Reverence

It’s not always easy to locate the origins of The Discourse. Terms like “intention,” “doing the work” and “unlearning” might be on-trend vocabulary now. On trend for whom? Angelenos wonder. These aren’t just pedagogical buzzwords in L.A.; they’re how we make it home.

Ask any person who has attempted to get off the 10 at Hoover or Vermont, or tried not getting stuck going to San Pedro, what happens when you do so without intention. (You miss the exit.) “Doing the work” is top of mind as we glance at organizers offering free phone charges to unhoused people while the luxury towers cast shade over Little Toyko; it’s what we think about walking past some neighbors sweeping aside the unattended nails loitering in the middle of Wilshire. The people of L.A. know what it takes to reveal beauty: unlearning the many stages of fugazi that created the eyesores in the first place.

The beauty of L.A. is intuitive. We get credit around the world for what’s above the hood but here, beauty is just as much about feeling as it is about looks. What moves us is having some skin in the game. The pushes, pulls, pokes are really just signs that love can hurt so good. Beauty punctures — and we would have it no other way. We seek out that space of vulnerability; the search for where beauty resides is a shared experience. Angelenos are proselytizers of process. Our desire to reveal beauty moves us, bonds us, empowers us to be accountable to its promise. We know what could be. So we use our imaginations; in our mind’s eye our beloved city looks like it does in our dreams.

Issue 5 is titled “Reverence.” Your warm embrace has arrived in the form of art, stories, conversations — tender hugs from L.A.'s very own. Julissa James bears witness to the humanity contained in the faces of loved ones drawn on bodies by some of the best portrait artists around. Jean Chen Ho mines the rawness of loss in the form of a thirst trap. Mr. Wash shares his gift of empathy with AJ Girard. Taylor Renee Aldridge talks to Texas Isaiah about the photographer’s “ability to evidence parts of ourselves that we don’t know or intentionally conceal.”

Seeing, thinking about or creating beauty begins from a place of deep respect, love. Los Angeles has been doing the work. It’s time The Discourse took an intentional westward turn.

Ian F. Blair
Editor in chief