Friday Was My Birthday

Posted on January 12, 2025 by max

I spent my birthday in San Diego this year. I didn’t expect to be here this weekend, but I came down here in light of the wildfires in LA. It’s hard to process the reality of living through a catastrophic natural disaster.

Was I overreacting by leaving? I live downtown, after all. My building is made of concrete and is at least externally is functionally fireproof. So right now downtown is the safest place to be in LA and that’s probably the only time you can say that. Downtown LA gets a bad rap, but I feel vindicated in my love for it during this disaster – thanks, firesafe building code. Down in San Diego, the air quality is pristine and I can sleep well knowing Milo isn’t breathing in toxic debris and carcinogens. So in that regard, I think I made a good judgment call, and feel lucky I was able to choose to leave rather than being evacuated.

The level of destruction is unimaginable, and the under-preparation of our city officials is deplorable. A moment of crisis reveals the fundamental cracks in the structure of Los Angeles, and I am convinced more than ever that it is a city dying at the hands of its government.

In San Diego, away from the hellscape, life is idyllic. I feel guilty sitting on the boardwalk, writing this blog, knowing what tragedy unfolds back home. I have to wonder – if, God forbid, a fire struck San Diego, would it take the same toll? This doesn’t feel like a city whose leaders would let that happen. San Diego beams with pride and the care its officials have for it is evident in every park and beach and free-use third place. San Diego feels like a place with a sense of purpose with leaders aligned with that vision. After a weekend here, I can understand why people settled here.

It’s tempting to view any city as an unplanned hodgepodge of housing and commerce that somehow magically adds up to a good or bad vibe. This is wrong. Think about the extraordinary amounts of earth and mountain that must be moved just to erect a building. The hours and years spent creating a statue for no sole purpose but to be a symbol of the city’s ideals. The collective coordination and focus it takes to put on a weekly farmer’s market. These things don’t just happen. A city is alive only because of its peoples’ commitment to keeping it so. There is an immense amount of responsibility on those in charge to progress the city towards its collective ideal.

LA is an extraordinarily beautiful place. I wrote recently about Eaton Falls and how wonderful it is to have a natural haven so close to the urban jungle. I fear it may be completely burned down now. I remember gawking at the dichotomy of the Barbie House next to the Goth house on the Pacific Coast Highway. Are they still standing? Runyon Canyon is a panopticon where you can see the valley and Santa Montica and the Hollywood sign from one place. Probably gone.

I don’t know if it’s because it was close to the gold mines. I don’t know if it’s because Union Station used to be the gateway to the west. I don’t know if it’s because it falls on a particularly powerful nexus of ley lines. But Los Angeles is the place. There is an undeniable magic to the soil of Southern California. Anyone who has been to LA can feel it. It’s been a creative Mecca for as long as the layman got the foolish idea in his head that he could go somewhere and become an artist. The city of angels is a historic site of life and culture and ideas on a scale replicated nowhere else.

***And what did they do?***
They let it burn.

I admire the responders doing their best to control a blazing conflagration larger than the island of Manhattan. But it’s been days and it’s what, 8% contained? Blame the Santa Ana winds, maybe. Or, blame cutting $17 million dollars of fire prevention funding.

***I wonder who that money went to?***
Congrats on the McMansion!

It’s the same greed that’s been killing every thing that made Los Angeles LA. How many movies are shot in California anymore? It’s too expensive to film in Hollywood anymore, so now Hollywood is in Atlanta or New York or Vancouver. Angeleno Heights turned into a playground for the Silverlake mustache-beanie-neo-Hipster gentry. Lowriders became Cybertrucks and West Coast hip-hop moved from South Central to some white dude doing “Not Like Us” on karaoke night. To be an artist you have to either get lucky in the dance-app lottery or pay $70,000 a year to go to film school and have 4 roommates and share 1 bathroom. You’re an artist – starve. It’ll be good for your jawline. We all have to be models, now, too. The next Humphrey Bogart would probably need a Turkish hairline if he even wanted to land a commercial.

I don’t know. Hollywood is a dream factory but it’s also a business. I suppose there’s always been this duality woven into the fabric of LA. But at some point, the balance shifted. Something happened, and I’m not sure who to blame, but it’s probably no single person in particular. But I’ll personify them anyways and say they took the ambitions and ideals of the people who made LA what it is, and they twisted it and distorted it and bled it dry and they let it burn. No wonder downtown is the last safe place. It’s the only place that’s solid.

I love downtown LA. I love walking out of my loft in the Fashion District and seeing the merchants selling their textiles. You could go on Amazon and buy Gorilla Glue for $15 or walk around for a few minutes and find it somewhere else for $4 cash. I love the Flower District and its flower shops where you can buy a dozen roses from the price of a single Urban Stem. I love that the Broad is free to visit. I love the architecture. I love that there’s a functional if under maintained public transportation system. I love that Molina Grand Park spans three city blocks and on the second block you can take the elevator underground to the city records backrooms. I love that the bars here are old and would never be caught dead on a TikTok trend. I love that the Hotel Cecil is haunted and at least leaves some sense of the supernatural left for us to imagine about. I love that Dogtown has all these bridges and I also just love that it’s called Dogtown. I love that Johnny Knoxville broke his angle trying to jump the river. I love that the gentrification is at least somewhat limited to Geoffrey Harrison Palmer and his obsession with buying entire city blocks and turning them into tacky, vaguely-Italian-in-a-Vegas-strip-type-of-way apartment compounds with names like Medici and Ferrante. Just kidding, I don’t love that. As a second-generation half-Italian I find it weird. Vaffanculo.

