[Landline] You Next
Catastrophes, and how to be of use
1. YOU NEXT
From a text conversation a few days ago with my writer friend Gabe Soria, a fellow ex-Angeleno who now lives in New Orleans:
I keep thinking of a phrase which appears in a lot of New Orleans folk culture: You Next. It’s particularly used by the Bone Gangs during Mardi Gras as a motto to remind us all that mortality comes for everybody, so live while you can. But today it feels like a particularly dark omen.
2. PAYING ATTENTION
I was having a conversation in a Tucson coffeehouse this past Sunday and was stunned to realize that many people are assuming that the ongoing fire catastrophe in the Los Angeles area is basically about the Palisades — that ok yeah it’s awful, but it’s basically about the wealthy, celebrities, entitled kids — people who can afford it, people who had it coming, etc.
There is an element of that. But there’s much, much more than that going on in L.A. right now, beyond the Palisades fire. What is happening is very serious and very sad, and it is affecting family, friends and neighborhoods I know. There is tremendous loss, confusion, fear, anxiety and distress. The Gofundme appeals we’re all seeing are just the tip of what is happening.
Peter Vermeren, among other things, owns and operates Coco’s Variety, a vintage bicycle sales and repair shop in the Frogtown neighborhood of L.A’s Atwater Village area where I lived from 1998-2008. Here’s a short video Peter posted on instagram five days ago — offering a sober, informed and very moving perspective on what was happening:
3. DUFFEL BAGS, XL CLOTHES, STORAGE SPACE
People in L.A. who have lost their homes, or who have been evacuated and don’t know when they will be able to return, are suddenly living like nomads, all certainties of life gone.
Here’s a short video Peter posted yesterday about what he’s learned in the last few days in working to help people, and what gets them stoked:
We need to pay attention to this, and we need to help, if/as we can. Because it’s the right thing to do, period.
And also, yes, we need to pay attention because there are things to learn here about how to help when this happens where you live: values to emulate, factors to keep in mind.
4. LAMENT
Posted last night by Mark Lightcap of the L.A. band Acetone:
Back home to a smokey house after a week of evacuation, counting our blessings, but still unable to grok the magnitude of this disaster that continues to unfold. Steve and I got together last night to prepare for this Acetone show in San Francisco that's happening next Friday, despite the fact that the world has been turned upside down here in the place we live. This was the first sound we made before "getting down to business"; it felt like a lament, so I wanted to share it. Video is some random footage I shot on my phone in one of the canyons deep in the zone of incineration, never taken for granted. Please enjoy, and carpe diem.
More soon,
Jay
Love "You Next." Something along those lines has been my comment when I hear the typical ghouls opining ignorantly and hatefully about this situation. Yuk it up asshole. Mother nature bats last. You aren't getting out of anything.
Thanks for the reminders. The human brain, emerging through Western thought and capitalist self-centeredness and all its addictive false binaries have many wanting to get back to "reality" asap af after something societal challenges them. It's like, without knowing it, we created this big dumb clumsy form of some sorta shorthand "a priori" that exposes how forgetful we are... and then we forget our forgetfulness. We can use the fires to get closer to the ground of our being or we can turn it into a tragedy story and get back to our feeds... I guess I think we should do both. I always love your shares Jay. Thanks.