I’ve tried to write this post countless times over the past few days. I am finally coming to terms with the fact that, in light of the fires in Los Angeles, I can’t really bring myself to care about the things I normally do.
And all my songs with words feel trite and annoying at the moment.
So I’m sharing this little instrumental piano piece I wrote when I was first teaching myself the piano about 11 years ago. I was living out of my suitcase in my then-boyfriend’s house beneath the 101 freeway in LA. The place was once a halfway house. It felt haunted. Maybe by the succubi of the past tenants’ addictions. Songs muted, but stuck on repeat. The tar from the highway caked thick over the windowpanes. Everyone who lived there smoked indoors.
From the inside looking out on a line of traffic, I was dreaming of John Steinbeck’s California. The one in which the lupin and the poppies sprawled down like a necklace over the great golden breast of the land. The one in which Spanish moss from oaks shaded the cold creeks of Spring. I was dreaming of the California I first fell in love with. The one in my mind. It was a partiality. The real California holds a quality that Joan Didion describes as “something like glamour and something like terror.”
And Los Angeles of course is its own dream. I love this city. I love the land of it, the architecture, the wild front yard flora, the palms waving like proud flags, but most of all its people. Our interconnectedness has never felt more real.
When I listen to this little song after so many years, it always makes me happy. It’s a child’s tendency toward hopefulness . And though we’ve been living east of eden for a long time now, eden lives still, like California for me, in our minds. It isn’t a place. It’s a way of being.
The way people are being to each other now is calling eden forth. I’ve seen the most beautiful acts of generosity and caring and community throughout the past week that have restored a waning faith in humanity.
I am making a series of very small paintings (5”x7”) & I am selling them for $30 each with all proceeds going to fundraisers for people who have been touched by these fires.
Please send me a direct message if you are interested in purchasing one or have any other questions.
<3
Lael
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