...Is this the end of Niko?
Sorry. I can never resist a Cagney reference.
But, alas, it seems to be case. Work on Killing Castro appears to have stalled, and now, in the latest version of his frequently mutating LitKicks profile, NasTim says he is leaving writing behind altogether. Now billing himself as a "digital video artist," he writes:
I have quite happily left publishing and relocated. I am now producing videos and am involved with doing video installations in a number of galleries. The work is charged with a visual and narrative creativity and I am having a lot of fun. The people are young and up and forward-looking and being around that is invigorating... My new work takes me to many new and far away places (filming deserts is a secret passion). I won't be publishing and I won't be on the Internet like I used to be. I am now that strange guy you see (or rather don't see) behind the camera. I am now the Old Man surrounded by much younger blood. I have a lot to learn and that is a big part of the creative challenge. No artist should ever get all that comfortable. -- Tim Barrus
I suppose it could happen.
And I will be good, restrain myself, and not, based on what has been seen of this new work, make any cracks about not quitting his day job. He has a good ear for pop, I'll grant you that.
Selfishly, I kind of hope he has, writing/publishing-wise, Left the Building. I think I've pretty much mined out my interest in the man and his work, and can happily, barring further fascinating new discoveries, put him to rest. It's been a useful and interesting exercise, thinking about identity with Timothy Patrick Barrus as a prism, but perhaps it's time to speak of other things.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Friday, October 13, 2006
Island Hopping
Well, to paraphrase Mrs. Federline -- oops, he's done it again.
Apparently the fascination of Mykonos, Delos, et. al. has proved to be all-too-exhaustible, for in recent days, NasTim has abandoned A Debris of Stones and turned his attention to a new project. Recent messages from him (after a vitriolic spate of musings on the death of culture and, of course, the horrors of publishing) taken a turn for the voodoo-esque. At one point, he was heading to New Orleans to research a new work (as if the poor place hasn't suffered enough); at another, things Haitian seemed much on his mind.
Now, however, this new project has moved further south, and it looks like the newest destination for the wanderer is Cuba, for he tells us that his next novel will be something to be called Killing Castro. Since NasTim is, to put it mildly, rather predictable, I decided to check around and see if there were yet any online signs of this new creation, and, lo and behold, there are.
So far, it's only the barest of sketches, an opening salvo as it were, albeit one in which the author manages already to find his usual mystic depths: "The emptiness of Cuba is like the Beggar Queen whose blindness confines in wombs strange new midnights wrapped succumbed in all the music of the dark..."
A few traces of his Attic adventures remain, for illustrating this new work are videos from a familiar name - this new work will apparently be just as much a multi-media extravaganza as the last. Yes, that 18-year old Greek prodigy Drakon Kerberos is now a YouTuber, creating slideshow videos rather like those that showed off the film side of the novel/film that NasTim's other alter ego Niko Samos posted to Google and used on the various Debris of Stone not-a-blog Blogspot pages. I supposes it's quibbling to note that our author shows his usual exquisite cultural sensitivity and ear for local flavor by setting images of Cubans at work and play in threadbare Havana to music by Santana, which somehow gives at least one of the pieces approximately the same effect one might have wandering through Covent Garden listening to Piaf.
But here's where things get a little (to use one of NasTim's favorite word's) disturbing. Unlike the MySpace profiles that underpinned A Debris of Stones (as of this writing accessible from here), which NasTim clearly said were meant to be a walled garden in which the various characters did not interact in any way with more, um, reality-based Internet users, Drakon has given us some insight as to what other YouTube content he finds interesting. If you guessed "postings by teen boys who have a tendency to take off their shirts," you wouldn't be far off. If I were a parent, I'd been uncomfortable just thinking about this pseudo-Hellene being aware of my child's existence...
I somehow don't have the feeling that this latest new direction will have the legs that the Greek phase did. From its first stirrings early in the summer through just the past week or so, it waxed and waned and shifted shape but, whether as a journal of NasTim's exile, as Immolation-that-morphed-into-Pasolini-Lite, or as a teen murder mystery/movie, it was clearly much on the author's mind. Cuba somehow seems more of a feeler. If nothing else, it would seem to be a risky thing to stake a new novel on the premise of Killing Castro, something that time and a lifetime's cigar habit seem to be taking care of on their own.
Apparently the fascination of Mykonos, Delos, et. al. has proved to be all-too-exhaustible, for in recent days, NasTim has abandoned A Debris of Stones and turned his attention to a new project. Recent messages from him (after a vitriolic spate of musings on the death of culture and, of course, the horrors of publishing) taken a turn for the voodoo-esque. At one point, he was heading to New Orleans to research a new work (as if the poor place hasn't suffered enough); at another, things Haitian seemed much on his mind.
