Reflections on a Return

It has been five days since I left Florida. I am now in Los Angeles as if I had never left and in other ways, as if I had never lived here. Undoubtedly, my mindset is different, though I don’t know how or if it will affect the work. From a distance, and without whatever clarity time might bring, Florida seems an important period. It might not be inaccurate to think of it as a self-imposed exile, thought I have to smirk at the idea of exiling oneself to anyplace in which there is a mall and a beach. But it was precisely that resort-quality of the little town in which I lived that wiped away the romantic aspirations to self-discovery and “toughness” that inevitably come up in pilgrimages to deserts, to Alaska or to New York. The charm of a little beach town, the homes decorated with coral, the gentle nights and the Lily Pulitzer outfits, meant that whatever ideas I wrestled had to be my own and, frequently, foreign to the day to day conditions. In other words, the angst of the artist in the little beach town is felt in sharp contrast to its surroundings. There is no nasty grit of the city or garbage or frostbite, no traditionally-grand landscape or historical weight to echo the brutality of living or to applaud the act of getting up in the morning.