I like listening to Marc Maron’s WTF. Have been for years. Especially his 5-10 minute little rants/rambles before he runs with his interviews.
From Maron’s podcast today, and even though I’m putting his words in quotes, it’s more of a loose paraphrase — but I need to credit him: “It wasn’t even a déjà vu feeling…I’ve been in LA on and off a long time, pretty much I’ve had a place there pretty much since, what? 2002. In one way or another. So I just walk out of this theater (it was the Vista Theater over in Los Feliz) and in my mind all these moments I’ve been in that area throughout the entire time i’ve been in LA just kind of congealed into this feeling of — what happened to all that time?”
What happened to all that time.
It’s a universal feeling we all have, so much so it’s kinda cliché. Part of the human condition, right?
Yesterday, as I was making my way down the 101 to DTLA, I exited early at Vermont Avenue. GPS had me avoiding the 101’s brutal afternoon traffic. I was coming back from the Valley, where I just just met my editor and handed off stacks of hard drives. My editor — now my ex-editor — was hired by the company who purchased my production company. And this was a final hand-off of sorts before I pack the last of stuff and move back home to Arizona.
(Side note here: a block south of the Vermont exit, on the right hand side of the road, is a burnt-out (literally…there was a fire a few years ago) Korean hotel. It’s always been a hotel, and long before it was a Korean hotel, it was the hotel where the love of Charles Bukowski’s life — Jane — died in 1962.)
Bucking GPS’s best route home, I chose to head to 7th street, turned east and went by my very first Los Angeles studio. It’s right across the street from the La Placita Market, where I used to run in to get my 11pm sugar fix before going to bed. Which is right down the street from Southwestern Law School, which is now housed in the old Bullocks-Wilshire department store.
(Side note here: back in the day, that Bullocks-Wilshire used to have, on 24-hour call, models with the same, exact measurements as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Jayne Mansfield, Lucille Ball, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, et al so when and if any of the ladies I just named show up to try on clothes, well…they didn’t have to actually try anything on.)
As I sat in the car in front of my first LA studio, 24 hours before listening to Maron’s show I mentioned in my opening, I thought something along the lines of this isn’t even a déjà vu feeling…I’ve been in LA on and off a long time, pretty much I’ve had a place there pretty much since, what? 2004. In one way or another. So as I sit in front of my old studio thinking about all the moments I’ve been in this area throughout the entire time I’ve been in LA it just kind of congealed into this feeling of — what happened to all that time?
What happened to all that time.
