[Author’s Note: this Blog Post was heavily changed and repurposed to function as a chapter in the TMR Novel. This is the Revised & Refined version. Toggle under the title to read the Original & Unedited form.]

I spent my birthday in San Diego this year. I didn’t expect to be here; I drove down in light of the wildfires in LA. It’s hard to process the reality of living through a catastrophic natural disaster. It’s even harder to process that I had just written 2 blog entries about metaphorical fire, and then a Real fire happened. And before that, I wrote about Eaton Canyon Falls, which is now destroyed. Coincidence? Cruel Kismet?
Let’s not get carried away.
I know I didn’t literally cause the fires to happen, but in my head, in the way I’ve organized the Story™, I wrote about fire, and then a fire happened. All the Witchy books talk about Manifesting and The Secret and how you can actualize the good things you want to happen in your life just by thinking about them. Why then does this not apply to bad things? Is there some sort of cosmic sieve that filters out bad manifestations and leaves the good ones?

I wrote that entry deep into Covid, a time which felt very similar to this week of wildfires. An ostensible apocalypse increases local entropy, and the metaphysical opportunist in me foams at the mouth.

— The Finesser’s Gambit —
Where there’s chaos, there’s Magic.

I ran into some friends over the weekend, secondary or tertiary friends who also fled to San Diego. Nothing like imminent doom to make me say, Hey Why Don’t We Hang Out More Often? There Are No Rules! as if the rules were what prevented us from hanging out in LA. I hate following the rules under Normal circumstances. Chaos helps everyone else see things my way.
I was never much of a wu-wu person until Covid, or perhaps it was dormant in me and it took a shakeup to get the juices flowing. The summer of 2020, I took Too Many Mushrooms for the first time, but I didn’t have my important breakthrough until a few days later, when I was off the drug. Well, I guess the Cube was still in my system, so maybe the thought was mushroom-induced. What counts as being “on drugs?” Were The Beatles literally on LSD while they were in the studio, or were they soberly recording Sgt. Pepper’s during a time in their life when they were taking it frequently? I digress.
By fall, any tether I had to my former idea of reality was out the proverbial window. I graduated college, ready to enter the Real World™, and I found myself with endless free time, living off unemployment and stimulus checks in a new city without the friends who had come down here with me. I tried Doing my Music, but had so much to learn before I could become a full-service solo operation. I didn’t realize how much I had been relying on the guys. Naturally, I procrastinated. Clev and I couldn’t make any new friends due to social distancing orders, so we spent most of our time together doing yoga and being vegan and getting stoned and running half-marathons. One day, I decided to walk 2 miles to Trader Joe’s because I didn’t have shit else to do. I did my week’s worth of shopping¹ and regretted my decision to walk when I had to carry the bags back. What is wrong with me, I contemplated sweatily. What am I Supposed To be doing?
I stopped in my tracks. What was I Supposed To be doing? The last remnants of psilocybin in my brain made me think of this phrase differently than I ever had before. There were a lot of things I was Supposed To be doing, but Supposed To had died with the Real World™ back in March. There were no more rules. Maybe there never were any at all. Then the concept came to me fully formed: I Am The Salmon.

— What this meant was —
The Flow Of The Universe Has Reversed Direction And You’re Going To Have To Swim Upstream To Get To Where You Want To Be.

I called Clev immediately. The Cube Just Told Me How To Change Our Lives, I said. We were going to set up a folding table around various places in LA and busk.
“What are we selling?” Clev asked.
Good Question, I said, That’s The Right Question To Ask Right Now. I had no music out, so we’d just be asking people to follow us on social media. @marcello.mottola had reached a dead end, so I samsara’d into @maxbennettkelly, which was the name of a character I had made up as a kid. Oh yeah, And That’ll Be The Name Of My Artist Project™.
“But we have to wear masks. How will people know what we look like? Won’t it be hard to connect with us?”
True True— okay, let’s professionally print 8-foot tall signs of our faces and put our social handles on them. And we’d better get some beach chairs because we’re going to sit at this table for 8 hours a day. Oh, and we’re going to do this for 30 days straight. And Then Our Lives Will Change.
“Sounds fun,” Clev said.
We called this activity Signs, and if it sounds crazy it’s because it Absolutely Is. This was the first time I ever did some of the classic Psychotic Shit I’m wont to do, and it fucking worked.

