billpalmer.net

I'm not sure I could be much further away from Hollywood at the moment. It's not the three thousand miles. It's the night-and-day reverse in culture, landscape, well, pretty much everything. I'm in a sleepy little town in Florida this week for the holidays, and while the west coast may be nowhere near, echoes of the six months I've spent in Los Angeles have nonetheless echoed every day I've been away from it.

I walk into the grocery store and Macy Gray's "I Try" is playing over the loudspeaker, and I can't help but recall the fact that Macy was standing in line to buy her iPhone at the Grove with the rest of us back on June 29th. I turn on ESPN News and there's a commercial featuring a song from Rocco DeLuca, and I think back to his after-party on the roof of the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard a few months ago. Flip past channel four and they're interviewing Joss Stone, whom I've never met but might eventually, considering she's a friend of a friend. I turn on a movie and it stars Robin Williams (who I met in California earlier this year) and features a song from KT Tunstall (who I met a few months ago thanks to Apple). Watch a repeat of Back to the Future Part III and there's Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing a high school punk. Isn't that the same Flea who was standing face to face with me while tuning his bass guitar before going on-stage, what, week before last?

It's not a matter of celebrity or name-dropping. It's just that when you realize that the people who have all this great effect on popular culture are in fact people you can meet, sit down with, talk to...they're just people...the world begins to feel cheerfully small. Why can't you or I have this kind of effect on culture? Well, we can. Doesn't mean you have to be a rock star or a movie star; I sure know I'll never be either. But I'll make my mark, and so will you if you keep thinking that you can.

In the mean time I'll just continue to sit back here in this sleepy place for the holidays and be reminded that no matter where you go, you're only as far away from the action as you want to be.