Spiritual Temperature Check #1: Los Angeles

The Psychic City of Los Angeles, January 2024.

This is the spiritual temperature check for Los Angeles, taken at the beginning of 2024. It’s hot out here.

i. In a coffee shop, a girl talks to her friend about her January workout plan. She is semi-ironically manifesting a more aesthetically pleasing butt. “In fact, I want a butt so big it’s doing the manifesting for me, you know?” she says. I briefly wonder if it’s possible to be obnoxious and high vibrational and decide that it must be because that’s the exact personal brand of every manifestation coach.

ii. The sun is an eternal symbol of energy and positivity and, in astrology, represents the self. Los Angeles is all about the sun. It has 26 degree celsius January days; its endless summer promises self-actualisation. There are no seasons here, which is a blessing and a curse for its fable of consciousness. When everyone is so focused on striving, there’s no sense of the time they’ve been forging ahead without results. Months, years, a strange sort of lifetime.

iii. I flew here from London on the 1st of January to begin the year as I mean to continue: doing exactly what I want to do. This could be a pure path for someone who automatically collapses into other people's agendas (in order to receive: love, connection, obliteration of self, all the good things). So, being selfish is a Godly act, actually. 

iv. Every psychic storefront will offer $20 readings but once you’ve had your reading, the psychic will ask for $120 or more. 

v. I take a photo of the house in West LA I’m staying in and send it to my friend who is studying to be a medium and also doing a PhD (unrelated). It’s a single-story white building with purple flowers outside. She replies excitedly that purple flowers are a positive sign for her. I don’t know if this means it’s a positive sign for me too, or if it’s exclusively a message for her through the conduit of me.  

vi. The spin instructor I have a parasocial relationship with—J, Real Housewives fan, fire sign personality, probably a Leo—says, as we go 120bpm readying for a sprint: “Your bikes might be stationary but that doesn’t mean you’re not going anywhere...you know what I’m saying?” We totally knew what he was saying.

 vii. At an event that promises to teach people how to become psychic, we’re ordered to get metal spoons out of our gift bags. The psychic tells us that she knows it’s giving Uri Geller but to channel upbeat happy energy into the spoon while tapping it against our free palm. Katrina And The Waves — “Walking On Sunshine” plays on the overheads and everyone starts laughing and dancing and tapping their spoons. After about thirty seconds, the first gasp and elated “oh my God” precedes a bent spoon held in the air. Many spoons meet their fate after that. Nothing happens to mine. I smack it lightly and then I smack it hard. A middle-aged woman looks at me proudly—smugly?— holding a spoon that looks like a pretzel. 

viii. Heavenly sounds: 963 hz music a Jesus Saves woman in the street plays to me off her iPhone. This hertz is apparently called the God Frequency. The thick hiss of milk frothing in coffee shops. The dogs, so many dogs, every size, beloved like children, treated like adults, barking against the constant white noise of traffic. 

ix. If J the spin instructor started a cult, I would join it. 

x. There is no other city in the world that makes my nervous system as dysregulated as Los Angeles. There is no other city in the world that is as relaxing in theory* as Los Angeles. There is no other city in the world that feels as exciting to me as Los Angeles. *for those with a $200,000 or above income per year. 

xi. At the beginning of a sincerely generic tarot reading, I feel electricity on the crown of my head. All of the following could be true: a) I am connected to the universe but the reader is poor, b) lightning is striking somewhere close, c) I am a generic person with indistinct problems.

xii. At a dinner party of free-spirited Hollywood creatives in their fifties and sixties, a woman corners me in the kitchen. For an hour or so, she explains how her rebirthing experience in a pool of fluids somewhere near LAX accidentally led to her being abducted by aliens. It’s pretty out there. Her words, not mine.

xiii. If you cast an astrological chart for Los Angeles, you’ll see that the city is a Virgo sun (meaning a fussy, health-conscious identity), Aries moon (emotionally bossy and a baby—a boss baby, if you will) and Libra rising (aesthetically and outwardly romantic and artistic, shallow). 

