Il Diluvio

Il Deluvio

The stench of broken empire rose in the West and soon bathed the new earth in its swaddling decay. The Empire's pyre was built on the broken back of the twentieth century, it's centurial conclusion lit the rickety, dry sticks propping the Empire up so that it always appeared taller somehow, psychologically dominant, a facade, sleight of hand. The Empire's dueling illegal excursions into the Fertile Crescent at the birth of the twenty-first century marked the opening note on a tired, worn, and painfully repetitious symphony. This symphony is not without its beauty; it is not without its tragedy; it is flush with suffering; it is pregnant with animosity apathy and narcissism. As the masses shifted beneath the weight of The Empire's silken, exposed belly, small parasitic insects bore down, slicing and penetrating with fragile mandibles until the beast bled out...slowly cooling and fading, its violent crimsons bleeding into pale translucence.

Globally, it seemed, in hindsight, that everyone in the civilized world had been watching the Leviathan's shining light sputter and flicker. All but the Empire's denizens were watching (patiently suffering in constant agony) and waiting. Why will no one help? shout the Empire's citizens, how could they have been silent while watching the house of cards fold? how could they abandon us after all we've done for them? The world learned its lessons from the Empire, it learned that Justice and Truth are relative to nationalism (national: intent and security). As the children of Empire watched, funded and (yes even) cheered on destruction of man woman and child in the name of Empire's interests, the rest of our world took heart. The rest of the world refused to forgive and forget and when the day had finally come, instead of working to resuscitate the Beast the World awkwardly turned their heads, averted their eyes and distracted themselves. Petulant children waiting while the corpse twists, turns, groans and painfully comes to final rest.

The time has come to burn down the plantation houses. It is time to flush the rats from their gilded basements. Purge this infestation with fire. The scaffolding must be lit at its base, allowing the flames to slowly and unerringly lick the wobbly supports of their ideology. There are no longer walls of perception erected around their crimes.

-Inter-Realist Manifesto #37


Los Angeles is a city of last minute plans and last minute cancellations; one must have a car because one can't be trusted to arrive (much less on time). A city where "you smell like drug abuse" is more oft heard than, "I'll love you til my dying day." Argue as they may, Los Angelinos cannot deny their city's saturation of apathy and willful vapidity. As with any absolute there are exceptions, at times many many exceptions, but as is the nature of frivolously thrown generalizations, it can be justified that the vast majority (perhaps even the essence of the city itself) wallow in banality and lack even a primary understanding or desire to participate in anything but the facade. The facade is not quantitative; we all bear our own persecutionary facade individually. There exists, barely a modicum of community, even in the face of overlapping and cohabitative facades.

For decades Los Angeles has lived and breathed at the resuscitative feet of facade, honing it, distributing it, perfecting it until all who lay their eyes on facade's prizes are pulled under the tractor-trailer wheels and whistle salutations and gratitude as the grinding machine pulls their form to pieces and leaves them scattered as so much flotsam on high speed motorways. From film to celluloid to personal health to domestic flaunt, Los Angeles poured its porous foundation patted itself on the proverbial back and walked away...waving ta-ta to their handiwork and caring not for its future or the futures of those it contaminates.

Foundations erode, especially foundations laid with no mind or sight for the future. The cosmetic band-aid of modern urban development plays the same tune as automobiles and electronic devices: Though this (it) must ring true perfection when it is handed to the consumer, it must invariably fail. This failure, the crux of our existence, must fall within an allowable time-frame. The allowance sought, the allowance wagered on and manufactured, must push the consumer back into the retail outlet to replace (and therefore spend $ on) their beloved possession. If this allowance falls beyond a profitable turn-over ratio (new: replace and/or upgrade) all is lost. Why wouldn't we just make a product that will last the customer until their need is fulfilled? Naïveté` is rewarded by violence and ignorance in this city fair. Those who innocently (or otherwise) ask for the facade to be explained, or for it to be rationally considered, are our modern time's lepers. Questioning the facade relegates you to a secondary existence as a citizen raped and ravished by Syphilitic plague.

The lesion-pocked backs of Los Angeles' hollowed citizenry formed the fertile soil for our Empire's final transformation. Though their city was being torn apart by civil turmoil and death the people of Los Angeles recognized their poignant moment; none turned their head in disgust at the prospect; none thought to cover their mouths to protect their lungs from this effluvious poison. It was only natural (was it not?) for our people to consider a watched-life.

Though entertainment had devolved into an orchestrated play-act of real events, the majority of the country still considered themselves well-equipped to define what is real and what is facade. It is a given that though they felt capable, it had been almost a century since our people had walked under the clear blue Chumanash skies unfettered by suggestion, unmolested by advertisement. Once entertainment had grasped the illusory powers of facade our nation suffered the largest mass-social-transformation in centuries. Soon all that was desired was available from any convenient market, created and manufactured in some distant land by a people we would never look in the eye. Our televisions told us who we were, and whom our neighbors expected us to be (and the highest expectation being that a person sow envy in those same neighbors).

Los Angeles curried the favor of New York advertising powers and willfully played their role creating and perpetuating the facade, perfecting it past the wildest dreams of National Socialists, Maoists or their brethren cultists the Mormons and Scientologists (to note a few (very few) examples). The basin became theatre and with the ability to paint celluloid with traces of light, the facade moved into the third dimension and crouched like an emaciated cat before an empty dish. Though the nervous system of facade began on the banks of Manhattan, the phalanges, muscle, tendons and flesh of facade rose from Southern California soil.

The late-century development in Hollywood of the "reality" phenomenon proved too attractive a prospect for manipulators of lives to turn away from. The opening throes of "reality" were littered with just that...reality. Soon it became obvious that the allure of "reality" was strong enough to pull the viewer in but failed miserably to hold their attention. Alas, watching boring humans turned out to be...well, boring. Proportion leapt out of the window, it seemed, from facade's standpoint, the more "real" a portrayal, the less "real" it felt on-screen. The drama of damaged inter-personal relationships became the call of the day, and as soon as it had begun, this "revolution" in entertainment fell into the same tired tapeloop as its predecessors.

We are not, and will never again be, concerned with what is real. The optimum we must hope for is a recognition of the shared reality between each human being. Our unique Inter-Reality.