I’m here in Los Angeles on business this week which is why, despite myriad story ideas on every odd angled street, I can’t seem to stop for long enough to write for fear of missing out on something. Talk about sensory overload. Popular culture, fabulous restaurants, and chic clothing shops smack into the numerous homeless people living on the streets, in the parks and under the bridges. All while Writers Guild of America workers strike on long studio blocks, themselves wondering how long they can hold out in their career before joining those who live outside their door.
These WGA workers feed the machine we call tinsel town, and are now charged fighting warriors in jeans and t-shirts circling in front of the mammoth studios for which they generally work. Los Angeles and the entertainment industry is bleeding in a way. The very workers who help provide the entertainment and information that is now being distributed via the internet in various new media formats, are in jeopardy. The overlords don’t really want to pay what the WGA workers want for that extra contribution to the infomania provided by the internet; so goes the game. But it’s one that sheds light on a city that so depends on these talented characters who contribute richly to a town that really delivers.
The workplace of a writer might be their den, bedroom or a cubicle or desk at a large studio. Perhaps a more solitary existence, but it still beckons attention for better worklife balance and respect. These folks don’t have to go very far to find material, it’s right outside their door, but the inward journey of writing – that is a craft that takes time, talent, and a keen awareness of what is happening around ones self and, as mentioned, tinsel town provides a lot of fodder. I was reminded of that in just one day. Yesterday.
In one day I fed the homeless on the streets with some friends in downtown LA, enjoyed the lyrical voice of author Judith Freeman who read from her latest novel, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved at Skylight Books in Los Feliz, and went for a screening of American Gangster at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with some friends of mine, who themselves along with friends are also impacted by the strike.
The film was a brilliant cascade of dark times in our nation’s history. The war in Vietnam, rampant police corruption because of an infusion of drugs and the soul and voice of Martin Luther King coming through even beyond the grave as others carried on commentary about the social injustices of that time. Those who had been voiceless were speaking and sometimes even being heard. The chaos of the times along with the protests triggered a leap in consciousness to a degree.
We are now challenged by different circumstances. Individuals at work and entrepreneurs alike spar with sensory overload, lack of appreciation, a tumultuous financial market, and a bubbling housing market. Change is a coming. The WGA strike is just a symptom of a much larger issue at hand; the need to awaken beyond the relentless production and dissemination of information – to the value of the human beings who create it.
