Text: HOMAGE TO LA: A SLAUGHTERHOUSE OF DREAMS

from Boris, 15.01.10

The
smell hits you as soon as you step out of the air-conditioned airport.
You feel the residue, the fallout of broken dreams hitting your palate.
The charred remains of incinerated hopes mix with the omnipresent smog
and invade every pore of your being.

The shuttle bus takes you
to your hotel over miles and miles of pulverized aspirations paved over
by concrete highways. From the bus window you can see the Hollywood
Boulevard, where gold stars are set into asphalt, merging imperceptibly
with the Promenade of Dead Dreams where the stars are wrought of dirty
and soggy cardboard and are stuck onto the pavement with scotch tape or
wads of old gum. Each cardboard star marks the exact spot where a
particular dream breathed its last.

Different dreams die in
different ways. Some shatter into jagged shards and one gets badly cut
trying to piece them together again. Some fragment into neat,
symmetrical fragments and re-construction is a relatively
straightforward task, sort of like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Others
just crumble away, like burnt paper, and nothing is left to do except
to warm your hands over their long-cold ashes.

Around each
broken dream a mass of people sit in huddles, protecting it, as best as
they can, from the elements and the vagaries of fate and keeping a
vigil, just in case it stirs and shows signs of life, for no dream can
be obliterated completely.

LA,
a Dream Slaughterhouse masquerading diabolically as a Dream Factory.
The dream incinerators keep working day and night, around the clock,
producing clouds of smoke that comprise of dreams reduced to their base
elements: deep yearnings, life-long desires, burning ambitions, great
aspirations, ineffable hunches rumbling just below the conscious mind,
half-remembered childhood premonitions.

The city takes delight in
finding new ways to kill dreams, in finding new dreams to put to death,
in searching every nook and cranny of one’s soul and mind for any
cherished hopes that may be in hiding there. The perversity of its
depravity is such that it even gives birth to dreams just so that it
can shoot them and watch them die. It makes you come face to face with
your shortcomings, makes you face your failures. It knows all the
delusions that comfort and warm us throughout our lives, keeping us
secure and contented, the delusions that sustain us through our daily
struggles, the delusions that we use to solve our existential crises,
the delusions that help us through our darkest times.

Every
delusion gets hunted down and taken care of in this town: the delusion
that one is destined for greatness; the delusion that one is special
and unique; the delusion that one is a genius whom the world doesn’t
appreciate; the delusion that all will turn out well in the future; the
delusion that there will come a day when one will begin to live happily
ever after; the delusion that one has unique talents and ideas; the
delusion that you alone, out of the multitude in the present world and
throughout history, will be spared from death; the delusion that one is
protected by fate and special luck from bad things happening to them;
the delusion that one will find meaning in one’s tribulations and that
one’s struggles will be justified in retrospect; the delusion that one
will find a soul mate meant just for them and whose love will save
them; the delusion that one does not have any delusions; the delusion
that one is in possession of insights into life that the rest of the
world lacks and that one is privy to truths that no one else can
access; the delusion that the convictions that one tenaciously holds on
to are not delusions at all but are rather veracious, valid beliefs
derived from experience and insight and supported by evidence from both
the outer and inner worlds; the delusion that one is above the laws of
humanity and deserves to be treated differently; the delusion that a
lucky break will come to you in the end or that you will be saved by
someone; the delusion that someone somewhere is working on your behalf,
trying to help you and looking after you.

Over
the eons the native denizens of the city have evolved a protection
mechanism - they dream only fake dreams and have only counterfeit
delusions so that when their hopes are destroyed, it doesn’t hurt at
all. Only the unwary outsiders possess no genetic defense system and it
is their dreams that the metropolis preys upon.

The mountains,
mute witnesses to the tribulations and sufferings down below, are
always there, solid and eternal, their presence contrasting sharply
with the ethereal and evanescent dreams floating around in the valleys.

Yet
there might be an explanation to this incongruity for according to an
old Amerindian legend, the LA area was once flat as a pancake. Over
time the detritus of destroyed dreams, the ashes, scraps, chunks, bits
and pieces landed on the outskirts and created the mountains, each
broken dream contributing about 2/7 of an inch to the mountains’ height.

The mountains say nothing, expressing themselves through that most ancient and most profound language of all – absolute silence.

Text: HOMAGE TO LA: A SLAUGHTERHOUSE OF DREAMS

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