For all intents and purposes, the intents and purposes of our city’s officials have been commercialization at all costs. Profit-driven development at the expense of disaster prevention. LA has become a cash cow so bastardized by the opportunists devouring it that the city has become hollow and we’re seeing the consequences of that in this crisis response. Opportunism breeds. A DJI drone crashed into a fire plane while capturing illegal footage that would’ve ended up on some short form compilation somewhere. Millions of likes and shares for a meager $1.50 payout from Meta at the end of the quarter. This is not a metaphor, it’s a microcosm.

Condemnation aside, I feel a sense of hope. I see my friends selflessly helping others evacuated at the risk of their own safety. Thousands of pounds of clothes and groceries donated. Resources shared. Is this… a sense of community? It takes a cataclysm to pull together 500 square miles into something of a small town. The people care. I care. I wish there was more I could do.

I feel sick and privileged escaping to San Diego for the weekend. I feel selfish that I had the nerve to have a birthday in the wake of this tragedy. I love LA, I really do. It represents so much to me and to other artists and dreamers like me. But I can’t help but feel hypocritical and part of the problem. I came here chasing the dream of Hollywood. I am the gentry I condemn. I try my hardest to engage in LA like an Angeleno and not a tourist. But it feels futile when the government does its best to destroy it.

The optimist in me says the light at the end of this horrific tunnel will be widespread change. A renewed sense of appreciation and community. A return to the ideals. But the pessimist says that dream is long dead. If it wasn’t, how could any of this have happened? All I know is, If Blackrock buys the ashes of the Pacific Palisades and sells it to Geoffrey Harrison Palmer and he builds another Vincenzo or Mario or whatever, I think we’re justified in eating the rich. It’s been long enough. We’re artists and we’re starving.

Stay safe everyone -mbk

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Why Do We Still Seek Fire In A World Full Of Flashlights?

Posted on January 7, 2025 by max

I can’t say for certain, but I am 99.9% sure my ancestors – at one point or another – huddled around a fire, perhaps as a beacon of light in a dark and stormy night, perhaps as a source of warmth to protect them from the bitter cold. In the Year of Our Lord 2025, I can assume – but again, I can’t say for certain, as I have not seen it firsthand – many people have simulated this, somewhere in the wilderness around a campfire, or in their homes around a fireplace. Does man love fire, or does he fear darkness? Some days, I lean towards the latter – why else would we have invented the light bulb? A simulated fire that is both stronger and safer than a true fire could ever be. Or, at least, brighter. Remember the last time you were driving and a lifted truck with LED headlights pulled up behind you? That shit is BLINDING. Why carry a torch when you could carry, well, a torch?

***For the Yankees***
Torch is British slang for a flashlight.

Pun aside, the question remains – why carry a torch? What is the purpose of fire in the modern world? We live in a society of neon signs and color-changing smart bulbs that can illuminate any room more effectively than a candle. And yet, there is still place for a candle. WHY? I ask. There’s no logical answer other than that we actually do just love fire, inherently, perhaps separately from its ability to banish the darkness we fear. Anyone who has a felt a fire knows its warmth. But we all also understand its destructive capabilities. Unchecked, a wildfire can run rampant and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burning is one of the most, if not THE most, brutal ways to die. And yet we still seek fire. Why, when we all carry a flashlight in our pocket?

Each one of us carries kindling around with us as well. Sometimes, when we meet someone special, a spark is created, and if we’re lucky, the spark catches the kindling and creates a fire. In my life, I’ve sought this many times. I love the feeling of catching fire specifically. Once I do, I let the fire burn just up to the point where the kindling starts to feel scarce, then I put it out and move on to the next fire. But what happens when the spark turns into a wildfire that completely destroys not only all of your kindling but also any source of firewood in the nearby forest? How then do you rebuild? How can you possibly face the darkness which you’ve so nimbly avoided by hopping from fire to fire your entire life?

Well, maybe the answer is to just grab a flashlight. The first time you do, you realize how much brighter it is than any little campfire or ember you’ve ever seen. Sure, it’s not as bright as the wildfire, but you’ve seen the damage a wildfire can do and you never want to see that again. Besides, even if you wanted to light a fire right now, all your new kindling is fresh wood that’s still too wet to catch anyway. But there’s still the problem of the darkness, so you need the light, and we live in a world of flashlights, so you grab one.

