New York is about success. Maybe that's why it's no longer the world's cultural capital
... I realized then that most people I met in New York were happily observing and talking about culture, but not necessarily contributing to it. It seemed New York had entered the pantheon of big cities that people visit and observe and patronize and document, but don't actually add to, like Paris. No one goes to Paris imagining how they can contribute to the city. People go to Paris thinking, "Wow, I want to get my picture taken with Paris in the background." That's what New York became, a victim of its own photogenic beauty and success. ...
And, to again state the obvious, New York is exclusively about success – it's success that has been fed steroids and vitamin B. There's a sense that New Yorkers never fail, but if they do, they're exorcised from memory, kind of like Trotsky in early pictures of the Soviet Communist Politburo. In New York, you can be easily overwhelmed by how much success everyone else seems to be having, whereas in LA, everybody publicly fails at some point – even the most successful people. A writer's screenplay may be turned into a major movie, but there's a good chance her next five screenplays won't even get picked up. An actor may star in acclaimed films for two years, then go a decade without work. A musician who has sold well might put out a complete failure of a record – then bounce back with the next one. Experimentation and a grudging familiarity with occasional failure are part of LA's ethos.
Maybe I'm romanticizing failure, but when it's shared, it can be emancipating and even create solidarity. Young artists in LA can really experiment, and if their efforts fall short, it's not that bad because their rent is relatively cheap and almost everyone else they know is trying new things and failing, too. There's also the exciting, and not unprecedented, prospect of succeeding at a global level. You can make something out of nothing here. Take Katy Perry. She's a perfectly fine singer who one minute was literally couch surfing and the next was a household name selling out 50,000-capacity stadiums. Or Quentin Tarantino, one minute a video clerk,1 the next minute one of the most successful writer/directors in history. Los Angeles2 captures that strange, exciting and at times delusional American notion of magical self-invention.