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Blue skies, palm trees, beautiful people, the Pacific Ocean and the Hollywood Hills. Los Angeles has it all. Home to the rich and famous and tens of thousands of homeless people living in tented encampments under freeway passes. It’s a place of unlimited possibility and harsh reality. Droves come here to make it; some do, most don’t. The lure of the possible inevitably gets bested by the probable, and the relentless sun scorches the dreams of the hopeful. Beauty and brutality side by side.

It’s hard to grasp just how unforgiving the sun is here. The brightness makes you wince and throws into relief the ugliness of many parts of the city. Litter is a problem and so are run down, rent-controlled buildings owned by landlords who just don’t care. The iridescent sunlight seems to amplify the dirt and dereliction. But it also highlights the incredible natural beauty, the brilliant reds and pinks of bougainvillaea trees and hibiscus bushes. Citrus trees grow everywhere, heavy with lemons, limes, oranges, and mandarins. Exotic flowers like bird of paradise are commonplace, jasmine scents the evening air. In many ways, it is paradisiacal.

But pain and suffering can seem worse in paradise, the clear blue skies and bright sun magnify what’s wrong. Not like Ireland, where rain and grey skies can soothe existential unease. At home, there’s almost a Greek pathos to the weather sometimes, a sympathy with melancholia and ennui. The climactic moodiness seems to signify that it’s okay to be pessimistic and generally downcast. It’s a little harder to pull that off with aplomb in sunny, optimistic blue-skied LA!

I moved here just shy of fifteen years ago. My now-husband had relocated to Chicago from LA to pursue our relationship and we got a groovy loft opposite Oprah’s studio in a cool neighbourhood. But having spent twenty-five years living in Los Angeles working as a film editor in Hollywood and then as a successful musician, he found that Chicago just didn’t have quite the same nexus of relationships and intricate connections that are so critical for life in the arts and entertainment. So, he talked me into it and we broke our lease, called a moving company, packed up the car and hit the road. Although I had visited LA a couple of times before moving, I was totally unprepared for life here.

First of all, there’s the size. Los Angeles is HUGE; its population is the size of Ireland. It’s less a city than a sprawling megalopolis, a connection of cities and neighbourhoods connected by a vast freeway system. Did I mention that freeways here have TWELVE LANES and that not driving is not an option? (secret: I only learned to drive when we had decided to move as the hubster insisted on it). Previously having lived in Dublin, Amsterdam and Chicago, I could get around entirely by bike and public transport. But I digress. Driving on a twelve-lane freeway requires a lot of focus and unrelenting attention. Exactly like trying to make it here, this bastion of the hustle.

I was also totally unprepared for the oppressiveness of the sun in this City of Angels. I mean that literally and figuratively. Those of us who are fair-skinned have to be very careful here. Initially, the novelty of there actually being consistent sun made me want to be outside all the time but soon enough I learned the importance of a shady spot to sit in. Without that, you can literally fry. By the same token, a good dermatologist is essential here (I go minimum four times per year), as is a wide-brimmed hat and sunscreen.

On to the figurative. It took me some time, much of that feeling overwhelmed and out of my depth, to understand that the sunlight here can feel like a mockery. When your self-esteem is shot and you feel like a loser, you’re flat broke with barely enough gas in the car to make it to the meeting where you’re hoping to score a gig, the light of that piercing sun seems to illuminate every doubt and fear. The nuance of Connemara grey skies is not part of the vernacular here and incessant sun can be its own type of tyranny.

When it’s been eight months and there’s been no rain, when you’d love to see a poetic cloudscape and you’re feeling like a failure because you lost the gig, or your private client bailed and there were eight people in your prime slot yoga class but sixty-four in the class that started half an hour later, that harsh sun can feel like a cruel reminder that your life is not where you want it to be.

The brightness is in stark relief to the shadows in your life, the spectre of unrealised hopes and dreams, the pain of working so hard, giving it everything, showing up day in day out with a smile on your face even though inside you’re falling apart and it’s still not enough. The success you so badly want continues to evade you. But you keep going. Because you’ve come this far and to stop now would be to abnegate all that’s come before.

