If one comes to the city of Los Angeles they will find a star shining within its borders. This shining star is the district of Hollywood. Hollywood is the most famous district of the city and very probably the most famous district of the world. Hollywood is often perceived as being a city --- and she formerly had been. But Hollywood gave up her cityhood to become a district of Los Angeles in order to obtain water rights shortly after the turn of the twentieth century.
Hollywood originally started out as a strait laced and genteel lady but lost her inhibitions to become a brazen hussy. She kept the facade of being high class, deluding even herself as to what she had become as she aged, and not gracefully. She became drunk on power and notoriety, turning into a foul mouthed and fickle bawd. Down but never out, often misunderstood, she is quite the trooper. She hangs in there even when the public has tossed her out as gutter trash during the hard times she has often faced. She is recognized publicly as the yipping bitch dog of success. But in private she is often the crying cat of failure.
A wooing siren, she is often cruel and disdainful. She entices many to seek their fortunes within her indifferent and conscienceless streets. How many end up on her boulevards of broken and ground down into powder dreams? How many facets are there to this glitter rhinestone of a district, this tinsel town that is not a town but a state of mind and attitude?
There are five points of a star and in Hollywood can be found five areas that make up who and what Hollywood is.
ARTANGELES ( Artwould )
Upper most to be found in Hollywood are the artistic dreamers who reside in Artangeles. It is here one finds the artistic, those who have the restless fire to create. They dance within the flame of Bohemia, to the siren song of the Muse. They come to Hollywood with their wild hearts, their art and their dreams, hoping to succeed. These take what they can without giving up the identity of whom they are and what they are. They are the ones who are talented, who will not sell themselves short. Art has been the gift given to them. They will not prostitute that gift for gain. They will not lie down for the whoremongers of the casting couch. Nor will they sell out for a life of leisure bought at the expense of their souls or their integrity.
Artangeles is where many begin and where many will end.
Many have doctorates in the School of Hard Knocks. They know they live in a world where art is devalued, where their genius is seen as madness or as something criminal. The flame of creativity accelerates in them. It is art that is the adrenaline that races through their restless souls. They can do nothing else with their lives. They are who they are. Their God given talent is a blessing sort of. It can seem like a curse in the face of poverty and obscurity that knows their unknown names and faces. These are neither the whores or the fools of the Industry that calls itself Entertainment or Music. They are not the slaves of the suits that use and then discard. They don't create according to "formula." Who they are is in their genes, their genius. Theirs are lives lived in shadow, lives filled with kaleidoscopic visions others seldom see.
They might never find the fame or the fortune. But they do not perceive themselves as being failures. They continue to persevere even in the face of all odds. If they have a motto it is that of never giving up. Their success might be that they have accepted their lot in life even if their lot is that of a small single apartment or hotel room where they wile away their years in the pursuit of creating. They might not be recognized or adored by the masses but they are respected by their peers.
They live their lives in humbling poverty or on the edge of such. When one of the talented make it into the realm of stars, the rich and famous, those who live their lives on the shadowed side of the limelight cheer. There but for fortune it could have been them!
LOS DIABLOS ( Hellywood )
Some are too impatient or can not bear the thought of living outside of the bright glare of fame. They put out or sell out and find themselves thrust out of Artangeles. They have given up their art for the hollow face of fame or the bottomless bag of greed with its never satisfied avarice of fortune. This brings us to Los Diablos: the city of Devils.
Sell your soul for rock and roll? Certainly. Be a star --- but pay the price for your name in lights on the marquee of the concert hall or theater. You can sell your soul for fame, for fortune, for infamy. Someone will pay whatever it takes to get what they want or think they want. They will sell their soul for peanuts --- or for palaces. In the end they might come to realize they had sold diamonds for cut glass, gold for tinsel. Some might be bitter once they realize how they have been cheated. Others will defiantly shake their fists at heaven even as their souls cringe and shriek as they are taken to hell.
Can you hear the devil's laughter? The devil not only will get his due but he will cheat those who try to bargain with him. He will take his due as well as any dues they feel they had a right to collect on. Any dues they pay to get what they want or think they want is something often found to be not worth having. A limelight can turn to a slimelight. A star can be an oozing scar. A mansion in Los Diablos: to live in hell. But make a deal with the devil. It is a broad road many have traveled on.
Vampires, wer-creatures, hybrids of heaven and hell; these are also found in Los Diablos. and not all blood suckers are UnDead. Some of them are homo sapiens, more inhumane than the traditional creatures of the darkness. Fiends and freaks, fame seekers and fortune hunters find their way to this city of the diabolical.
If one knows how, they can repent of their devil's so-called "bargain." They might find themselves on the outskirts of Los Diablos The devil is not going to TELL them they have a chance to escape from the glitter spangled tinsel cages he offers them. They think they are damned because the devil tells them they are. Yes, some have crossed from light into darkness. Many do not find this out until it is too late to turn back and receive redemption for the souls they have cast aside for so little in return. There ARE gates in Los Diablo that can be entered only by the diabolically chipped. These are those who have given all for evil, for the chance to have power and do whatever they please. These, who are truly damned, rejoice at trampling under foot anything that is good.
While many are damned there are those who do have hope. Some long to find themselves with less fame and more salvation. For them there could be a chance that they are not truly lost.
CHRISTANGEL
Repent and find yourself in Christangel. This is the area of Hollywood where one finds more poor than rich, beggars on the streets, riffraff that needs a helping hand. There are gentle souls who give and rejoice in the giving. There are those who are hidden in the Light. They work behind the limelight that entices the innocent and the evil into stardom.
