Anger is an Energy
Kenneth Anger’s energy was, and still is, undeniable. Brilliant, chaotic, and visionary, Anger
consumed the concept of celebrity as like Saturn devouring his children. He merged occultism
and pop culture; and pioneered setting film to popular music, thus birthing forth a new visual
language, revolutionizing cinema to birth its bastard child, music videos.
As a cultural provocateur, Anger influenced the Rolling Stones, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese,
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dennis Hopper, and later legions who fell under the sway of those
mavericks. Fellow fan of English occultist Aleister Crowley, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page,
was originally commissioned to create the soundtrack for Anger’s Lucifer Rising (1972/1980).
After numerous delays, Page was fired by the filmmaker, who turned to the film’s original lead
actor, who had also been fired by Anger, former Manson Family member and convicted
murderer Bobby Beausoleil, then serving a life sentence, to compose the soundtrack
But I didn’t know any of that when I asked for a copy of Hollywood Babylon for Christmas. I just
knew it was a book about Hollywood history, and that Nick Lowe had written a song based on a
lurid story contained within, featuring the catchy line “She was a winner/Who became the
doggie’s dinner.”
I devoured Hollywood Babylon, falling in love with Anger’s prose, his fever dream storytelling,
his gossipy bitchiness, his alliteration. He made the stars real through revealing their foibles, he
made them more godlike by giving them feet of clay then knocking them off their pedestals. And
that in our home, we had family photos of some of those people made his writing realer, made it
seem that anything was possible.
Along the way I read Aleister Crowley.
Later, I discovered Anger’s antics with the Rolling Stones, saw his films, had learned about his
connection with Crowley, how he promulgated the word of Thelema through his art. And then I
met him. He flashed signs above my grade and when I didn’t respond or react, he laughed and
jabbered with me about various occult figures and his favorite toys. Each time after that, he
remembered my name.
Decades after first reading Hollywood Babylon, Anger’s influence unexpectedly resurfaced in
my own work. When Mat Gleason invited me to be in his monumental art installation at the
Mural Conservancy Los Angeles, Very Well Read (please link to verywellread.net), he gave
me the brief:
Here’s a 6 inch by 9 inch custom art-grade wooden canvas.
Paint the cover of your favorite book.
saint of Los Angeles is Santa Muerte, Holy Death, the logic being that angels are dead people,
and L.A.’s patron is the Queen of Angels. (No one ever said religion has to make sense; it just
has to work for the individual). To further my personal heresy, Los Angeles is one of the world’s
great necropolises of dreams and memories. The city is crowded with the dead; roughly 3
million bodies are officially buried within the Thirty Mile Zone, among them silent film stars,
forgotten starlets, rock musicians, carnies, cult leaders, murder victims, visionaries, and frauds.
They continue to exist in archives, magazines, films, gossip, and legend. As a native Angeleno,
I celebrate the dreams and dead, and Santa Muerte features in many of my works, including
Santa Muerte collage and paintings for clients.
Kenneth Anger devoted himself to the glamorous, the profane, the occult, and the forgotten.
Long before I met him, he had already altered the way I thought about writing, art, mythology,
celebrity, and Los Angeles itself. Hollywood Babylon was my only choice for Very Well Read. I made my painting for Very Well Read a devotional piece. Instead of Jayne Mansfield, there’s a
shadowy, at times glowing, Santa Muerte hovering over the hills. In my theology, the patron.
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