/ by grace mcgrade

The Hollywood Hills are like fairy mounds, with the missmatched houses sliding off, precariously bleeding on to the freeways. Fairy mounds were places for mystical royalty in Ireland, but here, they are inhabited by writers, directors and polished dolls, who manicure their lovability for sullen rockstars. Fuckability becomes a science, maintained by doctors with knives, chemical reactants and LED mirrors.

The magic they do here is different. They have magic needles that can freeze your face from moving and plumpen your mouth, or magic needles with strange ecstatic fluids that carry into underworld poppy wombs, and make you forget your pain. They know how to make dreams appear on screens, and make melodies than transfigure mortals into stars. Everyone appears to stay in perpetual adolescence.

I have swam to the bottom of its basins and proccured my share of spiritual rot and ripoff. I have been down under, with the songstresses, celebrities, moguls and punks in hotel castles. Braced boulevards of wax figure prostitutes and playboys. Danced in satin, leather and lingerie. Tried to perfect my lovability, tried to mummify myself until I was silicone. I have had rumors hum about me like neon lights. I have been drowned and resuscitated.

I am not plastic, or wax. I am not bleached like Marilyn, and I am too fidgety to become a sugar-frosted mannequin. I have never appeared on a silver screen, but I consider myself an impossible creature. The magic I do is real, borrowed from the Celtic Otherworld and invoked from my remembrance of Heaven. I do it inadvertently and accidentally. I don’t want to be propped up on a pedestal, or immortalized in memories. I just want to be spread out on my bed like a reclining billboard model, and asked to explain my theories on everything.