Okay, we’ve solved the darkness. But we’re still cold. So cold, so numb. The brightest flashlight can never be as warm as the tiniest ember. You can turn on the flashlight but it’s not nearly as satisfying as catching the fire, even when all the fire does is turn into a tiny ember. You’ve felt the fire, so you know the value of the ember, but you’re afraid of it turning into a wildfire again. Does having the flashlight make it impossible to light a fire? Why seek the fire when you already have the flashlight? Well, because it’s cold. But if the flashlight prevents the fire… is it not logical to turn it off and man up and face the darkness for the first time? What scary things lurk in the forest? Why did our ancestors light the fire in the first place? And what happens if the last wildfire destroyed not only this forest but every first and there’s no more firewood in the whole world and you’re going to be dark and cold forever because that was the last fire ever and now that it’s out there will never be light again?

No, that can’t be true, you refuse to accept it, so in defiance you vow to seek the fire even in a world of flashlights because the fire is what’s kept life going since the first fish had the balls to step onto land to dry off. Even in a vast city of lights and shiny things you look for the fire because the fire is real and it’s the only thing that’s going to keep you warm, and you need the warmth just like your ancestors did before you and your descendants will after you and you’re a fool to think any society or civilization is more powerful than the fire because statues crumble and castles fall and skyscrapers topple and flashlight batteries die but fire is eternal and you’re really so arrogant to think that you have the power to stop or put it out because when it returns it will come back and burn up everything up again and again and again until the end of time.

Or something.

***To state the obvious***
I’m not really talking about fire.

’Til next time – mbk

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8, 18, 28

Posted on January 6, 2025 by max

One day you’re 18 and the entire world is a mysterious, wondrous, massive place bursting with possibilities and magic. You wake up a decade later looking down the barrel of 28 and out of nowhere you know the number of every freeway and the direction it runs. You don’t remember when you learned this information and can’t decide if it’s even important to know. You’re on the way to see a girl from 10 years ago and suddenly you remember what it’s like to not understand how a city works, and a plane passes overhead and you remember how it felt to not know that flights ran on a pre-determined schedule. A song comes up on shuffle and you remember when it was music and not a combination of notes and harmony and rhythm and God Particle and LA-2A and blah blah blah.

***10 years is***
A lot of time to learn a lot of useless information, and a lot of time to forget a lot of important stuff.

I knew, for as long as I can remember, that I wanted to be an artist. I refused to be a “grown up.” When I was 18, I dreamed of going to LA with my friends and pursuing music. We had our little band, we thought we could conquer the world. But then Spud just had to go off to Utah and get Mormon married and shatter my idea of the band. So I hard-pivoted to going to college in Arizona and leaving my music dreams behind. I was 18, it was time to grow up, and I had a full-ride scholarship and a commencement speech worth of reasons to grow up.

***I also had her***
But we’ll get to that.

Let’s go back another 10 years. I was 8 years old and I was in that sweet spot where you’re functional as a little human being but you haven’t been burdened by self awareness. So you know what you like to do and you lack the wisdom to tell yourself not to do it. Art, then, was drawing, and I liked to draw pictures to make my friends laugh. I liked the validation I got from drawing for my teachers and parents. I was a “draw-er” before I knew I was an “artist.” The tragedy comes a few years later when kids start thinking sports are cool and I’ve invested all of my skill points into drawing anime eyes and now I’m in the gifted class and all the kids I used to be friends with think I’m a nerd and ahh damn I have an inferiority complex for the rest of my life. I felt isolated by the very thing that made me “me,” and I could already sense the childhood wonder begin to dry up around all of us. Playing pretend gave way to chasing girls and sleepovers turned into parties. Drawing comics for class went from cool to weird and nerdy. I felt like the only one who knew we were growing up, and I wasn’t ready to leave behind the magic.

Around the time I was 11, I started getting into music. I was obsessed with lyrics first and foremost and was fascinated and empowered by the idea that if you put something into a song you had the liberty to say anything you want. There was real life, which even within the highly structured environment of elementary school was chaotic and inscrutable. And then there was art, which was neatly packaged and able to be played back if you missed a part. Around this time I also began my journal but that’s a whole other story (and also where I came up with the name Max Bennett Kelly).

I began to see art as the path to true freedom, a way to liberate your inner world in a way that was acceptable to the public. I clung to this idea because I felt so unaccepted by my peers who once found my creativity and intelligence endearing and exciting. I couldn’t understand why art wasn’t cool ’til it was “cool,” why the most famous people in the world were artists and yet it was “lame” to write song lyrics in class. How did you close that divide? Like I said, I wanted to be an artist for as long as I can remember, but that dream was (and probably still is) intrinsically linked to my desire to be accepted, to be liked, to be “cool.” I struggled a lot with being seen as “nerdy” and written off for it. Kids can be cruel, which is a horrible reality at a time when everything feels like the most important thing ever.

