda it is easy to understand why we love los angeles sunbaked unreality cut loose from the present an eternal time an internal rhyme over forever linked to past and future but never to now aging hipsters ancient hippies all the way back to hollywood nature boys this place this land this zeitgeist called to us all in our sleep in our dreams it beckoned us with a beguiling voice calling us with this siren song you'll never be home till you're here till you're here till you're here you'll never be home till you're here
and we came in cars in jitneys in jalopies in jets in jest in just what we had on our backs whatever it takes to find our way here find this time this place this land so hot and dusty and magical it must be a fever dream where every possibility is a reality waiting to be uncovered this is where we belong
this is our home this will always be our home this always has been our home
we walk its canyons of cactus and concrete sit in its cool temples both sacred and profane and we ask why are we here
we know we are supposed to be here but why?
some come for fame and some for fortune but if that is what you want you take it and leave soon enough you were never one of us you never belonged here and we can see it in your eyes smell it on your soul and we bear you no animosity and we say go with the grace of God...
...but go
a thousand failures are our family but you we don't know
we come to build and make but many times we know what we build but not why our great white elephants rear back and stretch tusk and trunk to the sky why do we do that why would anybody do that?
because we can and because we can then we must we can not let los angeles go unimagined we must call forth a thousand foolish fantasies from a thousand fantastic fools and we must shape the unreality the ur-reality and make it concrete give voice to the dream that beguiled us revitalize it and send it back into the world to find our brothers and sisters and bring them home
los angeles you are my home waiting for me from before my parents were born you hold secrets for those who love you secrets you reveal and they will share with the rest of the world
not everybody will hear the music or get the joke but those that do they will be here they will come they will be part of us
dusty canyons dreaming streets dazzling days starry nights of neon and wonder blocking the real stars in the sky dazzling us with galaxies imagined by man and woman some big some small some petty some grand but all reflecting the same unreal city and land that calls us here that makes us welcome
to the desert! to the skies and snakes and scorpions, to sunbaked sunblasted sunbleached suncursed vistas of melting stone landscape, we come
to the sea! great prehistoric monsters of steel and gray writhing above the waves hiding behind phony palm trees only to fall to very real surfers knights of the sea skating slithering sliding safely between the legs of the giants to deliver themselves born whole like venus onto the nirvana of the beach, we come
to the studios! playschool playhouse playacting a thousand lives a million scenarios an infinite range of possibilities playfully tossing back to the world what the world cast off, we come
we come without fear and oddly without hope because hope is uncertain and we all know we are the chosen one we are the one destined to set the night ablaze with unquenchable glory, we come
and so here we are what are you going to do about it?
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text © Buzz Dixon