serious bread

It’s a sunny morning on Sunset and I’m not back in the Casbah. My erstwhile favourite café in Los Angeles has closed its doors to me, with news of a $10 minimum charge for using their internet connection. As a result I am a couple of blocks down the road, sipping a latte – confusingly, to be ordered only with its second syllable stressed – outdoors at Insignificance.

Insignificance is totally dedicated to an alliance between coffee and Macintosh computers. They have worked tirelessly to create an environment where they can exist in perfect symbiosis. As I order my strangely-stressed hit of caffeine, the self-styled ‘Coffee Facilitator’ with the porkpie hat starts juggling the milk and I notice behind him a line of people at the counter, eyes down, tapping away at silver Macbook Pros. Each one identical, all new models. The computers look the same too.

I’m lucky to get a seat at a table between two guys reviewing a script (on another Macbook Pro) and a threesome gathered around a book entitled ‘Hypnobirthday’. It’s about a new childbirth technique, and they’re discussing when the new mother’s going to be ‘put under’. After her waters have broken, or for an extended period of time before this – days or even weeks.

I spot a pigeon strutting around the table in front of me, looking like it owns the joint. I swear I saw it pecking away on a small laptop earlier. Hidden in the shade of the potted palm trees.

A girl is asked to move, downgraded to the corner seat because she’s punching poetry into a last year’s white Macbook. After the ‘Table Co-ordinator’ finishes dealing with her, I fear I could be next. I have a 2008 computer, and it’s squarer and clunkier than all the rest, with it’s tell-tale silver keys. I love this computer, but right now it’s the Model T Ford of this particular parking lot.

The Table Co-ordinator knows I have nabbed a good seat and is worried about the age of my laptop. He greets me with a banality. Luckily my accent, age and profession provide my usual LA passport to celebrity (for which, see previous adventures).

I may know U2. I may even be a member of U2. I may or may not be a friend of John Fluevog. I sit tight.

The table in front of me looks strangely barren, until I notice that the two musclebound beach boys looking down have iPads neatly folded in front of them, reading the papers online. London is burning in real time in small articles on American front pages. People are getting arrested and killed at a rate seems positively prehistoric for the Los Angelean. The main home news story seems to be graphs falling at vertiginous gradients. Money wins out over violence every time.

The couple next  to me who are reviewing a script, start acting it out. “That’s not sexist, it’s sexy” one screams in a sitcom voice. “Nothing wrong with sexy” replies his friend, straying into Spinal Tap territory. They discuss the finer points of the dialogue, “He could say ‘I am OK with the idea, after all - oh my - you inspired it!’ Whaddayathink?” “‘Oh my’ or ‘oh well’?” “‘Oh well’ - that’s awesome. Then Turner goes back to surgery. I like that. I can feel…” (in a falsetto voice) “…serious bread.”

I’m in the open air but under a terracotta awning. Outside in the sun, to my right, a kid is working with strings of green numbers on a black background – like on the first word processors. Perhaps this is the guy who has caused those graphs to tumble down newspaper front pages. From the level of his concentration he looks like he’s hacking into the World Bank while munching a pomegranate, peach and avocado muffin.

                                                               *

I’ve just arrived from Maggie’s Café, where I promised myself I would just have breakfast, read the LA Times, and take in the sunny morning. Not worry about tour receipts and writing and dates and schedules. I’d phone my American friends, because that’s what I do in America. We talk for very pleasant short periods of time while ducking and diving through schedules (East Coast friends) and for long periods of time with pauses and many ‘Riiiiggghhhht’s (West Coast friends and Rad, who is actually officially coastless in the sense that he’s on permanent cruise control).

The tour soundtrack is on the Maggie’s Café stereo system – the “we could have had it all” Adele song, the Katy Perry one about Friday Night where nothing much seems to happen, and the Eminem song where he sounds so tight and frustrated. OK, I realise that’s not narrowing it down a whole lot. You know the one where even he has become so bored with that same tone of voice he always uses, that he’s roped in a chick singer to lighten things up with a bit of an actual melody.