If there was any solace, it was that I grew up in the particular ensuing decade. I lucked out – nice was in the zeitgeist and once I hit high school it felt like bullies were dead, jocks weren’t the kings of the school and you could be received positively for being yourself. I grew up expecting to be Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club and was delightfully surprise to be more like Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street. I started being rewarded, again, by leaning into my creativity. I started posting music with my friends online and developed a bit of a following. I would make video projects for school and perform at talent shows and assemblies and my teacher and peers loved it. It felt like the two halves of my brain were both being scratched, I was able to do my art, and it was what made me “cool.” The little kid in me who remembered what it was like to be accepted for being himself was vindicated after years of torment and isolation. However, the draw to “cool” was too strong. I was popular now and I started drinking and chasing girls and doing all the things I used to see as sellout activities done by the cool kid bourgeoisie. Art was for the nerdy proletariat. I wanted so badly to be “cool” inherently, without taking the roundabout way I always had. Why was it so easy for some people to be in the “in” crowd? Why did I have to make fucking videos and songs and pictures just to get them to like me? What was the place of art in my life? Was it a way to draw people in or a way to alienate myself from others? When it came time for college, I began to wish for a simpler future, where I could be accepted without having to be… me.

***And now we’re caught up to the next decade***
Who says you can’t write a recursive non-chronological blog post?

The dominoes come toppling down when, like I said, Spud cut us off and went to Utah. I think I was relieved, secretly, that the band died and I was able to grow up guilt-free. It was my fault I wasn’t pursuing my dreams, it was the band’s fault for dying!! I had outgrown my childish nonsense and was ready to go off to Arizona to do Important Adult Things™ like joining a frat and taking Greek mythology midterms. However, there was one little snag… her. Yes, her, the her that I drove down to see on Sunday. The “her” that I wronged more than anyone I have ever wronged. My great blunder, my great shame. Let’s call her Codename: Monstro. She was a time capsule that I didn’t know how to bury. She was the last person to see me before my tragic 10-year journey of self-destruction and self-discovery.

When I went off to college, determined to destroy every idea of myself I had ever held dear, Codename: Monstro remained back home as a symbol of everything I was leaving behind. I didn’t want to go off to college. I know that now. I was so scared. All I had ever known was in Kent, WA. I had never moved. I had the same friends my entire life. I was the biggest fish in the smallest pond imaginable. The clock was ticking forward against all my wishes and it broke my heart and I hated myself for not following through on my dreams. But hey, if you can’t beat em, join em. If I was going to college, I was going to Go To College™. I would encapsulate every single American university stereotype. I failed at my dream of being an artist, but I would succeed at being a college student.

But I failed at that, too.

I didn’t get into a frat. I applied to a bunch of clubs and was rejected by every one. Oh wait, didn’t I want to be an artist as long as I could remember?? Why am I here again??? I was tormented by the idea that I sold my soul to come here and was punished for it. I longed to go back in time, just a few months, to undo everything. I would have never let Spud go to Utah. I would have gotten the band together and went to LA. I understood now what I was giving up by growing up. I was so ashamed for having betrayed myself. My creativity, my art, my sense of self, that’s what made me “cool.” Without those things, I was one college kid out of 50,000 with no defining characteristics. I was a shadow with nothing to talk about, no identity outside of being popular in high school.

***10 years is***
A lot of time to get your liver eaten.

And now, a brief tangent. In RELI 305, we learned that Prometheus brought fire to man and was punished by being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten every day by an eagle. We think of Prometheus as a martyr who sacrificed his freedom and bodily health to bring fire to man, and we interpret this fire as a metaphor for innovation and evolution and change. In HNRS 206 we learned about Plato’s allegory of the cave, and how for many individuals their idea of the world is nothing more than shadows on a cave wall, cast by an unknowable fire behind them. The people in power, aware of the fire, create shadow puppets of their own design to cast on the cave wall. The former group of people are no more aware of the shadow puppets than they are of the fire itself. For this group, the shadow puppet of a wolf is the wolf itself. They are unaware that what they see is merely a symbol of the actual world, created by those with actual access to the real thing. The irony is, neither group of people is aware of the sun outside the cave. The ultimate source of fire. The true light. Plato asserts that enlightenment begins when one begins to questions the shadows, sees the fire, and begins to search for the exit of the cave to find the sun.

I suppose that if you view the quest for fire as man’s ultimate struggle for purpose, it makes sense why Prometheus was punished for just… giving it away. Man spends his whole life trying to bask in the sun that the gods dangle over us, mocking and beckoning. It’s a microcosm of a microcosm. The humans with access to fire dangle it over the heads of the humans without, acting like the gods they so desperately wish they were. Prometheus took pity and he got his liver eaten for it. But the damage was done, and now we have fire, and now man is punished for seeking out the sun. Only our livers don’t grow back.

Like many men before me, the shadows weren’t enough. With a younger man’s hubris, I sought the sun in the most literal way by going to Arizona. I left the cave and was blinded. Without the shadows to guide me, the vast, real world was unfathomable to me. I missed the comfort of not knowing how freeways worked, how flight paths operated, how music was made. But I made my choice, I was outside of the cave and I could never go back in, no matter how hard I tried. I spent the next decade finding a way to make it all make sense again (someone should make that into a song lyric). I asked every question I could possibly think of, desperately looking for an answer that would be as comprehensible as the shadows used to be. But there was no going back. Freeways would never just be freeways, planes would never just be planes, music would never just be music. Friends would never just be friends again. Home would never be home. Love would never just be love. When Jevandre was still alive, he loved this tenet of Bruce Lee’s philosophy: for a beginner martial artist, a punch is just a punch. For the intermediate, a punch is an impossibly complex series of muscle contractions and releases and an instantaneous calculation of force and velocity. But for the master, a punch becomes a punch yet again. I wanted, so badly, to believe that this was true. That with enough study and analysis and questioning everything would become simple again, the way it used to be.

