Los Angeles and California: Hiraeth and Hope
Anyone who knows me will have garnered that my ex-husband was not my first love, perhaps not even my greatest love, which was (and is…) Los Angeles. It has not been an easy relationship, one with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and getting dumped by LA circa 1999 was one of the worst things to happen to me, sending me back home to London with my tail between my legs, bereft. But, following my heart much moreso than my head (just as I have done with my ex-husband, undoubtedly), I kept coming back for more, unable to scratch the perpetual itch of possibility and of opportunity that is the City of Angels.
I was eight years old when I first visited LA and decided it should be my home. Or perhaps I decided it had and always would be my home, yesterday, today and tomorrow, whether I lived there or not. The Celtic word hiraeth describes a feeling of nostalgia for something or somewhere that may or may not have ever really existed, a yearning and longing for a place. When I think of LA, I experience palpable yearning and longing, a wistful desire tinged with sadness: hiraeth.
Los Angeles and California are dreamy places of promise and potential. Whether those promises materialise is another question entirely, but sometimes, for some people, the promise is enough. It is a uniquely human power to imagine a better future for ourselves, to make a sacrifice today in the hope it pays off tomorrow, the concept upon which almost all California’s industries have relied, whether it is the gold-diggers of ’49 relocating with all their worldly wares to the North of the State, or the health-seekers of the 1880s believing in the benefits of the dry air and citrus fruits of the South (and those of the 2020s who make a regular pilgrimage to the healing grotto of GOOP), or the actors and directors and screenwriters who continue to search for their fortune in the movies. Each of these immigrants to the 31st state - the gold-digger, the health-seeker and the filmmaker - has bought himself a lottery ticket, wishing for wealth, or health, or fame, and sometimes it is enough for him to keep that ticket in the back pocket of his jeans, unchecked, still holding the possibility of huge winnings (the Schrodinger’s cat of California’s good fortune). Indeed, the motto of the State of California is “Eureka!” I have found it. Or, possibly, it has found me. The investments in the gold mine, the remedies, the acting classes and the lottery ticket have paid off and the dream has become a reality. “Eureka!” is the word on the tips of the tongues of the Californians.
And so when I think of LA and of California, the Angelenos and Californians, and I experience hiraeth, I think the residual feeling is one of hope. And it is not easy to feel hopeful in 2025, not with genocidal wars being fought across our world and unscrupulous politicians upending democratic principles and unreliable media that seeks to polarise opinions and obscure truths. Hope is a rare bird, indeed, and I have found it in abundance in the palm trees of LA. Or I did. Once.
The images of the wildfires scarring the West Coast idylls of Malibu and the Pacific Palisades, landscapes with which we are familiar from a plethora of films and shows, are unbelievable. I want to disbelieve them, to pretend they are from yet another disaster movie with an underdeveloped script and scenery-chewing performances, but that is not the case. The media describes the charred scenes in evacuation areas as “like war zones” and “apocalyptic”. Most of us are lucky enough not to have been a first person witness to a war zone, but we have a sense of them from images shared on our screens, and none of us has witnessed an apocalypse, but we dip into our cinematic memories for a reference to MAD MAX, or ESCAPE FROM LA or THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, and the mind plays tricks on us: is this believable? Could this possibly be real? Alas, it is real. This is not a movie. Thousands of homes have been lost. Thousands of lives are forever changed. Thousands of families will be losing hope.
If LA is hope, which it has been for me, then the feeling I have had over the last few days is one of hopelessness, and I do not like it. I do not like it one bit. If I continue to associate the great state of California with hopelessness, then the mountain is only rich in clay, the prognosis is grim and survival unlikely, the castings are unsuccessful and the lottery ticket is void. Just like in the movies when we suspend our disbelief, I am going to suspend my hopelessness, intentionally and actively, and invest in hope for LA and for California. I am going to buy my lottery ticket and start to imagine a better future for all Angelenos and Californians, for all those who have lost someone they love, or their home, or their hope: I will be hopeful for them.
After all, they are my first and greatest love, and I still long for them and yearn to go back. Stay safe and strong, LA. ❤️
