Carver’s Dog

Last night, after making some last minute notes on a script for an industrial film whose production I am in town to oversee, I stood on the balcony of our seventh-floor hotel room in Studio City and breathed deep of the soothing white noise of L.A. that I have missed so much: the constant roar and hum and whoosh of cars on the 101 freeway just outside our door; the siren wails of police cruisers and parademic wagons that ocassionally race down Vineland Avenue where the hotel is situated; the scream of jetliners in descent toward Burbank Airport.

“There’s a poetry in the white noise of the freeway, and especially the sirens shouting, those what the hell is going on? moments that give L.A. a vibrancy, a pulse, a sense that you’re living in the middle of a thing, not just a city.”

I probably sounded pompous when I said it because Miss L disavowed my ponderings with one withering glance. To her, my white noise was just noise. Period.

The following evening, while I typed up even more last-minute notes, the balcony door open for penetration from the whoosh and the roar outside, Miss L sat up in bed, jolted awake from a dead sleep, and announced in a startled voice: “I heard that. The wind.”

“The what?”

“I heard that gush of wind outside just now.”

“There’s no wind, honey,” I reassured. “It’s what I was talking about: the white noise.”

She rolled her eyes in dismissal and laid her head back down on the pillow.

Previously in Return To L.A., Briefly: Leaving Las Vegas