LA is a lifestyle

[itsallovernow]

Yesterday was really the epitome of life in Los Angeles. My company let us go home at 2:00 p.m. because the marches and demonstrations were taking place on the major street where my office is housed and many of the surrounding streets were closed to traffic as a result. It's weirdly ironic because I can guarantee you that no one who went home early in my office lost money, nor do I think it likely that they attended the demonstrations. We were mostly worried about our commutes, not about the plight of immigrants - illegal or not and while I have definite thoughts on the issue (and given my commie pinko ways, those thoughts are likely not much of a surprise), mostly I was glad to get to go home and nap and exercise.

I walked up the hill to Wattles park, which is this beautiful weird little park in my neighborhood at the top of a hill. It has a Buddhist shrine at the top, and these lovely Greco-Roman columns and it was just a beautiful day to hike up there and look over the city.

I came home, and then went to another LA institution - Spaceland - with some friends, feeling vaguely too old for the scene but it's a great place to see bands, a little seedy, a little trashy with fantastic acoustics and all these girls dressed up not in the Hollywood cleavage and Disel jean ensemble, but in the '80s punk girl wear which has strangely never gone out of style. The first band was really fun, a key board and a drum that lit up and an iBook, like being in a video game with a hell of a backbeat and some extra cool riffs. The next band, Army/Navy was a lot of fun, sort of a Weezerish sort of pop band, until their bassist broke a string and they lost their momentum and started fumbling around, asking the audience if anyone had a bass string. I was annoyed at the lack of professionalism, at the fact that they couldn't just figure out a solution, kept waiting for someone to solve the problem for them and we left soon after.

I had one of those pivotal moments in writing yesterday, not so much in content as in, "Wow, my ficcy audience is pretty much gone, but this is a story I'm still trying to tell, is one that I've been telling for the past three years, and here's it's ending, audience or not." We say we don't write for an audience, but that's not exactly true. Art is action and interaction and while the impetus is perhaps not driven by the need to have a response, the work itself isn't art if it exists in a vaccuum, exists solely in the writer's head and paper, kept in a drawer. It feeds on itself, just as skill and story feed on themselves. Resonse drives momentum drives production. I write more when I'm writing and I tend to write when I have an audience, but it's not that easy, not that simple, and we do ultimate write to fullfill that personal inner drive, and I love when writing strokes you back, when you get to a point with an idea and realize that it's part of something larger in the context of what you've been writing. I've written all of these stories that were basically stories about sex throughout season 2, and they shaped each other, and built upon each other, and I find, now, I know where they're supposed to end, what will tie them tight and allow them to shift into the next set of stories. (Not stories I'll write, but the next place the 'authentic' text has to tell). And I find, audience or not, that's exciting. I've missed that feeling, and I'm pleased to have teased it back out - however unexpectedly. I love the original stuff I'm working on, want to work on, but I've spent a lot of time writing fic in the FS universe, shaping that world in a textual way, and I'm pleased that it has formed into something that, for me, will end up being a whole story.

And finally, some link drops. vonnie_k is looking for someone to write Veronica Mars apocafic. Go help a girl out!

isabellesmuse wrote me a truly excellent post Suns and Lovers sex and death drabble here.

And annakarrennina has been producing some lovely work, both at farscapefriday and at her own LJ.

And speaking of which, this week's farscapefriday challenge is to write something based upon one of the poems of Catullus! C'mon, you know you wanna!

Three more days until sign-ups close for Thelma and Louise Do Outer Space. C'mon down and sign up. It'll be fun! I promise.

Comments

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

i love what you've said here about writing. the sense that you can build layers of ideas, imagery and characters that produce a sense of connection, and a "whole story" feels vital.

and yesterday sounds a bit surreal - - here we might have been a bit more insulated from some of that being not such a big city. but that might have also been due to the computer problems we were having. ;)

[filmg33k.livejournal.com]

Yesterday was amazing. I was trapped south of Wilshire, and couldn't get home without going a ridiculous amount out of the way to get north of Wilshire, and even then, it took ages as there were streams of people and cars. I would have been better off taking the 10 and 101 home. As it was, it took me about 2 hours, what normally takes me 45 minutes.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Oy! I totally thought of you after they let us go home! That's so unfortunate!

[kernezelda]

I don't think your ficcy audience has gone away, so much as you've matured in what you need from an audience; exchanging quantity for quality or just a different kind of feedback, perhaps. You attract new readers with the power and grace of your writing, both fanfic and original. I've certainly found your LA Story to be fascinating, little though I may say. Unlike FS, which is familiar to me as it is to you, your world is far more alien.

When you say you are reaching an end of a set of stories, can you talk about that a little more? What is the whole story you see yourself writing that feeds back into the textual stories? For me, I can't envision such, because that story has already been told, and only the future remains open to us, unless canon is laid aside in favor of - *g* - unrealized realities.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

What is the whole story you see yourself writing that feeds back into the textual stories?

When I wrote the first Trading Card Porn story, it was a joke, a riff with Cranky and FBF, and some smut for Searose. And then it grew and grew, kept going, more stories, all the same themes and yet I parsed and parceled them out, trying to stay true to the times and moments, keeping the continuity from one to the next, even if it was only in moments and comfort and positions.

I've hit most of the episodes (aside from ep continunations that were done better than I could), and now I find myself at the end of that arc, at the end of the unspoken sexual relationship because I've gotten to LGM pt.1, and for years couldn't work sex into that moment, then recently figured out how to make it work, and when that's done, the real text, the show itself picks up the thread and tells it's own story that the TCP stuff has no place in.

So for me, unconsciously, I created a series of stories for myself with a beginning (Lavandaria) and an ending (this current piece).

It isn't telling a new story, only the thready subtext of the "real" story, but it's been my journey too, and I find myself proud, at the end, that it was a journey and a process, however unintentionally started;)