Ry Cooder's LA

Ry Cooder’s story set in Los Angeles carried tremendous imagery. The narrator of the story goes from place to place on the long-lost Red Car of LA, which must have travelled at the same speeds as the trolleys in San Francisco, (so not very fast). Yet I imagine that for the die-hard, pompous narrator, they were like the LA freeways of today. The link between red cars and freeways brought to mind the experience of being in Los Angeles. Experiencing the city is another way of saying, “driving,” and in every single one of these drives, you feel that distances don’t matter. It’s the traffic and the speed, with everything about LA from the shabby colors, the flat buildings, and the dirty atmosphere (i.e. everything that makes it the best damn place) is in constant motion. I thought, “what would it be like to move through LA in a fast but not-so-fast speed, not having to worry about hitting other cars or pedestrians?” You’d see the colors move into one another even if the lines of the buildings do in fact register. And you’d be smiling the whole ride.