College happened, college ended. I eventually figured it out, but have always regretted betraying myself at 18, and have spent the last 10 years getting my liver eaten in atonement, promising to never, ever let that part of myself down ever again. Art was once a way to connect me with others, then it became a way to isolate myself, and it once again is a way to connect. I regret having to let it go just to learn how to get it back, but it couldn’t have happened any other way. I set out from home and went on this wild odyssey just figure out that I knew who I was all along. The punch has become a punch once more.

***And now we’re caught up to the current decade***
And the recursion is reversed.

You’re 28 and on the way to see Codename: Monstro. The immensity of 10 years of time hits you. You haven’t seen her since you broke up. You owe her an apology. You’re sorry that in your quest for fire you couldn’t bring anything with you. You’re sorry for leaving her behind. You’re sorry for pretending like she meant nothing to you, when really she was everything. You’re sorry you didn’t know how to say goodbye properly. You’re sorry you had to throw rocks so she wouldn’t come back. You’re sorry you were a jackass.

It’s rare, in today’s world, to have no idea what someone has been up to for 10 years. I’m so used to keeping up with people on social media that I forget we are biologically designed to let time pass. That our minds are designed to forget. I’m so used to keeping up, to knowing, that I’ve forgotten what it is to remember. But when I saw Codename: Monstro for the first time in 10 years, I remembered. I opened the time capsule I had buried so long ago that I had forgotten that I had ever buried it. I had so deeply forgotten how she was, how we were together, that I was astonished I was able to remember at all. But seeing her reminded me of the time before I left the cave. Before I left home. When things were simple.

***10 years is***

A lot of time to catch up on, so don’t bother.

Instead we just talked about what we were doing now. We did a brief Sparknotes on everything, sure, but mostly we just.. talked. It was bizarre to speak with someone who had no idea about Max Bennett Kelly, who was absent for my entire college journey, who didn’t know about Codename: Apples, who didn’t know Spud came back and we restarted the band, who didn’t know that we all went to LA together, who didn’t know that the band broke up, who didn’t know that Jevandre died, who didn’t know about Codename: Emily, who didn’t know I had found some success, who didn’t know I bleached my hair, who didn’t know about Codename: Didi, who didn’t know I saw the world, who didn’t know I lived in my dream loft, who didn’t know that I was leaving LA, who didn’t know I was moving to New York. Codename: Monstro knew me at 18, skipped 10 years, and is seeing me again at 28 with no details to cloud her judgment. I stand before her, as I am, here and now.

***And once again, I ask***
Who am I?

Life is so, so, so funny. I’m cracking up as I write this. I was devastated when I went to college and no one knew anything of my past, because I had nothing to speak of in the present. I spent the next 10 years building up my life so that I would never be caught like that again. And then after the most defining era of life, I’m faced with someone from my past who had no idea of what I had built; faced, again, with the undeniable and inescapable and unfathomably horrific idea of being… me. No accolades. No identity to lean on. Just the words I spoke and the air I breathed and the space I occupied.

We had a wonderful time.

These last 10 years didn’t matter. The next 10 years won’t, either. Time happens whether you like it or not, and trying to define and consolidate each moment is futile because eventually you’ll get caught with your guard down and have to present yourself raw, authentically, naked and flawed and vulnerable and beautiful, as you are, right now. And in those moments, you won’t know why the freeways work the way they do, you just know one of them drove you away from someone who meant everything to you. A plane passing overhead could very well be the exact same one that took you off to college. You don’t recognize the song playing on the speakers but it reminds you of one you listened to together in the same car you drove 10 years ago.

After matcha I mentioned that yeah, I’m still driving the Prelude. She couldn’t believe it and wanted to see it. So we stood outside of the car, just like we did back then. I’m so glad I forgot how that felt, because it was really nice to remember.

’Til next time -mbk

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Leaving Los Angeles

Posted on January 3, 2025 by max

I find myself again thrust into my subconscious. It’s a bit scary, but it’s where all the best work is done. Allow me to explain –

***An irrefutable maxim***
Life is a cycle of consolation and desolation.

In less pretentious terms, life has ups and downs. In more pretentious terms, I’m one chapter in to Moby-Dick and I am Ishmael out at sea. Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey asserts that all stories reflect the inner workings of the human mind, and the constantly repeating journey from home to the unknown and back again. Campbell says that what is recognizable as a “story” is a metaphor for man’s plunge from the conscious to the unconscious and the imperative rise back up. Luke Skywalker leaves Tattooine at the behest of a great call to save the universe, but it’s not a “story” unless he returns back home again, to see how much he has changed in comparison to his idea of “home” which is unchanging. Or something. All I know is that at the end of the year, I return home for the holidays, and am always met with a painful feeling of “otherness.” Because while home is the same, I am fundamentally different. And the pieces of change I have picked up along my journey are not noticeable to me until I return to where I came to compare the current version of me to the person I was the last time I was there.

