In his essay, "Hissy Fit," Steven Martin said, "Los Angeles is a city of abundant and compelling almosts. [...] As the surface is unpeeled, a deeper level is revealed, but just beneath that, the surface level appears again." He said the city is constantly offering "evidence of something richer that has just been missed."
People come to Los Angeles thinking the angels have made promises. Faith in yourself. Not confidence, but faith _ like a member of your own congregation, come to LA to find the executive or the director or the producer who will preach the gospel of you, give you your testament and proselytize your virtues. You're looking for the PR priest who will craft your word and the rag that'll spread it. Where once you were blind, now you shall be a Star.
The Star is a pilgrim until she becomes the symbol of her own faith, deified by her agent, a would-be Pope. LA is the Jerusalem for the young zealot, and a million holy wars are being waged here all the time, generals strategizing over hands-free cell phones. It is the Holy Land, the City of Angels, broadcasting love and joy and situation comedy to all the world, but so too is it smothered 'neath smog and lust and pills.
The Reverend agent standing in line at Starbucks shouts through a glowing ear bud to the heavenly Star, preaching to her of rehab. He casts out heathen production assistants in the parking lot and forgives the pool guy of his sins. He draws his strength from her love, but keeps her faith in check so she doesn't get off the hook. He is her missionary to middle America, summoner of ratings, but he tells his bartender she can be such a cunt. He knows that they are each real only through their belief in her _ who exists through his belief and yet made him what he is _ but he takes her name in vain. He is always on the lookout for a new messiah. He thinks he'd like to buy a bigger boat.
Mike Doughty said Los Angeles beckons the teenagers to come to her on buses. Mike Doughty said Los Angeles loves love. She is the holy mother or the archangel, either summoning the supplicant visionary to piety or appearing in fire as the harbinger of the Star's destiny as the next pretty face, the next sensation, the next fabulous ass.
The Star shall be her own mother and her own messiah, the virgin talent that gives birth to her own glorious fame under her own gleaming star. Every movie theater shall be her temple, until her star finally settles on earth in a sidewalk slab.
Cocaine is their wafer. Sex-sweat is their wine. Bottled water is holy. The critic is the Devil.
The contract is a holy text, and the Star is but a simple carpenter, so she has the priests decipher its meaning. She trusts the priests to their faces, but knows that in each of their hearts is a pore through which the poisonous blood of Mammon seeps. So she turns also to the million morphing Gnostic texts of some other dogmas, brought to LA by golems or space aliens, in the hopes of raising her heart up near heaven again, while keeping her million-dollar ass down here near Santa Monica.
People come to Los Angeles thinking the angels have made promises. Faith in yourself. Not confidence, but faith _ like a member of your own congregation, come to LA to find the executive or the director or the producer who will preach the gospel of you, give you your testament and proselytize your virtues. You're looking for the PR priest who will craft your word and the rag that'll spread it. Where once you were blind, now you shall be a Star.
The Star is a pilgrim until she becomes the symbol of her own faith, deified by her agent, a would-be Pope. LA is the Jerusalem for the young zealot, and a million holy wars are being waged here all the time, generals strategizing over hands-free cell phones. It is the Holy Land, the City of Angels, broadcasting love and joy and situation comedy to all the world, but so too is it smothered 'neath smog and lust and pills.
The Reverend agent standing in line at Starbucks shouts through a glowing ear bud to the heavenly Star, preaching to her of rehab. He casts out heathen production assistants in the parking lot and forgives the pool guy of his sins. He draws his strength from her love, but keeps her faith in check so she doesn't get off the hook. He is her missionary to middle America, summoner of ratings, but he tells his bartender she can be such a cunt. He knows that they are each real only through their belief in her _ who exists through his belief and yet made him what he is _ but he takes her name in vain. He is always on the lookout for a new messiah. He thinks he'd like to buy a bigger boat.
Mike Doughty said Los Angeles beckons the teenagers to come to her on buses. Mike Doughty said Los Angeles loves love. She is the holy mother or the archangel, either summoning the supplicant visionary to piety or appearing in fire as the harbinger of the Star's destiny as the next pretty face, the next sensation, the next fabulous ass.
The Star shall be her own mother and her own messiah, the virgin talent that gives birth to her own glorious fame under her own gleaming star. Every movie theater shall be her temple, until her star finally settles on earth in a sidewalk slab.
Cocaine is their wafer. Sex-sweat is their wine. Bottled water is holy. The critic is the Devil.
The contract is a holy text, and the Star is but a simple carpenter, so she has the priests decipher its meaning. She trusts the priests to their faces, but knows that in each of their hearts is a pore through which the poisonous blood of Mammon seeps. So she turns also to the million morphing Gnostic texts of some other dogmas, brought to LA by golems or space aliens, in the hopes of raising her heart up near heaven again, while keeping her million-dollar ass down here near Santa Monica.
By the way, SGATL is having an open event this Friday. Check out the info here and let me know if you can make it!