Before we lived here together, Dave, my husband, gave me his take on why Los Angeles is a deeply spiritual place and it took me about a year or two of living here to fully grasp what he meant. Which is that life in Los Angeles is akin to being perched on the edge of a chasm that could swallow you up at any time. It’s a void of meaninglessness, failure, stasis and continual striving. In other words, the life of an artist. Living in Los Angeles as a creative, trying to get traction and make an impact requires massive amounts of self-mastery. You are constantly up against the abyss of annihilation and irrelevance. This city will bring you to your knees. Rejection is never far away but you have to keep putting yourself out there, keep a happening narrative going.

You never know when you’re going to meet someone influential, it could be at a party in the Hollywood Hills (yes, I’ve been to Nick Nolte’s home) or waiting tables. In my early days here I waitressed at a hip restaurant in Venice and served Sacha Baron Cohen, Helen Hunt and Dennis Hopper, amongst others. I’ve taught yoga to Marisa Tomei and Colin Farrell (who came up and introduced himself after class). When those opportunities come along, you better be ready and it’s best to be grounded and self-assured. Nobody wants a sycophantic yoga teacher or a fawning waitress

It’s challenging to stand out amongst four million Angelenos. Whatever you’re good at, there’s probably someone better than you. Or someone who has better connections than you. You have to learn the art of the hustle. More accurately the art of hustling while not appearing to hustle. Cultivating networks, being always available for the next audition or gig, or ready as a substitute teacher for yoga classes. Whatever it takes to get traction. Embodying the ethos of Hollywood requires having an elevator pitch ready at all times so that when anyone asks you what you’re up to, you can give a juicy but succinct and perky description of whatever fabulous project you’re working on, or in the process of manifesting.

People talk about manifesting a lot here. Manifesting a new home, or partner, or private client, acting gig. You name it. If it exists people talk about ‘manifesting’ it. It took me years to understand that part of the LA vibe is to actually believe you can manifest your desires. If you don’t believe it, it won’t happen. You can’t bullshit the universe that way, and for many Los Angeles is the universe.

But there’s a deeper point here, in Los Angeles the void of meaninglessness, lack of belonging, and potential failure is ever-present and takes sincere spiritual work to ameliorate.

This is the home of every spiritual movement you can think of, a playground for the seeker. From Kundalini Yoga to Hare Krishnas, hardcore Ashtanga practitioners (a yoga teacher friend of mine counted Madonna, Sting, Jane Fonda and Kareem Abdul Jabar amongst her private students of Ashtanga Yoga), Orthodox Jews, Tibetan Buddhists, Gospel churches with full electric bands and Scientology. It’s all here. Every fad you can think of, juice cleansing, bleach enemas, New Age gurus, Orgasmic Meditation groups, yoni steaming. This is the headquarters of GOOP after all! There’s an openness in LA, a sense of possibility. Creativity is king and the hustle is everywhere. And there’s something else, something more fundamental.

It’s not a coincidence that Los Angeles is the spiritual capital of the West and the centre of the entertainment industry. The two go hand in hand. Everyone (okay, almost everyone) in LA is looking for something. The next audition, or screenplay, the next producing project, the next catering gig, the perfect body, the redoubtable spiritual teacher, the realised guru. And almost everyone is hustling. Themselves, an idea, a movement. To live and succeed in LA is to learn to constantly put yourself out there. To be upbeat, positive and optimistic. And relentless in the face of rejection and failure. It’s the ultimate spiritual crucible, the sun may be shining all the time but there’s no place to hide in the shadows.

Self-creation and self-realisation are playmates here. Both are deeply spiritual. Whether you’re an actor, a musician, a yoga teacher or a dancer, you consistently face rejection and being replaced by the next best thing. But you have to keep bringing the enthusiasm and positivity.

You have to dig deep and generate so that you can stay in the game, stay relevant. Doing that requires excavating your inner terrain so deeply that there’s nowhere left to go.

You hit bedrock and realise that you’ve gotta bring it from within, to embrace the creative act of self-formation just as much as the creative act of writing a script, directing a movie or creating a yoga sequence.

In this vast city of scorching sun, exquisite beauty and non-stop self-promotion the void is never too far. And when you think about it this makes perfect sense, situated as we are between the mighty Pacific Ocean and San Andreas Fault, a powerful earthquake line that runs the length of California. Any minute of any day a tsunami or an earthquake could wipe out much of the population of Los Angeles. But in between those colossals something beautiful is possible; radical creativity and self-expression, an opportunity to become who you really are despite the existential threats. Or maybe it’s because of them, who knows. But I do know that at this point I couldn’t live anywhere else. I love this City of Angels, it has made me who I am.

Dearbhla Kelly, December 2020.