Christangel has missions and churches. It has sinners redeemed and saints. There are those who have a mission and calling to save a soul. Others are there to fleece the flock. There are many kooky religions, New Agey and otherwise. They all come with their brand of "Christ" whether one within or without. There are Christians to be found in high places ( a few ) and in low places ( more than a few ). There are preachers, teachers, leechers and creatures willing to cater to whatever itching ears or broken hearts want to hear or worship.
Christangel is not all that it seems. It hides more than a hypocrite or two. These hypocrites are often found inside of a very bright limelight. These are the"Christians" the rest of the world sees in Hollywood. The "Jesus" they worship is one of celebrity, a superstar rather than an Savior.
Cults and religions, thousands of them, flourish and thrive in the land of hopes and avarice. There are eastern religion gurus who preach a life of hunger and abstinence while they live lives of gluttony and depravity. There are Jewish temples and kabbalists. There are varying cults, ancient or modern, some worship wearing a mask of Christ that never existed; others are honestly pagan.
Many believers are those who believe in using the cults and churches for a network into a limelight that will give them fortune and fame. Religion is thriving in Christangel though true Christians are often anonymous. Even less than the integrity driven Bohemian, the Christian artist in Hollywood has less of a chance for fame and fortune. But then their souls are no longer their own and are not for sale for any price to the devil who would offer what so many others have bartered away for tinsel fortune and glitter fame.
GLAMANGELII
Illusion is the stock and trade of Hollywood. Where better to be seen or imagined in than in Glamangelii, the faery land of fantasy? It is here that illusion holds sway. It is an alternative Hollywood --- complete with alternative realities, a world of other place and time: Hollywood as it might have been or could be. Here you have glitter and glam, faeries and elfin, other worlds that exist side by side within the fantasy factories and on the dream boulevards of surreality. Here is a world of twilight, of shadows that might call your name or wear your face.
Glamour --- the entrancement of the many, the illusion that is spun like a glittering web to snare the innocent or the not so innocent in a maze of hunger, the hunger for the fulfillment of one's dreams. How many come to Hollywood with stars in their eyes, the glamour of what Hollywood represents to them, a fresh hope in their souls?
The borders of the Otherworld are closest to earth in this district of tinsel and enticement. The elfin kin have always loved trading faery gold ( that would turn to dry leaves ) for youth and its passion. The small screen offers up the delusion that things will be better, that YOU TOO can become one of the favored few, the celebrity, the icon adored and idolized by the masses. But the facade is a papier mache and crepe paper hung fantasy that turns to a multicolor mass of muddied confetti once a cold rain brings it to the streets of a hard stone reality.
Chance, Fate, Fortune and Fame walk the boulevards of Glamangelii. The windows of a neon shadow with an ironic smile, a shadow called Opportunity, those stained glass or marchpane sweet windows look out onto Glamangelii's Boulevard of Realized Dreams. And those doors of Opportunity --- will they open for you as you walk towards them, your heart full of hope and wonderment?
If the streets appear to be strewn with gold, if the stars in the sky are shining as brightly as diamond-flame above the smog clouded evening; if the stars on the street seem to cry out for your autograph, then it is possible you have walked from the bus station to this boulevard of sparkling enchantment here in Glamangelii.
BROKANGELZIN
Broken: the Broken Angels. Brokangelzin is where those who cannot accept the reality of obscurity and poverty find themselves. They have been broken by the loss of their hopes and their dreams, sometimes to the brittle point of madness. They live on the back streets of the boulevards, these crumpled remains of once hopeful and happy humans. They hide away their pain and their agony with a proud defiance, a curt anti-social rudeness.
They cannot ( or will not ) go back to where ever they came from. They will not go back to the small town or suburb that will never let them forget that they went to Hollywood and did not become a star. They cannot admit to failure. They have given up the dream and do not want to look at the reality of their broken down lives. Their only dream was that of stardom. They are not content to live in obscurity. They are not content to be embraced by the shadow they dread: Obscurity with a passionless face --- their face. No one knows their name. No one knows their face. No one cares. But THEY care. They are broken and they are eaten up by the bitterness that has left them with nothing. There is only the shattered reality of the once shining star that never shined except in their wanting and now dissatisfied hearts. The worm of you never made it mockery will greedily devour their souls and leave them with a broken and sharp edged future they face but never accept.
Also broken are those who have taken the bite out of reality's sharpened teeth by losing themselves in the uglier reality of drugs and alcohol. Their candyman will peddle them a sugar that is a deadlier poison than the addiction of fame. Their death in life is found in substances that will abuse and destroy them and those they can leech off of and blame for their own failings. These, who turn their lack of ambition into a loser's pitiful dance of darkness, might be on the street and sleeping off drunk or a high.
Or they could be nursing away their never healing wounds in a darkened room away from the limelight that might have faded or never was. Dreams to be had, found or lost, they lie broken in the dust of Brokangelzin.
FIVE POINTS OF THE STAR
HOLLYWOOD, the Star of Los Angeles, she shines for you with her five points of reality:
Artangeles: the Bohemian Enclave
Los Diablos: the rich and the damned
Christangel: with salvation -- for free or for a price
Glamangelii" where illusion and glamour hold sway.
Brokangelzin: where hope is gone and bitterness reigns
HOLLYWOOD: that grand old dame, tawdry bawd and defiant wild child of Los Angeles ----
she welcomes you!
1-1-2004 Hollywood
2-12-2007 Hollywood ( revised )
1-3-2015 Indio ( revised )
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