The Truth is Sexy

Had a frustrating meeting with my agents today. They brought me in as if under a firing squad and told me that I was of a certain age. It's true. I am of a certain age. That age being thirty. I believe the day I turned thirty they dimmed the lights on all the street lamps. Another girl who didn't make it by the end of a sultry decade.

A decade that began by lighting a cigarette, donning a pair of knee high, kick ass boots, filling diaries, living in New York, moving to Los Angeles, hurling my soul into the depths of romantic love, as if I was a French Poet,and hopefully learning somethings along the torrid way . A decade that ended by putting out a cigarette, still wearing boots and dancing to a Cure song in front of the beach.

And now I roam these streets. Oh who am I kidding. There's not a lot of roaming to be done in these streets. Mostly it's parking. So I park in these streets looking for the authentic. Looking for the heartbeat.

I can feel the pulse. The pulse is undoubtedly sexual. The pulse of twenty two year olds, drug addictions, short skirts, gas stations, worn out head shots, lost memories, forgotten promises, a willingness not only to sell ones soul but to photograph the garage sale.

But the heart. The heart of the city. I'm not sure what it is. Joan Didion says it's in the piano bars of the old hotels. But I've lived here for five years, and never found myself understanding LA in a piano bar. Perhaps in the nature. Although yesterday when my girlfriend and I went on a hike, we heard more cell phone chatter, than birdsong. One girl in particular striding past us, said into her phone : the truth is sexy.

So I'm in search here. For the heart of this city. Underneath the desire for validation (parking, and other) the need to be the hottest in the room, the funniest, the most fuckable, the highest paid, the most evolved, where is the heart? There's gotta be more heart in this city than the red blink of my blackberry. So I'm gonna look- and I'm gonna record- what I see- what I recognize as truth in this city.

Someone else said that truth is beauty. But if it is sexy. Then bring it on. I want to find what is true beautiful and sexy about this city. I know it's here. I can feel it, underneath the blink of my blackberry, the laugh of my best friend, the daily reach of the forever ambitious, the breath of the surfer, the insecurity of the class clown. I hear something. I think it's a heart. I hope so.