“If you don’t love where you come from, you can’t love where you are going.”

or those of you who follow my tweets (ahem, twitter.com/leahdriscoll or just click on that nifty twitter link in the upper right hand corner of this page!!!), then you may recognize that quote from something I posted earlier this week.  It was the message on my “Throat Comfort” Yogi tea bag.  Yogi tea is also the maker of “Throat Coat” tea which is a MUST for singers, and helpful for anyone suffering from a sore or hoarse throat.  But I digress… I loved this quote!  And it absolutely popped into my mind a couple days ago when I made a trip to West Hollywood for the first time in probably a couple months.

I haven’t made it a habit of traveling east of the 405 recently.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with LA, the 405 is a major freeway that runs north to south all the way from Sacramento to San Diego.  It divides the “beach communities” – Venice, Marina Del Rey, the South Bay, West LA, and my fair Santa Monica from the other parts of LA, which includes too many areas/communities for me to enumerate on here.  One of those areas however, is Hollywood/West Hollywood.  My friends who are not “Westsiders” have been getting on my case about how I never want to cross the 405… heck, most of the time I don’t even want to leave Santa Monica.  One part of it is straight-up because of the traffic.  Depending on the time of day, the underpasses for the 405 can be SO backed up that a 20 minute trip could turn into an hour… or more.  The other part is I just like it over here!  It’s clean, the people are nice and laid back, you can easily walk around (and as an east coaster that’s a big deal to me), and it’s clean.  Did I already say that?  However, most of the “action” is happening in Hollywood… or at least the glossy, “cool” action.  Clearly, it’s important for me right now to be near “the industry”, but I prefer not having to live directly in it day in and day out.  Well this week, I had the occasion to cross the 405 to go all the way into West Hollywood *GASP* to meet a friend.  Within about an hour of being there, I was reminded of WHY I live  on the Westside.

I ended up at the Sheriff’s station.

Now before any rumors get started or anyone is concerned, I am FINE, I did nothing wrong, I was just a witness to some Hollywood insanity and went to the station as moral support.

I can’t go into the details of why I was there as I really don’t want to get involved in “the dramz”, however, it just reinforced to me what this town can do to some people’s heads.  So now I return to my quote:

“If you don’t love where you come from, you can’t love where you are going.”

A lot of people who come to Hollywood seem to be running away from something… running away from the past, running from themselves, (running from the law……..hehe).  So many people I’ve encountered seem to want to erase who they were pre-LA.  They get COMPLETELY sucked into “Hollywood”, which in a lot of ways is smoke and mirrors.  The people I’ve seen be successful in the entertainment industry, who have had lasting careers, and seem generally content in their personal lives, are the ones who have created a life that does NOT revolve around hanging out/going out in Hollywood… they seem to create a cocoon of normalcy.  Santa Monica is my cocoon of normalcy.  I feel that over the past year or so, I’ve done a really good job of not letting myself get sucked in to other people’s crazy lives, partying, believing everything someone says or promises (which is hard because by nature I WANT to be trusting).  But it is fairly hard!  You need to be a strong person… and you need to remember who you are.

I don’t think coming to LA, specifically Hollywood, ever fixed someone’s problems.  But I think as long as you keep your head on straight, the opportunities to tap here are endless.

And now I think I will go take a walk in my safe, clean, soothing neighborhood… and appreciate the warmth before the freezing cold of the northeast bites my butt next week!

 

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