On June 10th I returned to my (Covid Era) roots in Culver City to yet again cat sit my friends Haley and Murphy. Sandwiching this solitary cat sitting gig around my NorCal community sojourn was a real study in mind fuck-age, but I honestly think it worked well for what I was looking for. I got back into the me shit that I was missing. I knocked out a podcast episode with my buddy, Dusty, and, in a very meta reference, I started getting back into this blog in earnest via processing my experiences at Cosmic Honey. This solo time and general catch up period lasted for all of 2 days, as my friend and primary producing collaborator from graduate film school, Virgile, came to stay at the cat house to work on his screenplay for the duration of my time in Los Angeles.
Upon returning to LA from Cosmic, I immediately noticed an uptick in the “get up and go” sector of my attitude. I was still somewhat in camping/community/roughing (kinda) mode from my time at Cosmic, and I had absolutely no tolerance for internal BS or inertia preventing me from getting my shit done in a timely fashion. It wasn’t even that I had some major expectations or big goals while I was in LA, it was more of a sense that I refused to let myself slip into some kind of solo time tailspin. It just wasn’t going to happen. So everything I did took the form, or structure, of being some kind of operation. Everything had a game plan that was scrutinized. Work periods. Planned out. Store trips. Scheduled. Running errands in different parts of town. Calendered. This is just where my brain was at, and this militaristic drive towards having my personal “self” on lock down was also providing a type of comfort.
Beyond refining my ability to boss myself around, the two weeks I was in LA was primarily dominated by 2 things: working with Virgile on his new feature script, and coming up with new short form video content to shoot - primarily for my website, Instagram, and my Youtube page. While up in NorCal, there was a lot of talk among the group of shooting a short film (a horror comedy to be specific), and that notion kind of got the wheels turning for me regarding shooting my own shit again. It’s simply been way too long. Also, the timing is great as it matches the type of output I’m trying to produce on this web site, and, quite simply, I miss the satisfaction of shooting and completing physical content. So, my time in Los Angeles this go around, aside from some nice catch ups and hikes with friends, was pretty much this Groundhog Day style existence of working with Virgile half the day, and working on my short form stuff the other half of the day. And, clearly, the remaining portions of the day were dedicated to a militaristic focus on going to the store and scheduling errands.
We did get to the beaches a few times, where we took in some solid weirdos (Venice, and one special metal detector person at Manhattan Beach), and we akso got some chill time over at the beach Playa del Vista, which is excellent. Otherwise, there really wasn’t much in terms of emotional/philosophical/existential check ins of note during my time back “home.” I felt busy... but I did also find myself grateful that I would soon be leaving for a cross country road trip to Louisiana. It starts to get to be a bit a depressing being in a city as dynamic as LA with everything shut down. It hits me more there than when I’ve been in smaller places during this time period. And it’s weird being in a place that’s so crowded, but so limited in terms of spaces you can be in. I still look forward to returning to LA at the end of this Louisiana adventure, but I definitely learned during my two week stop off that you need a plan of action, and a no frills militaristic attitude, to consistently ward off the lingering darkness.