song: Only Shallow
artist: my bloody valentine
album: Loveless
year: 1989
“You must learn to inhabit the world you realize because no one is going to save you,” the machine told her in her dreams.
“You must learn to live with you and only you, but what does it mean to live?” it asked.
Nova asks herself this question as she observes the Eastern light dusting the arches of the 6th street bridge a faint gold.
There is a new sense of place. A new sense of time. A new rhythm.
The band of concrete in ahead of her flows West into the city, far enough away to appear as if the skyscrapers all lived on a single plane of glass. There are dark and pregnant rainclouds far behind them, and it reminds her of a piece of a photo she once saw in an old book.
She drives on 3rd street in the direction of the 110 and takes notice of the structure of the 5 Star Bar across from her at a red light on Main – Beer, Buds, Music, Food – and she remembers when she used to play bass in a band with Ryan for drink tickets on weeknights with an occasional Saturday night if they were lucky.
Those times are now dissolved in the ether and the excitement has shifted, but she’s glad they happened and are now sealed in memory, however volatile. She’s not even sure if she knows what excitement is anymore.
A universe of strange and marvelous stories exist and she reminds herself to write them down one day. Maybe for posterity, but certainly for glory, even if only a vain attempt at it.
The bar doesn’t look open anymore and she accelerates across the intersection after the light turns green and glides down the street and through the underground tunnel and the street carries her across Fig and onto the freeway onramp.
Bret Easton Ellis wrote that, “People are afraid to merge in Los Angeles,” and he was absolutely right. He actually still is. The fear is astounding and it saturates the cool morning air.
*
And that couldn’t be more true after it rains. The day blurs and time passes swiftly like a shadow in midday and Nova drives back across the city and the road is wet from the rain and she listens to Albert Hammond sing that it never rains in Southern California.
Thousands of lights behind building windows are on, each like a small cell in a battery, and the flow of red taillights snake into the dark spaces between these structures and it’s just clear enough day to see the snow covered mountains across the valley.
As she makes a left onto Los Angeles St from 7th, she notices the blue light windows that hover above the concrete world and it looks as if they’re carefully watching over the slow revival below. Keeping tabs on the cosmic ledger.
She thinks about techniques to archive collective memory and wonders if she knows of any, but does it even fucking matter?
kosmik city 