Definitions HQ

Los Angeles (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠a city whereby the city burning is its deepest image of itself.

Los Angeles (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠a moral dead end, where the underlying values of industrial capitalism hard work, thrift, diligence, and delayed gratification have given way to the hedonism and narcissism of twentieth-century consumer capitalism.

Los Angeles (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠where a good part of any day is spent driving, alone, through streets devoid of meaning to the driver, which is one reason the place exhilarates some people, and floods others with an amorphous unease.

Los Angeles (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠where the freeway experience is the only secular communion its people have. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can 'drive' on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, but actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.

Los Angeles (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠a place in whose local imagination the Santa Ana winds figure radically. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

Los Angeles (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠where the weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and the violence and the unpredictability of the santa ana affect the entire quality of life in los angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.