Here’s the thing about paradise during the apocalypse: it makes me feel like an asshole for even having the thought that I might be suffering.
The Westside’s giving you everything, that relentless California sunshine hammering down like some kind of cosmic joke, the Pacific doing its eternal churn six blocks away, and I’m sitting there in my Craftsman Bungalow with the peeling paint and the landlord who hasn’t fixed anything since 1987 (me BTW) , wondering if this is enlightenment or just another form of solitary confinement with better production values.
Every morning the surfers are out there, these wetsuited prophets bobbing in the lineup like they’ve figured out something the rest of you missed. Maybe they have. Maybe the answer to everything was always just paddling out past the break, waiting for the next set, keeping my distance because that’s what the water demands anyway. Social distancing as spiritual practice. The ocean’s been teaching that lesson forever, respect the space, read the current, don’t be a kook.
The music’s different now. I’m spinning records alone, or streaming some DJ set from Berlin or Brooklyn or wherever, and everyone’s in their own little bunker doing the same thing, this weird synchronized isolation where we’re all listening but nobody’s dancing together. It’s like punk rock without the pit, like rock and roll without the sweaty communion of bodies pressed against the stage. All the transcendence, none of the transmission.
And the weather, Christ, the weather won’t quit. Day after day of this Chamber of Commerce perfection while the world’s falling apart elsewhere. Lindsey, Sharka and I take our socially-distanced walk through the neighborhood, past the bungalows and the overgrown gardens, and everywhere there’s this cognitive dissonance between the golden light and the dread in your gut.
Paradise has always been suspect. Paradise with nowhere to go, nobody to see, nothing but time and beauty and anxiety? That’s a special kind of purgatory the brochures never mentioned.