In my own life, I was a small town boy who had the call to adventure to come to LA. I came here in 2020, conquered my demons, made my music and came home battered and bruised to tell the tale. I was completely different than the person who set out on the journey. And then at the turn of the year, I’m called back to LA to start the cycle over again. And each holiday season, I return, markedly different from the last time. This repeats year by year, and because of my mortal brain I am forced to interpret what happened over the year as a story. Each time leaving home and returning again is a neat story arc that wraps up in some nice philosophical insight, and it aligns with the Gregorian calendar so perfectly that I have to assume it’s by design. There’s a pattern to every year, a bunch of built in moments that allow for a Mad-Lib style of plot points and twists and jumpings of the shark. However, I’m going on my fifth year in LA, and I feel a larger story arc coming to a close. And I’m realizing that each little mini-arc over the last four years has been a minor side story serving the larger narrative of my life.

***A regretful admission of defeat***
I think it’s time that I leave LA.

The call to sea is deafening, except don’t call me Ishmael, I’m Max Bennett Kelly and the sea is New York City. Except really I’m not Max Bennett Kelly, I’m Marcello Mottola and New York City is… what now? I’m not quite third-person perfect enough to fully understand the metaphor, not yet, but I’m trying so bear with me.

It’s unsettling to know that I’ve been in LA long enough to where it’s become “home” and the next chapter of my life is the “great unknown.” B-but Kent is home, and LA is the great unknown!! Hmm, it’s almost like my “home” was never really “Kent” and the great unknown was never really “LA,” and to think of it that literally is misunderstanding Campbell’s metaphor. “Home” is the conscious, the comfortable part of life, the mindset you have that limits you, that – for better or for worse – you seek to outgrow. You push yourself and do uncomfortable things in the name of some “calling” and it leads you some “great unknown” in which you are frightfully unprepared. Situations to which your framework is not yet suited for. And you adapt your framework to conquer your environment, and conquer you do, until you slay the dragon and steal its gold or whatever. But what then? Do you just sit there in the cave with the gold? No, you bring that shit home. But then what, you spend it? Invest it? Chase another dragon and go get some more? The fact of the matter is, having the gold never feels the same as finding it.

***To spell out the metaphor***
Gold = goals, people

You come home to Kent with unfathomable riches and experiences and you realize that what you set out to do and what you accomplished are, on the surface, the same, but the meaning is different. So when I used to come home and wanted to brag about my life here, my success, the people I’ve met, what I’ve created, this time – and perhaps the last few times, if I’m honest – I’ve felt too unrelatable to even begin describing what I do. I have nothing to tell anyone. “How’s music?” they ask, and I say “good.”

But what I really mean is, the pursuit of “doing music” led me to come to LA with my friends, but nowadays it’s more like I’m quasi-Nietschze with internet access in a less walkable city. I ponder the secrets of the universe and find roundabout ways to express myself in hopes of unlocking some new part of my brain to inspire progress in my music. I constantly strive to meet new people to teach me different ways of viewing the world, hoping that someone’s innocuous comment about something may lead me to approach the next lyrics I write from a new angle. I travel to see architecture and culture in a way that is foreign to me, in hopes of broadening my understanding of the creative process to where I can approach my next character from a completely different perspective.

It’s not enough to me to create for the sake of creating, each piece I create is a study of what I’ve been taking in. One piece must iterate on the last piece if it feels like something worth releasing into my catalog of work. With the overarching goal of “music,” I understand that to evolve as an artist is to answer every unanswered question from a place of unshakeable vision. I welcome questions that I struggle to answer, and the point of view that I answer from is my “artist project.” It’s distinct and yet entirely separate from my inner world.

But sometimes it gets confusing. Am I pursuing this relationship because it is helping me flesh out a concept for an album? Am I hanging out with this person because their sense of humor influences my next skit? Is it possible to just “exist” as an artist, or is every waking moment an alchemical reaction of turning life experience into inspiration to fuel your next work? If I am a cup that runneth over into my next work, what happens when I run out of water to fill me up? Is it okay, sometimes, to not pour it all out? Is there ever any water that I get to keep? Any experience I allow to stay latched onto my soul before I sublimate it into something consumable? I’ve gotten skilled enough at directly turning my life into inspiration that I rarely allow my experiences to gestate, to mature before I cut them off like a cancerous lump. A day in the park becomes a blog post, a relationship becomes a song. And once I sculpt, the marble is gone. What then am I left with? Am I a machine that exists only to turn life into art? If so, where’s the “life” in my life if I never allow myself to experience it? If everything is in service of the “Max Bennett Kelly artist project,” what’s left over for Marcello? Especially in a year like 2024 where I didn’t release any music. These things that I’ve created aren’t even able to be experienced by others – they’re just artifacts of a life lived in past tense that I revisit from time to time to prove that I did, indeed, live in the times inbetween singing and writing and drawing and acting and building.

But yeah, music is going good!

I love what I do, I truly do, it feels important to me and I feel called to do it by some great force. But I’ve been wondering, lately: if I was able to choose my life’s calling… would I have chosen to be an artist?