xiv. My face needs to have an ascension experience. My cheekbones and neckline are puffy where they were once defined. I go on TikTok for the first time in a month or so looking for a gua sha tutorial. A hot American woman in her twenties has a helpful video that features her Before (normal face, At Ease) and After (snatched face, bratty pose). One commenter asks if she’s had any other work done and the woman replies that she’s had a nose job and filler. In another video she gives her tips on how to be hotter. “Number three is stop telling people your insecurities, even your friends,” she says, brandishing a make-up brush. “The minute you tell people what you’re insecure about, they’re gonna start noticing it.” 

xv. I keep noticing the angel number 999, which I assume means I’m in immediate danger, especially because the first time I see it is when I’m doing something I definitely shouldn’t be doing. I cross-reference articles on Cosmopolitan, The Economic Times and HowStuffWorks.com, and discover that it means completion and new beginnings. On Reddit, a Juice WRLD fan had said that: Juice stated in an interview that the number 999 mean “taking whatever ill, whatever bad situation, whatever struggle you’re going through and turning it into something positive to push yourself forward.” Pretty much you’re flipping the Negative (666) into something better and more Positive (999). 

xvi. There’s a specific type of meditation I learn locally that involves observing only what goes on in the body. After a couple of weeks, I manage to get beyond the sensation that my skin is crawling. The first time I did it I couldn’t stop scratching. Now it’s like there’s nothing happening inside besides some intestinal squirming but I think I’m supposed to feel everything going on. 

xvii. The women in this city are either thin or perfectly thick: protagonists or Goddesses. 

xviii. Me and everyone I know here is seeing the advertisement on Instagram for something called “The Class”. It’s a sponsored video in muted tones that has Emma Stone in a tiny white yoga top explaining that taking The Class has changed her life. The Class saves. It’s an online cardio, strength and yoga class that incorporates meditation in some way. There are in-person studios in LA and New York. Like most brands now, it is part friend-part therapist: it promises to hold space for you and prizes authenticity as a value. We all want to try it.

xix. A new friend who is a psychic-medium and a hairdresser says that a lot of hairdressers are psychic—they’re up around your hair all the time, touching your head, of course they’re going to intuit information from you. 

xx. “There are no coincidences,” says a girl I once randomly met at an event when I bump into her at the crystal store. Spirituality culture is mostly about meaning-making in a world that currently has no meaning.

xxi. The smoothie is fucking delicious and cost $23 with a tip, which is about the cost of a healthy day now. On the plastic cup it reads: “Don’t KALE my vibe”. When I buy one the following day it reads: “I got 99 problems but TURMERIC SOLVED LIKE 86 of them” on it. The sensibility and tone of voice of the millennial early wellness world, the one that As Women we thought was so fucked up and dumb, seems relatively honourable and good natured now. We knew it was cringe but we didn’t know it would become cute.

xxii. At a show in Hollywood, a baby musician drinks as much of a large bottle of vodka as he can during the set. It’s his first live show. He updates us on his progress between songs. I feel a weird mixture of envy—at the opportunity to utterly obliterate yourself with spirits—and compassion. It’s so innocent to not only wear your fear like a t-shirt but publicise its fit on you without realising. Everyone knows he’s scared and everyone in the crowd is scared too. 

xxiii. What is the spiritual meaning of my trip to Los Angeles? I want to hear about money and success to be honest, but the glamorous psychic Brittany Leigh Gaddy asks the question for me. She pulls the Nine of Swords (anxiety, mental anguish, sleepless nights), the Four of Cups (missed opportunities, stagnation, self-absorption) and the Queen of Wands (confidence, independence, social butterfly). “It’s not the worst spread of cards it could be,” Brittany says. “At least you get your moment where it all turns around at the end.” 

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Updates:

I wrote this Bar Italia cover story for Crack magazine. They were a hype band, now signed to Matador. It was deeply enjoyable to listen to people shoot the shit and not overthink what they’re doing and I think that’s reflected in the profile. 

I’m moving on to Arizona for a couple of weeks tomorrow, which I’m excited about. Currently watching Yellowstone, working out properly for the first time in years, writing a couple of cover stories and manifesting fun and handsomely paid work opportunities from @universe.