Lucky’s Reviews > Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. > Status Update

I drank tequila in San Francisco to warm me up and in L.A. because it was appropriate.

My claustrophobia from San Francisco begins to vanish—that cheerful shipshape vitality of the north violates my spirit and I long for vast sprawls, smog, and luke nights: L.A. It is where I work best, where I can live, oblivious to physical reality.

L.A. was embarrassing; I tried not to notice.

The night was young and the moon was silver and the Irish have never been boring.

I was dancing, dancing through the crowded room and absolutely unable to stop smiling. Women who dance with their eyes closed, smiling, are as near to heaven as you can get on carth, and there I was, in heaven, only in Bakersfield.

What did people do in Los Angeles, I began to wonder, besides rather useless business involving typewriters and offices? They didn't tend to essentials like growing food, that was for sure. They just breezed along in the supermarkets and went home to watch television, not knowing a thing about vineyards or orchards.

And so the artists in Los Angeles just don't have that burning eagerness people expect. And they're just not serious. It makes friends of mine in New York pace and seethe just remembering the unreasoning delight one encounters with the cloudlike marvels of Larry Bell.

People nowadays get upset at the idea of being in love with a city, especially Los Angeles. People think you should be in love with other people or your work or justice. I've been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I've loved and the ideas I've embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do to be able to stand it.

This is a love story and I apologize; it was inadvertent.