So I’m at Maggie’s and, as is usual on my LA visits, inspired to write poetry. Also as is usual I have forgotten my black book dedicated to writing poetry in. I start searching my bag for hotel notepads. That’s where most of my poems end up being written. Songs, on the other hand, often start on the back of car hire rental agreements. That’s where a whole lot of fine-print real-estate is waiting for a  Sharpie’s scribblings to turn it into a manuscript.

I send a text message here, I receive an sms there. The morning’s going well. The friend I am staying with has a reality TV series crew round for the morning and I have promised to leave them alone.

As noted, I promised myself to have breakfast, read the LA Times, and take in the sunny morning. I’ve even filled a hotel notepad and some of an Avis rental agreement with a poem and a song. I’ve done all these things but I’m looking for a little human contact.

There’s a bearded 30-something year old guy at the table to my left. When I can’t find the sugar on my table I lean over to him and ask if I can borrow his. As he reaches it over I spot mine hidden behind an enormous napkin dispenser and apologise. “Mine’s better, anyway” he laughs. I’d noticed Chris (for it is he) is half-way through what in Scotland would be called “an enorrrr-mouse booowl a porridg’“ and he’s eating it with strips of fried orange bacon. The bacon has been artificially coloured and crushed by a James Bond villain to become a new substance, unrecognisable as meat.

Chris and I strike up a friendship, bonding over a combination of oatmeal and memoir. He tells me that’s what he’s writing. I say I think he looks a little young to be looking back over his life and he explains that ‘memoir’ doesn’t necessarily mean that anymore. Apparently it’s being used by young people to take ownership of whatever story it is that they are telling. Almost to simply express that it’s not a novel – a memoir has authenticity as the writer’s own story.

It’s the “is this the real thing” question I often come up against in Los Angeles. Like when I was sitting in my friend’s garden under the shade of  a tree which was growing oranges, lemons and limes from the same branches. And the fruit was undoubtedly real.

I’m thinking perhaps I was wrong to write “This is not a memoir” in the press release for ‘21st Century Troubadour’. For me, the word reeks of retired politicians - that and rock books half-written by drummers or rhythm guitarists telling everyone how the crowd went wild at their every show, the audience gave back amazing energy and - if I remember correctly - the drummer pounded out the beat for hours as if his life depended on it.

I ask Chris what his book is about. He won’t tell me - a good answer. Write the memoir, don’t spend the time telling everyone about it so many times that (a) you get bored of the stories and (b) there’s no time for the actual writing.

We talk back and forwards about books and films. Malibu (where he has come from), Ireland (where he has visited), cars (he has an old Porsche) and Justin Bieber. I should  qualify that last one.

Justin Bieber. You see, I’ve just arrived from Canada, and Air Canada has a highly effective Justin Bieber policy. Even if the flight looks like it’s on time as you’re boarding, as soon as the doors are closed they lock the plane down, keeping it on the runway for up to two hours with the air-conditioning off, so as they can force you to watch the Justin Bieber movie. There’s simply no escape from the precocious Ontarian wunderkind.

In another country this kind of behaviour would be regarded as direct contravention of the Geneva Convention of Human Rights. To lock people up without food or drink in an airless Bieber-filled environment would surely be actionable in the Hague Court of International Justice. Bringing charges of ‘Severe Aural Abuse’ could be another angle in a court of law.

In addition to mental torture, the physical pain I endure in the endless wait for the Justin Bieber movie to end - cramped conditions, no natural light, endless choruses of repeated banalities - is only exaggerated by the exhausting routine of the Biebs himself. He’s constantly dancing, exercising, playing basketball, warming-up, singing, signing (autographs) and always always talking and goofing for the camera.

About five hours into the movie there’s a let-up when JB loses his voice. Since it provides the only real drama of the whole marathon experience, I suspect it’s a set-up. Especially when, two days after wrecking his voice in a Mylie Cyrus sex-free love-duet, he is ordered to stop talking by his voice coach and pumped full of vitamins by a man in a white coat. These two offsiders say things like “You simply can’t talk for 24 hours. Period.” in a stern voice and, “Those two strips of flesh are what your entire career depends on right now. Your vocal chords are a sacred place.”