The other day someone told me I DID choose this, in the time before time before my soul was a soul. And it’s my duty as a human to figure out why my soul chose to do this. Whoa, that’s powerful. Caused me to spiral a bit. The next day as I was breaking the script for a new project I totally lost the line between what was art and what was real.

***But wait, you say!***
Isn’t art real?

I don’t know anymore. I used to think that nothing was real except art. Much like nothing happens in life, and our brains only interpret the details as a “story,” I used to think that life itself was a nebulous series of meaningless stimuli that your eyes trick you into thinking is a mountain. Or your ears hear a sound wave and think it’s a helicopter passing by. You ingest some chemical compounds and your mouth tells you it’s your mom’s pasta. Your hands grasp onto something solid and convince you it’s your father’s shoulder. Some particles enter your nose and you remember a dream you had, of the house with a dog and a woman, where it smelled like breakfast tacos. But these things don’t MEAN anything unless you wrote them down, or made a song about it, or drew a picture of it. They didn’t actually HAPPEN. You didn’t actually FEEL them. It was a trick, it was fuel for your art, it was part of a story. Right? …Right?

***Once more, desperately***
Right???

Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s time to outgrow the framework again. Maybe the first part of my story was learning how to turn my life into art. Maybe the next part is learning how to turn my art into life. Or maybe they’re two halves of the same story. Or maybe they’re just the beginning of a larger narrative that won’t make sense until I’m old. Or maybe it’s just a tiny particle in the big story of the universe and I’m a minor plot contrivance for some celestial being on his way to doing more important work.

Maybe.

Or maybe those details matter more than anything, and I’ve just forgotten to remember that.

It feels like a lifetime ago when I dreamed of coming to LA, back when the dream was the realest, most tangible thing I knew. When I got here and I still couldn’t believe how tall the palm trees were, or that there was a ferris wheel on the pier, or that seriously, you can see everything from Mulholland Drive. Every person I met was a reflection of this life I dreamed about where artists flocked to a Mecca of creativity and abundance. I believed that each person I ran into was doing big important things, and I had hope and optimism that every single one of them came here with a divine purpose, too, and that at least we had that in common.

But when the pandemic was “over,” and reality of living in one of the most expansive, expensive metropolises in the world sunk in, the light in these people’s eyes left and one by one their dream of LA died. “The people here are so fake.” “I hate the traffic.” “It’s too expensive.” And one by one, they left. They gave up. The quitters! Fools! I found solace in the fact that I, for one, I would never become jaded. My dream would never die. I would NEVER leave LA.

…

***Oh, God***
Who have I become?

It’s undeniable, the sea does call to me. “New York City” occupies the same place in my mind that “Los Angeles” used to. “Los Angeles” in 2025 sounds a lot like “Kent, Washington” did in 2020. But am I ready to leave? Has LA really jaded me that much? Or perhaps have I… *gasp* … introspected TOO much? The blasphemy. Maybe the short answer to the question “how is music going?” is actually the better answer: “NOT LIKE I THOUGHT!” I came here to play shows. To make music with friends. To have FUN. To drink and party and be stupid and free. But life got in the way. I feel like a company man. The second I got an inkling of money and success my life became work, work, work. WORSE, I fancy myself a fucking Herman Melville with a blog. What am I even WRITING about. Sorry if you got this far, but you are indulging me, so stop it. Just kidding. The fact of the matter is, I may be 28 soon, but when did I get so old? There is beauty in this city and I’ve just forgotten it because I sit inside all day musing over my digital journal and having one-sided conversations with my new family (Milo, ChatGPT and Alexa).

***A hypothetical yet extremely realistic conversation that I will probably have when I get to New York***
“Yeah, I just moved here from LA.”
“Oh, nice, how long were you there?”
“5 years.”
“That’s a long time. What kept you there? What did you do? What stories do you have?”
“Not much, you?”

In truth, how do I answer that question? What life have I lived here that I couldn’t have lived anywhere else? I know, I know, a few posts ago I said I would write no resolution, but this year I vow to convince myself to stay in LA. It’s a moot point, because I am going to move to New York in August, but it’s romantic and I like it. The LA bucket list. Or like, the reverse. Rather than things I have to do before I die, it’s things I have to do to convince me not to die. Okay the metaphor has gotten a bit morbid. I’ll call it “Reasons to stay in LA.” I’ve already started, thank you. Here’s three beautiful things I did yesterday:

Reason #1 to stay in LA:
Eaton Canyon Falls

I had never gone on this hike before but I woke up at 7 AM with an unshakeable feeling of dread and brought Milo. It was beautiful to be in nature. No wonder I’m so fucking miserly all the time. Get outside and touch grass, bub. There’s countless accessible and beautiful hikes in LA that will, let’s face it, be hard to come by if I move to New York.

Reason #2 to stay in LA:
The Bradbury Building

I recognize this building from the end of (500) Days of Summer and Blade Runner so it’s cool you can just… walk into it. It is much smaller than I would have expected it to be, but I like that such a beautiful piece of architecture is available to the public. There’s a bunch of fun corridors and hallways to get lost in which the urban explorer in me drooled over. Price for an office there is $39/sq ft (!!) but at least they don’t charge you to breathe while visiting the lobby.

