A song from nearly 50 years ago meshes well with LA in the 21st Century.
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From my youth up I never liked the city.
I never forgot the mountains where I was born.
The world caught me and harnessed me
And drove me through dust, thirty years away from home.
Migratory birds return to the same tree.
Fish find their way back to the pools where they were hatched.
I have been over the whole country,
And I have come back at last to the garden of my childhood.
My farm is only ten acres.
The farm house has eight or nine rooms.
Elms and willows shade the back garden.
Peach trees stand by the front door.
The village is out of sight.
You can hear dogs bark in the alleys,
And cocks crow in the mulberry trees.
When you come through the gate into the court
You will find no dust or mess.
Peace and quiet live in every room.
I am content to stay here the rest of my life.
At last I have found myself.
— Tao Yuan Ming (Tao Qian) Chinese, 365-427
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Thanks, Gerard.
Is it because I’m housebound with a broken toe? Is it because I grew up listening to EJ in the Seventies? Was it the vacation I took in LA last year (working vacation, mind you)?
Seems to be some dust in here, and getting in my eyes.
Unadorned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UroApoVbKn0
That song will always live within me. Ironically, it was probably only a couple of years ago that I finally knew what some of the lyrics are.
God bless the internet. That was marvelous. Do people still watch TV?
Regarding the lyric comment, frequently I search for the real words to songs I grew up with.
Lay me down in sheets of linnen.
Never would have figured tjat one out.
Now try Benny and the Jets
Got me all misty, too. Good lord, I know every landmark in that video, and I’ve visited most of them at one time or other. Los. Fucking. Angeles. Hate this goddam place. Except I love it. We love to hate it and we hate to love it. But dammit, I am an Angelino. It is my city, my culture, my America. And yeah, it’s gone down hill, and it ain’t the LA I fell in love with anymore. But I’m a curmudgeonly old bastard now, myself. Still my city.
JWM
That was a piece of work, brother.
And as jwm noted above we are formed by our surroundings and adapt to the where and the what we are immersed in. By doing that we take on the flavor and texture of the meat, we feel the bones, and share the pain of our (OUR) place. As a kid I used to think doing that was peculiar to the Appalachian South since that was my place and my people made sure those origins were known to all within earshot; we were a tribe connected as much to the soil and air as to the family tree and all it’s roots. But it wasn’t just my circle that felt that way, we’re all like that and some of the connections are sweet, some are bitter, some are both.
Rob Ziobro, That’s the line I looked up, because I never could tell what he sang.
Again, you never disappoint. Thank you
A million people, a million stories, all unique.