Los Angeles LightsCities are subjective pieces of art; from Rome to Bangkok to Los Angeles about which this essay is about.
Los Angeles is famous for smog, for hippie trends and movie stars. It is a city built on light, electricity, even a fervor of human inhabitants all hopeful. Thus, light in L.A.
is an inescapable force and for me, in my subjective capacity for interpreting such a force I believe the lights in L.A. stand for hope.Electricity is the testament of the genius of man and inside these yellow orbs are the continuation of one man’s genius, of one man’s destiny fulfilled and in their glow, luminous L.
A. rises a city full of inhabitants who each want to make their own glow, fulfill their own destiny.Although people say that New York is the city that never sleeps, L.A.
didn’t just get its smog from a few lights burning but from thousands going and being turned on constantly. The light in the window is a beacon that tells passer-bys that the person inside that window, that house or apartment is working on something, some business, writing, personal affairs for which they need electricity in order to accomplish and be done with it. Thus, lights in a window are a symbol of a person’s personal energy going strong into the night.Another way that the lights are so typically and fundamentally about hope in Los Angeles is because stardom is associated with lights.
The expression that came about ‘See your name in lights’ was coined in Hollywood’s beginning in the 1930’s and 1940’s when the expression made reference to giant marques on the main drag of Hollywood (close to L.A.) where a person knew they were famous because their names were so big and made into lights. Thus, light is a catalyst, a transformative device that is a measure of when a person has fulfilled their destiny – when they see their name in lights.
Lights are beacons and in this metaphor Los Angles is a light house. A beacon in America that tells people, not to watch out for rocks, but attracts them like bugs. A little rough metaphor but nonetheless true for its oddness. From all night diners which L.
A. is famous for, to clubs that don’t at night to that window which has previously been mentioned and tended to; L.A. is a place where no one sleeps and America can tell that no one sleeps there because of how bright it is in L.
A.When a plan gets ready to land in L.A. during the nighttime (at least in my experience) all the passenger can see far into the horizon of the city is lights.
Moving lights from cars going somewhere at night, to the stationary lights of houses and the lights that are on in business buildings or skyscrapers telling the plane that this city is moving, in a constant fervor of energy and even the runway lights dance in the same fashion as if to say ‘You’re here, you’re here, you’re finally here’ and therein lies the excitement. The lights are a welcoming just as people used to place candles in windows in order for soldier’s to make is home safely, just like these stationary and moving lights are on in constant testament to how Los Angeles is a city constantly processing some new idea that is akin to electricity but definitely needs electricity in order finish its work.Thus, for me electricity in Los Angeles is a beacon of hope, of a way the entire nation and the world knows that people living in L.A.
are hard at work trying to find their own genius at night.
