Go West, Young Man (Part Two)

If you come from a small town miles from anywhere, it's hard to shake the wide-eyed look you get when you visit a big city. Growing up, Carlisle seemed pretty cosmopolitan to someone like me: after all, it had a Our Price and a Virgin Records. Back home, we had the top 40 and some dodgy compilation albums in Woolworths.

London was naturally a whole different ball game, obviously, but I've never felt I got a handle on how big it is. Visits there limited themselves to the city centre, the suburbs only passing by in a blur on train journeys. Even the city itself was covered underground, oblivious to all above.

So when the plane approached LAX, the scene outside the plane window - luckily it was a clear day - was mind-blowing. Urban sprawl as far as I could see, a city on a scope beyond anything I'd seen before. Typical of the States, I guess, everything just having to be bigger.

Including my friend's apartment, which seemed huge to me. At the time, I was working as a journalist and living in a bedsit that could be best described as "a box" or "a complete shitheap", depending on your point of view. My host, who worked as a clerk in the DVD section of a record store, lived in a very spacious gaff with it's own underground parking space just off Hollywood Boulevard.

My first full day, we drove down to Santa Monica for my big moment. Going through Beverley Hills and Bel Air - it's perhaps naff to say, but it was such a thrill seeing places I'd only seen on TV. When we finally made it to the coast, I ran down to the waters edge and stared out over the Pacific Ocean. For some lanky gobshite from Whitehaven, it seemed I'd come a hell of a long way.

There's something about the Pacific that's hard to explain unless you've been there. A scene in Mad Men has Don Draper wade in its waters and emerge determined to be a new man, and when I saw that years after I'd been there myself, the scene resonated deeply. At the time, I looked out and thought "there's nothing out there but thousands of miles of blue until you hit Asia".

Then we went and had cocktails in Malibu.

After that, for the main part, I was left alone to do my own thing. My friend would head off to work in the morning and I'd leave and just head in some random direction, seeing what was around. Bumming round the middle of LA, checking out the art gallery. Wasting half a day gawping at the guitars in this huge music store on Santa Monica Boulevard.

It was there, I think, that I realised that American Culture was at heart, corrupt. In the middle of Hollywood, one of the major world centres for entertainment and people rich beyond my imagination would be people holding up signs begging not for money, but a job. I thought of that guy a lot, about how the system that was supposed to be best left so many on the scrapheap.

I also remember on my first wander walking down Hollywood and looking around with what must have been the look of an obvious tourist. A voice came from the ground next to me.

"LA, baby, LA!"

Some homeless dude beamed up on me. He must have seen hundreds, thousands of people like me, looking around with wonder. Films like Mullholland Drive make more sense once you've been there - the city is full of people out to try to make something of their lives. My friend knew plenty of time: aspiring musicians, actors and writers. Some of them seemed to be getting somewhere - a band who'd got a song on the soundtrack to some fairly big film, someone who'd got a book deal for their children's books.

They were encouraging when I mentioned I was trying to get a band together and even if they were just being friendly, it was nice to hear. When I was growing up, if you showed any kind of artistic slant, the reaction was usually "think yer fucken' special, eh?" followed by repeated accusations that my sexual preferences might be more in favour of males.

Going back to the whole American = big aspect.You ask for a bowl of chips (alright, fries) with your beer while watching a game, you get a huge plate of the things.

That action also brought one, umm, uncomfortable moment. On being delivered a burger and fries in some diner place with my friend and some of her colleagues, I proceeded to grab the vinegar to drown those spuds as is my ilk. Sadly, it wasn't what I thought it was and instead a load of syrup glooped on my food. Odd looks were abound, naturally, but for some reason I decided I couldn't look stupid and instead, smiling, ate my somewhat sweetened fries, much to the bafflement of everyone else.

In a flash, it was all over and I was back at LAX, drinking crap beer and seeing England beat the USA at football. The return flight was a slog and I learnt an important fact: jet lag fucks you up.