Off Wilshire

As a follow-up on some of my hospital thoughts, another part of my experience was actually leaving the place. I arrived around 10:00 pm on a Tuesday and left about 40 hours later. All things considered, that’s not an overly-long stay. However, as I left the parking lot and drove toward the 110—as merging on to a freeway is the most LA way to be reminded you’re back in the real world—I felt incredibly disoriented.

It’s not just that time seems to stand still, but because of the sterile and ubiquitous nature of hospital rooms, I could have been anywhere. Returning to Los Angeles felt like I’d warped into another world after spending nearly two days staring at the same off-white walls, watching repeats of Law and Order: SVU and listening to my roommate repeat the same Christian affirmations on his phone for hours on end.

There have certainly been two-day stretches where I haven’t left my apartment before, but I’m always reminded of where I am by the helicopters overhead, the cars honking from the intersection, the customers of the plumbing store loading materials into trucks in the parking lot outside my window. I can haul my laundry upstairs and have a pretty decent vantage point of Koreatown from the top. I could lie in bed for days on end and still know I’m in LA.

In the hospital, it’s different. All I hear are asynchronous beeps, all I can see out the window—if there is one—is a concrete parking garage. The news on TV reminds me that LA is out there, somewhere, having car chases and traffic jams, but from my vantage point it might as well be Mars. I didn’t realize it until I left, but I was slowly going crazy while I was stuck there.

It makes me think of everyone who has extended stays in these places, or the elderly living out their terms in the death-care equivalent. People who have no connection to the world outside of four, unchanging walls, stuck in the places the rest of us don’t have to be reminded they exist in. We have such a deformed view of what care entails in this country, and I doubt it’s going to get any better anytime soon.

Cats in the studio

Coming soon

As I return to work, beginning with a 2026 edition of Standing Still In A Storm, the cats have begun to acclimate to the new studio.

I’ve been taking it slow over the past month, getting this space and the apartment to what feels comfortable, but I’ve been developing larger concepts to begin actually painting soon. I’m hoping the next few months will see some new music and a slew of new visual art so I can enter the new year with a bunch of stuff ready to show. I do have longer-term plans for the gallery space, but for now it’s just nice to use for work and be able to roll out of bed and make some tea and not have to drive anywhere.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin imagined a future where only wealthy people would be able to travel and ‘those of lesser means’ would only be able to experience the world through a VR headset. He goes on to talk about how that might create a divide between rich and poor. Jesus Christ.

It’s quite obvious how the chess pieces of technology, corporations, capital, violence, and governance are being aligned right now to create a future where the majority are ruled with a generally automated iron fist by the few. It’s the plot of endless sci-fi stories, but what comes to mind is Elysium, where the rich build themselves a giant space station as the rest suffer on a burning Earth patrolled by robots. What’s also evident is that those who aren’t quite wealthy, but live comfortably above most, are generally in favor of this divide, even though it would likely see them stuck holding the short end of the stick with the rest (see: Ross Sorkin and the entire NYT op-ed section).

There’s a good chance it is too late to do anything about it. While groups of people who lean left politically exist in the United States, they’re predominantly in urban areas and proportionally tiny compared to the population at large—a population that believes capitalist neoliberalism is ‘left-wing.’ The type of change required to do anything about wealth disparity—via reform or revolution—is simply impossible. In turn, the country will be forced to look on as the people are robbed, their food supply poisoned (or, eventually, lost), and any reaction brutally policed by stalkers and thugs using AI surveillance. (Even at the local level, despite outrage from the people who elected them, city councils are voting in favor of building data centers everywhere.)

Meanwhile, the wealthy and their fans will go on to have discussions about how they’ll be perceived as all of this violence against humankind continues unpunished. The United States has probably passed any point of anyone in power having to deal with any kind of consequence for any action whatsoever. We can’t even properly handle cops standing around for hours during a mass school shooting, much less force the release of the Epstein Files. This country has volunteered itself into submission.

China might be able to reframe the balance of power in the world and possibly diminish the role of capitalism in the future, but the United States will surely burn itself to the ground—and as much of the world as possible—before that happens.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

There are a variety of things to do in Los Angeles that feel just very unique to the city. Going to a show at the Hollywood Bowl might be one. Sitting next to Bob Odenkirk at a lunch in Larchmont might be another. Watching Dudamel conduct at the Walt Disney Hall or going to any number of the world-class, completely-free art museums downtown is up there. (Ironically, leaving the city to go out and camp at Joshua Tree would be another.) And this is just the shit that like, the average person can afford and experience. I’m sure spending some time at the Chateau Marmont would be the first on my list if I ever won the lottery.

Then, of course, there’s the movies. There are a ton of art-house, independent theaters showing films from all eras of Hollywood history, often with special guests including actors, writers, directors, and producers. A couple highlights for me—just in the past six months—have been Elliott Gould after The Long Goodbye, Paul Thomas Anderson before One Battle After Another, Isabelle Huppert after The Piano Teacher, and Gus Van Sant before Good Will Hunting.

Last night added chalked up a couple of these experiences in to one.

My phone is eight years old and I was far away so this picture is very low-quality

At Cinespia, an outdoor film screening that takes place in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, there was a screening of one of my all-time favorites, Josie and The Pussycats. Four thousand people were in attendance, and when writer-director pair Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont were introduced (whom I also saw a couple weeks ago after a screening of their first cult classic, Can’t Hardly Wait), they said it was more people who saw the movie in its original theatrical run.

Also in attendance? Star Rachel Leigh Cook and Letters to Cleo vocalist Kay Hanley, who provided the vocals for the music in the film.

These aren’t always things that add too much substance to an experience, although there are guests that really provide some insight into process or creativity, but it is just kind of cool and the type of thing that doesn’t happen anywhere else. Stars might show up to a new film to promote it in New York, but Werner Herzog doing an extensive interview after a fifty-year-old film in Heart of Glass is not something that happens often outside of LA.

Though plenty of people who attend these things work in the industry, some of us just fucking love going to the movies and getting a little peek behind the curtain as an added bonus makes the experience just somehow more—as well as feeling more a part of the fabric of what makes this city unique.