Caveat: Heaven / Caveat: Hell.

Below, from Bertolt Brecht's Hollywood Elegies.  I particularly like the characterization of heaven, at the start. Who needs heaven and hell? You can make just one place, that's really nice for some of the people to be in, and horrible for the other people.

I
The village of Hollywood was planned according to the notion
People in these parts have of heaven. In these parts
They have come to the conclusion that God
Requiring a heaven and a hell, didn’t need to
Plan two establishments but
Just the one: heaven. It
Serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful
As hell.

II

By the sea stand the oil derricks. Up the canyons
The gold prospectors’ bones lie bleaching. Their sons
Built the dream factories of Hollywood.
The four cities
Are filled with the oily smell
Of films.

III
The city is named after the angels
And you meet angels on every hand
They smell of oil and wear golden pessaries
And, with blue rings round their eyes
Feed the writers in their swimming pools every morning.

IV
Beneath the green pepper trees
The musicians play the whore, two by two
With the writers. Bach
Has written a Strumpet Voluntary. Dante wriggles
His shrivelled bottom.

V
The angels of Los Angeles
Are tired out with smiling. Desperately
Behind the fruit stalls of an evening
They buy little bottles
Containing sex odours.

VI
Above the four cities the fighter planes
Of the Defense Department circle at a great height
So that the stink of greed and poverty
Shall not reach them

Hat tip, for the above, to Frederic Jameson, who cited this Brecht in his chapter on Utopia in his Valences of the Dialectic, which I am currently attempting (but mostly failing) to read. Also, as an erstwhile Angeleno of the ambivalent, love-hatey variety, I appreciate the dark vision of the place.

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