Change your perspective and you change your story

on creating cities inside of you + a short story

Visuals by Emery Gluck

I had an interesting thought the other day. It was a thought I’ve had before, yet this time , a new perspective on it appeared.

“I’d be so much happier if I lived in another city. A metropolis like New York or London, where I could walk and experience life, and all the people would feel so much more connected.”— I thought to myself.

Now, let me add, I love living in Los Angeles. There are just some key things about it I’d like to change. Mainly being, I wish it was more pedestrian friendly. That there was more ease in reliable and safe public transit that connected the far corners of this sprawling place. The city can often feel sleepy and disconnected with people retreating into their cars and back into their homes. There is creative energy here but it’s happening in hidden corners. It’s happening in people’s homes. To which it then finally bursts out for the world to see.

But, in cities that have ample public transit, that are bustling metropolis’, it feels like people’s ideas spill out into the streets. The energy is palpable, charged, and flowing. It feels like you can tap into the creative charge of humanity so much easier. And it doesn’t feel like you lose that connection to energy. Plus, an aimless day in New York City can easily turn into an immaculate adventure. It’s harder to say the same in LA, though it is doable.

So, as I had this fizzing of thoughts, a counter-voice popped into my head.

“You don’t dislike Los Angeles. You dislike the way you act here. You dislike how you act sleepy. You dislike how you disconnect yourself.”

And it dawned on me. It wasn’t LA that bothered me, it was myself.

Whenever I’m in a new bustling city, I am my most excited self. Running in the streets, inquisitive, glimmering. Yet, when I come back home, where all of my routines and obligations lie, I am my most regimented self. My least imaginative self. I believe less in the possibility of things.

This has obviously been discussed before. Who we are on “vacation” differs from who we are in our daily lives. But this feels deeper, why can’t these two selves fuse?

Can I create a new experience of Los Angeles by just shifting my behavior within it? Creating an endless city inside of me that runs like a power source and blending it with the energy field in LA?

In a way, that’s what I want to do here, with Electric Blue. I want to create this sparking, flowing energy field. This feeling like you're running through a city and life is beautiful and heartbreaking and mind-boggling and existential but you feel so, so connected to it. And through that connection you have hope. You believe in things. You feel there is a way forward. I want, through my words and my experiences and the people I interview here, to give you that spirit of life jolting through you.

I’m tired of running away from things. I’m tired of thinking a new city, a new job, or a new person in my life will save me. I’d rather do the saving myself. It’s not that I need New York City, I just need to tap into the person I am while I’m there. Which in essence is a person who is vibrantly alive and connected.

I think different cities come with different contracts. It’s not that energy doesn’t live in Los Angeles, it just needs to be activated. Places, like New York, where energy is running rampant, have a different set of contracts. You have to take more care for yourself and build up some kind of armor for you to truly enjoy all the energies offered. New York is there for you to sample the energies of humankind. For you to understand how to refine the specifics of yours.

In Los Angeles, since it’s so much more spread out, it invites a different relationship with energy. Here, you feel exposed. But, your energy has room. Your energy has space. Your energy can be magnetic. What can you do with this energetic space?

I believe space gives you the option of creating a specific, isolated, frequency of energy. It might not be like in New York, where ideas are sticky and may easily attach themselves onto people. It’s just that here, you have to pose your energy like an invitation. Like shining a light — to then have people follow it. Where they can then traverse into a new subset of reality through your energy field. An alternate dimension projected by you. What’s different in Los Angeles is you can really create a world.

This transcends out to cities outside of Los Angeles as well.

As I’m working on my book, a work of fiction, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to create a story. I’ve even been breaking down the idea of what even is a story? Why does a story need to get told? Why do you follow some stories and others you leave behind? And why — why do you become the one chosen to deliver a story?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. Sometimes it’s nice to just ask them. Sometimes questions don’t need answers. Because even the asking gives itself some kind of answer, some kind of respite.

An opening, you could say, into a new world.

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For paid subscribers, I have a short story for you:

I visited one of my artist friends, Evelyn Hernández, to observe and write about one of her pieces. I am consistently so touched by the art she creates, yet this piece of hers felt somewhat dire. It called to me as if I was pulled by a string. So yesterday, I found myself in her apartment, with her lovely dog Mookie, and saw what words flew out when my pen hit the page.

Below you can read the words.

They came in the form of a story.

But first, here is the artwork.