That’s the rest of the journal entry from earlier. I wrote that on the sixth day of Signs. The first few days, I was drawing caricatures on the Santa Monica Pier, but the diminishing returns of drawing a caricature for the chance to net a single follower were making my hand cramp. We had to optimize. We started buying-and-returning costumes from Daddy Bezos. One day on the Venice Boardwalk, I was a ringmaster with a bullwhip, and Clev was a strongman in a leotard. On Rodeo Drive, I was a doctor, and Clev was a nurse². We set up a mock chemistry set at the Promenade and asked people to Do Science with us. Outside of the Melrose Trading Post, we wore metallic, headless morphsuits³.
That day, a Sunday, a girl from across the street beelined towards us to see what we were up to.
“I respect the hustle,” she said. “Are you guys TikTokers?”
No Way, I said, I Do Music.
“Well,” she asked, “where’s the music?”
Oh yeah, I thought, that’s what I was Supposed To be doing.

— A Simple Concept abstracted to Absolute Insanity —
And So I Was The Salmon.

That girl was Codename: Emily, and I knew in my first 2 seconds of meeting her that I’d be Superinlove with her. She was a musician, too, and she was great for my Pen. I loved writing about her. I loved the way she made me feel like my music mattered and that my dreams were Possible. I started to think I loved her, too, and that led to its whole own sordid Story™. Of All The Sidewalks In The World. For now, she was a reminder that I was Supposed To be Doing Music. Hey— That’s Why I Came To LA. She introduced me to Slush Puppy, whose song “Juliette” inspired me to finish the “Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted” demo, which sat in the vault for a while before it Changed Everything a few months later.
I still feel the ripples created by every single person we met during those 30 days of Signs. Towards the middle, I met Codename: Ace, who became my first collaborator since the demise of The Old Band. We were Twin Flames. They liked to do a bunch of weird shit, too. They even joined Clev and me for Signs a few times, handing out their own stickers and merchandise. I had never met someone who so closely matched my maniacal energy. We’d record, we’d shoot music videos, we’d make clothes, we’d go to parties, we’d explore LA. They introduced me to Caleb, who is now my Big City dating co-conspirator and right-hand blogger. They inspired me to finally put out my first song under the name “Max Bennett Kelly.” They believed in me.
They also thought we were in love.
“We should talk about our relationship,” they said to me, walking back to my Honda Prelude after a long video shoot.
I was flabbergasted. I thought we were friends. What signs had I given them? We had never touched, never even come close.
I had to say, We Are Not In A Relationship, of course. It was the Truth, but saying it felt like a Lie, somehow. To myself, or to them. My view of dating was challenged. We were inseparable, but not intimate. To me, this meant we were not dating. But I’ve been in relationships where we were intimate, but the love wasn’t there. So what was this? I told Codename: Ace we were not in a relationship, and yet I add them to my lineup of suspects.
Perhaps it all started here, with Signs? I learned that if you do something weird, you maximize entropy and can use that chaos to create opportunities you wouldn’t find otherwise. It’s like a Magic Spell to activate the Mechanism behind the Machine— I Challenge You, the invocation goes, Show Yourself! 4 years later, I’m constantly doing something weird. I have to exist in a state of maximum local entropy to induce Magic. That’s the only way to make things happen as an artist. You won’t get inspiration from living a Normal life. So I enter strange, reality-warping relationships. I refuse to get a job so I can open my days to whatever sidequests are thrown at me. I live off my credit cards to stress myself out enough to pull a deal out of thin air. Everything is leverage. But I’ve inflated my lifestyle and responsibilities, and it’s getting difficult to keep the plates spinning. That’s when the Magic happens, right? I know it’s going to be a good year. True Modern Romance is going to Change Everything all over again.
It’ll all be worth it. Right?
I’m writing this entry on a bench at the Waterfront Park in San Diego, across from the Maritime Museum. A man walked up and asked, “What are you writing?”
Saying I was writing a blog about my music outside with no Wi-Fi seemed a little convluted, so I said, I’m Writing A Book.
“Are you an author?” he said.
Actually, I said, I’m A Musician.
He smiled at me a little funny and walked away.
I wonder how much less worried about my music career I’d be if, for once, I just focused on Doing Music. I try not to think about the consequences if none of this works out. My career is built on spinning plates. Is it Possible for them to stabilize? Can you even rely on stability? The world seems stable, but a pandemic comes around and destroys the illusion. A city seems solid until a wildfire burns it all down. A 2½-year relationship seems like forever until someone wakes up one day and realizes you can just walk away. It’s all leverage. We put our hopes into the mirage of permanence when really, everything is inching closer to entropy every second. So Why Not Lean In?
I have to go back to LA at some point, but I don’t want to. I’m gonna hide out in San Diego for as long as I can justify doing so. Hell, maybe I’ll buy a ticket to New York. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Caleb. I have the freedom to do whatever I want, right now. Might as well make the most of it while I can.

Keep on reading into it
—mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. Thanks, EBT card. ↩
2. Both barefoot, for some reason. ↩
3. I wore gold and Clev wore purple. ↩

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