Rick Moody at Salamgundi:
1. The day on which we embarked to see Joni Mitchell play the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles (“we” defined as myself, my wife Laurel Nakadate, and our son Theo), having flown west from Boston, was the date of my own parents’ wedding anniversary, namely, October 19.
2. My parents had been divorced since, I think, 1971, or 53 years, on the occasion of the concert. I still think of them on October 19.
3. Is not divorce, any divorce, on the list of “petty wars” that the Joni Mitchell narrator of “Traveller (Hejira)” describes in that bit of song ravishment? (I’m using the demo/early version here.)
4. There are things I find keenly uncomfortable about Los Angeles. I like to walk, but L.A., because of its scale, requires a lot of driving. A constancy of highway transit, yes. A city of travelers.
more here.
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