Parsing Romance from Reality
In the early part of 1990, my architectural office dispatched me to Los Angeles to help our new branch office get started. I carefully carried computer disks I would load onto the personal computers through airport security. Newly divorced, I was very open and uncertain, about everything. I stayed at my boss’s house in Glendale, but I had a rental car, and a car meant freedom! It meant the keys to a city I didn’t know, but whose cultural relevance hit me at every turn. “Ventura Highway in the sun …” It wasn’t the movies, the American dream machine, that thrilled me. I knew very little about studios or stars. It was really music, the fact of Laurel Canyon, the Troubador, the songwriters who gathered to write, sing and record together. It was also street names, places that conjured up long-held associations: Sunset, or Hollywood and Vine. There was no GPS, but I had a map! When I wasn’t working, I was footloose. What was to become of me? What was I doing? From my journal: “March 15: I...
