This week, I have really focused on creating musical pieces to capture my experience in Los Angeles. My previous blog posts already do a pretty good job of summarizing my experiences and learning, therefore for my songs I will be continuing to showcase my learning but through an expressive means. While in Los Angeles, I played a lot of music in my room. I brought a practice amplifier, a guitar, a pedal, and a keyboard along with me. On nights that I did not go out, I spent quite a lot of time reading my self-assigned books, listening to music from Los Angeles, and playing music in my room. One thing that artistically struck me about L.A. was how eclectic the ‘sounds’ are that come out of this city. While many cities are known for being the birthplace of a particular sound (and make it quite apparent), the nature of Los Angeles’s decentralized and immigrant/transplant population creates such a diversity of ideas that there really is not one concrete sound that defines the L.A. music scene, which is something I really enjoyed about the area. However, the themes I will be playing upon in my music will not be as “sunshine-y” as the famed ‘California sound’ that I discussed.

One major theme I will be focusing on is Alienation. As I talked about previously, I felt an extreme sense of alienation while traveling by foot around the city. The sidewalk was a barren place. In many places that I walked, the only other people I would see on foot were usually homeless. When I told one of my interviewees that I had walked to Studio City from Sherman Oaks (about 4 miles) he said “NOBODY I’ve ever known would do that!”. He further told me that when people see you walking down a street such as Ventura Blvd. at night alone, they assume either you’re mentally ill or homeless. I remember one night when I was walking from Encino to Sherman Oaks and I was literally the only person on the sidewalk the entire time, while many cars were just whizzing by. I felt very alone. I found the situation almost comical and began laughing really loudly, only to realize how weird I must look to cars passing me. I was not alone, I was constantly surrounded.

Another big theme was waste. It is a wild and completely 21st century notion that civilization in the middle of the desert is even possible. With increasing population and decreasing resources comes many issues. One that I have been focusing on is the water crisis, being one that is effecting the entire west coast as well as the entire world. Having grown up in Minnesota, one of my first encounters with the idea of California (besides television and almost every movie) was when I was younger and many Minnesotans were up in arms about how California lobbyists were lobbying for the taking water from Minnesota lakes and using it for Los Angeles. In fact, a third of the water that comes to Los Angeles is sourced from Lake Superior, as well as Lake Michigan. I remember hearing people complain as a child about how unfair it was that a state could just take another states water because it had more money and was more powerful. Being in the state, it was wild to see how wasteful people were still being with water. One woman I talked to (a friend of the daughter whose house I was staying at), told me that she didn’t believe in the water shortage at all. Because the water crisis isn’t effecting many people in the United States (especially Los Angeles due to shipped/piped in water), it can give people a level of comfort. Water comes out of the sink, and it always has and will in their mind. People are constantly going to the car wash as well. Living across the street from a car wash, I was always surrounded by traffic going in and out from the business. I don’t know how so many people are able to keep their cars clean, seeing as my car was constantly dirty (even after I washed it) from the dust and bugs. One thing that I learned about water legislation in L.A. that I found interesting was how water laws affect different communities within the city. For instance, most sub-cities have laws as to when/how much water can be used weekly. The exception is Beverly Hills. There are no restrictions to watering lawns there, and the result is extremely visible. Green, large fields. And at the end of the property line, the desert continues, creating quite an unnatural sight.