Reason #3 to stay in LA:
LA Central Library

I had no idea this place was so MASSIVE. 8 stories with a museum or gallery on each floor. Completely free. “The biggest library west of the Mississippi” the librarian told me. She helped me find Moby-Dick and so you have her to thank for my painful philosophical loomings. When she saw the tarnished hardcover copy of Moby-Dick she took it back to repair with an air of genuine concern. It touched me. In a vast library of millions of books, a librarian found it necessary to repair the spine of a single second edition. In fact, the entire concept of a library was beautiful to me for the first time. In our stark and bleak capitalist dystopia a library stands in defiance as a free, humanitarian establishment. She fixed that book for no profit incentive. Isn’t that beautiful??? Having fun isn’t hard when you have a library card. Fuck it, I would graduate the LA Central Library to a higher tier of “Reason #1 to have faith in the side of goodness in the modern world.”

Drama aside (tough task for me), I vow to spend my last 8 months in LA squeezing every inch of wonder this city has to offer. I will not leave this place having given up – I will leave this place wishing I could have stayed longer. LA is home now. Strange to say.

But I am Marcello Mottola and I have a life to lead.

I am Max Bennett Kelly and adventure awaits.

I am Ishmael and the sea calls. Can’t wait ’til I catch the whale! (I’m one chapter in).

Cheers to 2025. It’s going to be beautiful -mbk

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Austin Tacos

Posted on December 31, 2024 by max

I end this year entirely different than I began it. I guess we all do that, every year, but this year feels significant. Just like every year feels significant.

***What’s that?***
Jaded much? No sister, I call it cynical optimism.

Buckle up – it’s a sad road, but it ends up happy. Ish. I’m talking about this entry, by the way, but it applies to life as well. Funny.

What do I believe? Well, long term, I can’t logically reject that it’s all “pointless.” By all definitions of the word: there’s no conclusion we reach, there’s no happily ever after. It’s been a long time since I’ve believed our endless strife ends in a gliding plateau. The perfect wife, the perfect career, the house with a yard. A family. Over, done with, see ya in the next life. That doesn’t really align with my understanding of reality. No, there’s ups and downs, and I suppose if you’re lucky you might end on a peak and kick the bucket before you reach the next valley.

Okay… The next most realistic scenario, then, is that in your fleeting last moment before you die, you happen to feel fulfilled in everything you’ve done. I know the feeling of fulfillment – it would be nice if that’s how it ended! Don’t have to deal with the next disappointment. But this is wishful thinking as well. Most likely, Alzheimer’s takes over and you head out drooling. If you’re lucky, your last moments will be on the phone calling your relative by the wrong name and they’re too sad to correct you.

No, I believe that everything ends the way it always was. When you say goodbye to someone, you don’t get a perfect moment of closure in which they’re the best version of themselves and they tell you the exact combination of words you needed to hear from them. At best, you get a lingering glance out of the driver’s door of the Prius and a Mona Lisa smile you’re gonna spend the rest of your life deciphering. I don’t understand you, because I never truly did, and everything ends the way it always does.

So while everything ends, there are moments along the way that are undeniably beautiful and justify the journey. And after the ride is over, the memories don’t come flooding back all at once, but in small bursts when you revisit a place that you didn’t even realize was significant when it was part of your life. And all of a sudden, in line at Coffee Commissary you remember her favorite breakfast order and laugh to yourself about how funny it was to hear it in her accent, and curse whoever gives meal orders stupid names that you’re forced to call them to the server because now you have to order something else. Veggie burrito, please.

Ultimately, everything ends, which is sad, but it ends the way it always was, so if it was fun and beautiful and silly and light and full of love then it’s okay that it’s over. The year is over, but it was never really happening, you were living moment by moment even when you didn’t think you were, even when you didn’t think you were truly experiencing everything life has to offer, because you were breathing and you were thinking and you got a dog and you filmed a movie and you lived with someone for the first time and you made 2 EPs but didn’t put any music out and you got to travel all over the world and you quit the vape and you made money for the first time and your sister married your childhood best friend and your other childhood best friend married his high school sweetheart and your new best friend got engaged to his first love and you got the loft you always wanted and you’re in the Uber on the way to some random party to ring in the New Year with people you don’t know and you’re proud of yourself because today was extremely hard but you remembered to eat and call your friends and you didn’t sit inside watching How I Met Your Mother but you showered and put on a turtleneck because tonight is going to be amazing despite how certain you are that it’s going to be as underwhelming as every other New Year’s turns out. But you pay the $50 Uber anyways because even though it’s fucking devastatingly hard moment by moment you never fucking give up, you never have and you never will. And tonight 2024 will end and 2025 will begin and it will all start over again and you’re gonna think the same exact thing next year, probably, just like you think the same thing on the same day every single year, and maybe when it’s New Life’s Eve and the ball drops over the Times Square of your time here on Earth you’ll face the light with certainty that the next journey will be just as hard and beautiful as this one was.

Or something.

Happy new year’s. ‘Til next time -mbk

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