The drama is worthy of ‘Masterchef’. It’s that intense. Wondering whether JB’s voice will recover in time for the Madison Square Garden concert or not is the equivalent of the ‘Waiting For The Judges’ Verdict’ bit in ‘Whatever Your Country Happens To Be’s Got Talent’ or ‘Wherever You Live Idol’. It’s as nerve-wracking as wondering whether the soufflé will rise or not, or if Nigella’s hubby will go down and nick all the goodies in the fridge before the Kitchen Love Goddess sticks her finger into a Chocolate Surprise and breathes “Yummy!” into the camera.

Twelve hours later - the movie is shot in realtime, obeying the Aristotelian principles of time and place, ie it’s all set either in a characterless venue or a tour bus and takes as much time to happen as the events it portrays - the Bieb-boy takes the stage to wild applause and serious pre-teen screaming. He sings flawlessly, as if aided by forces beyond all human ken.

In Maggie’s, someone at the next table past Chris is reading last month’s MOJO magazine with Paul McCartney on the front cover. I ask if I can look through it. It’s weird to read lists of Ghosts of English Tour Dates Past. Although, not as weird as the ‘50 Reasons To Like Macca’ pull-out section. Why? Well - it’s a bit obvious, innit?

Because he’s fab. Always will be.

Chris tells me how to get into the closed section of the Malibu Colony. I tell him I’ve been to Ojai (a hippy town the same distance out of LA as Malibu, filled with aromatherapists and a place called the ‘Psychic Boutique’). I tell Chris I have written a book but since I know I have made a new friend I refuse to tell him what it’s about. Instead we talk about the number of words on a page. I think ‘21st Century Troubadour’ has 90,000 on 300 pages.

That’s a whole lotta words, as someone without much imagination might say. I can’t help it. It’s a whole lotta words.

I’d like to put the book out so that you could read it on one of those ‘e-reader’ devices (you could read it though I couldn’t – my eyesight isn’t good enough any more). You see there’s no way I can carry around enough copies of the book on tour. Every time I leave I fill up The Bag with them. They disappear just as quickly, the first few days I’m on the road. Always.

I remember that a slim volume awaits me, on my return to Australia. I haven’t told anyone about it yet, but I’ll have it on Thursday. Perhaps it’ll find its way into The Bag and stay there for a little longer.

                                                               *

Back in Insignificance, a man walks in with a four-day-old puppy, the cutest thng you’ve every seen. He’s grey-haired and stubbly. Looking OK in a T-shirt and Converses, like an older G. Clooney he is giving guys like me hope, but the real centre of attention if the four day old puppy. Did I say it was the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? Cuter than Prince in the video for the song that’s just playing. Cuter even than the baby labrador chewing on a Macbook power adaptor under the poet girl’s table. Cuter still than the girl with the hat at the coffee counter. Not cuter than the French girl with the stripey top who walks past now and then clearing tables outside the next-door restaurant. The one where Daniel Lanois and Patti Smith played an acoustic fundraiser last month. If you bought a ticket you had dinner with them. Heavy-framed glasses were a prerequisite at that table, I don’t know how I can tell. I just can.

This morning, Raybans are back in in LA. Goodbye Aviators, Arrivederci Mirrored Wraparounds, Farewell to the Face-Eater. Open those drawers and see if you can fund that old chunky pair of ‘Highway 61’ style face furniture.

The table on my left breaks out singing in a chorus of “Hypnobirthday to you” and the four-day-old puppy walks past with the grey-haired man. The hypofans dissolve into jelly screaming as if possessed “he’s sooooo cuuuute”.

A guy has just sat down beside me with an equally old Mac laptop. It’s clunky and the keys are covered in grey grime. I am willing to bet that the screen carries the imprint of the keyboard. He’s on Craig’s List looking for a place to live, like everyone else in this café. Chris told me earlier that a one-bedroom place costs $1600 per month. That’s better value that $1600 per moth, which is what I originally typed. Those lepidopterae sure earn the big bucks for all that window-banging.

This afternoon I’m going to break into Malibu colony, mentioning my new friend’s name. Then I’ll finish the song I started on the Avis rental agreement and search pet shops for as cute a puppy as the four-day-old puppy whoe grey-haired owner has just left Insignficance.

He’s smiling (the cute puppy) and panting (the grey-haired owner, who’s just experienced more chick affection by puppy proxy than I’ve ever seen anywhere).

Serious bread indeed.