Muse for a day reminisces on Los Angeles traffic
Is it normal to use a friend to further one's creative endeavors? In Los Angeles, yes! Yes! YES! We feed off each other, providing needed inspiration and support.
Today, my friend Lloyd drove me to his place in Hollywood, two blocks from Sunset Blvd. and The Comedy Store, in order to compose music.
I'm his muse!
My job is to sit quietly in the livingroom with my Dell Inspiron laptop, while he creates musical genius upstairs. He's got a TV network president of production interested in his spec song for a new show. Which means one or more of the following: She's being polite. She fancies him. She may give him a deal.
So while he's upstairs, strumming on the guitar, I'll recount our drive from Westwood to Hollywood.
Construction was everywhere!
We departed the Westwood area from Santa Monica Blvd., construction two years and counting, and maneuvered side streets, like peaceful tributaries off a reckless bay, making it to Wilshire Boulevard. Tall condominiums of glass and concrete towered over us, the sort of massive structures you don't want to be in or around during a big earthquake. Driving in their shadows, we turned left onto...
"Lloyd, what's the name of the street we turned left on?!" I shout upstairs.
Jester, the lab, barks and Lloyd saunters down, leaning over the staircase's white iron railing.
I repeat, "What's the name of the street we turned left on from Wilshire, getting into Beverly Hills?"
"You're not going to tell everybody?" he says, politely as his face scrunches up as if to say, Are you nuts?!
Knowing shortcuts in Los Angeles is a means for survival. He who knows the best short-cuts gets to his destination on time and wins.
Lloyd's secret route will remain safe with me.
Lloyd, like many, learns traffic short-cuts the hard way: getting stuck and unstuck, over and over, and readjusting his schedules, and left and right turns, in accordance with our ever changing landscape, thanks to construction.
Okay, so, we made a left turn, making our way along Beverly Hills side streets, passing well-manicured lawns, trees with large roots growing into the ground, branches reaching out, and further out, and leaves, full, fuller, and lush all around. Flowers galore. A blue sky. Rich green foliage. A pond 
with floating lillies.
It's strange, I think, how no one walks in these glorious neighborhoods. Yet, in Manhattan, everyone walks and I can't help but think that if New Yorkers were transplanted here for a day, they'd walk and talk in our manicured beauty, and just love it, and they'd eat it up, and feast on the beauty, until they'd turn the corner and breath in exhaust from the local large thoroughfare. Then coughing, and feeling a migraine coming on, they'd wonder what they were doing here, after all.
Several blocks before exiting Beverly Hills, enroute to West Hollywood, we saw twenty brown-skinned construction workers, probably Mexicans, looking like worker ants, posed atop an ornate ivory estate. It was in the process of becoming one of Beverly Hills newest monstrosities, concrete slabs upon slabs of gargantuan bad taste... in my opinion.
There was a main house that could fit eight smaller houses, easily. And a smaller house in the back, in process of becoming guest headquarters for probably an Iranian contigent of forty long lost cousins eager to reconnect with their Uncle and his wealth derived from family gemstones and a Persian rug dry-cleaning franchise. Iranians have infiltrated Beverly Hills. And in between the main house and the relative's "shack" was a space large enough for an Olympic sized swimming pool. Lloyd imagined white alabaster elephants spewing Chandon champagne near the pool at the family's first house warming, a party complete with tuxedo-clad valets. And I imagined poor people starving in east L.A., and I wondered if the day-laborers who worked on the estate had enough food for their families.
We passed Beverly Hills, and entered West Hollywood. West Hollywood is known for a large gay population. I once interviewed to be deputy mayor of West Hollywood, and I can tell you first hand, these people are nice, they're neat, and colorful. A crowd of wonderful people. Boring does not exist here. Boring will never exist here. Fortunately, Santa Monica Blvd's construction finished W. Hollywood's portion last year. The wide tree-lined boulevard is flanked by standard Starbucks and Subways, and upscale restaurants, too, so it's pleasant to visit. And clean.
Apartments in West Hollywood are more tightly placed to one another than in Beverly Hills. And people tend to be friendlier. I wonder if there is a direct relationship between close proximity to one another and being friendly, or being far apart and being distant.
We crossed La Cienega off another secret side street, and voila!, Lloyd's pad where creativity takes place came into view.
Lloyd's still strumming on the guitar. And I'm about done ruminating. So until early tomorrow...
Construction in L.A. frequently begins as early as 6:30 AM, though they're not supposed to start until 7. I woke at 6:45 AM today to the sound of drilling because another house behind me needs a face-life. People here are rarely satisfied when it comes to their real estate and cars, cars, gas-guzzling SUV cars. Will building and striving for more, bigger, and better ever end?