Now, however, this new project has moved further south, and it looks like the newest destination for the wanderer is Cuba, for he tells us that his next novel will be something to be called Killing Castro. Since NasTim is, to put it mildly, rather predictable, I decided to check around and see if there were yet any online signs of this new creation, and, lo and behold, there are.
So far, it's only the barest of sketches, an opening salvo as it were, albeit one in which the author manages already to find his usual mystic depths: "The emptiness of Cuba is like the Beggar Queen whose blindness confines in wombs strange new midnights wrapped succumbed in all the music of the dark..."
A few traces of his Attic adventures remain, for illustrating this new work are videos from a familiar name - this new work will apparently be just as much a multi-media extravaganza as the last. Yes, that 18-year old Greek prodigy Drakon Kerberos is now a YouTuber, creating slideshow videos rather like those that showed off the film side of the novel/film that NasTim's other alter ego Niko Samos posted to Google and used on the various Debris of Stone not-a-blog Blogspot pages. I supposes it's quibbling to note that our author shows his usual exquisite cultural sensitivity and ear for local flavor by setting images of Cubans at work and play in threadbare Havana to music by Santana, which somehow gives at least one of the pieces approximately the same effect one might have wandering through Covent Garden listening to Piaf.
But here's where things get a little (to use one of NasTim's favorite word's) disturbing. Unlike the MySpace profiles that underpinned A Debris of Stones (as of this writing accessible from here), which NasTim clearly said were meant to be a walled garden in which the various characters did not interact in any way with more, um, reality-based Internet users, Drakon has given us some insight as to what other YouTube content he finds interesting. If you guessed "postings by teen boys who have a tendency to take off their shirts," you wouldn't be far off. If I were a parent, I'd been uncomfortable just thinking about this pseudo-Hellene being aware of my child's existence...
I somehow don't have the feeling that this latest new direction will have the legs that the Greek phase did. From its first stirrings early in the summer through just the past week or so, it waxed and waned and shifted shape but, whether as a journal of NasTim's exile, as Immolation-that-morphed-into-Pasolini-Lite, or as a teen murder mystery/movie, it was clearly much on the author's mind. Cuba somehow seems more of a feeler. If nothing else, it would seem to be a risky thing to stake a new novel on the premise of Killing Castro, something that time and a lifetime's cigar habit seem to be taking care of on their own.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
PayPal for Pity
Whatever else he is, was, or will become, NasTim is an angry, angry man. He is angry, like many of us, at injustice in society. He is angry at publishing, for what he believes is its blind ignorance of him and his work. He is angry, in the abstract, at the reader ("I only loathe him, and want him to leave me alone. I want nothing to do with him and have removed myself to some very real isolation," he writes on LitKicks). Lately, he's even been angry at the Internet, a haven, he says, for "gossip and screaming." (This from the original KING of yelling in CAPITALS.)
Well, I prefer to think that, rather than screaming, I myself murmur in a bemused, whiskey-voiced sort of way, but that is neither here nor there. If I had to diagnose the source of NasTim's anger at Senator Stevens's series of tubes, I would attribute it not to either gossip or volume, but rather to its reach, to the ease with which information posted on it can be accessed, and how both of these, in the wake of the revelation of Barrus's deceptions, have cut him off from what was previously a source of affirmation for his fantasies and, it seems, something of a cash cow.
A reader (and there does appear to be, much to my surprise, one or even two) has commented in response to a previous post, that I am "dismissive" of those who believed NasTim's tales of woe, that I do not believe that what was done to them was wrong. That is far from so. One of the nastiest, dankest, most irredeemable aspects of the whole bizarre NasTim story is that he has, from the start, gone beyond mere imposture and well into the kind of territory more usually trod by fortunetellers, televangelists, and other scammers. He performed a sort of literary 419, each of his sad stories about beautiful, doomed boys and his selfless work to save them from the cold, cruel world adorned, bottom left, with a curt "Donate please" and that cyber-equivalent of the old tin cup, a PayPal button.
"I want to get them in the outdoors. Where they can learn something of the spirituality of the place and how that spirit is about a self-reliance... Alone in the hour of the dead, our dark garments will be from roots and fecund and magic djinns that move in turn in river’s bed so rich it perishes upon the tongue," he wrote, his plea an overwrought variation on Miss Cleo's ceaseless "Call me now!"
I don't suppose he ever got rich off the results of his begblogging, but here and there online one comes across admissions of having made a donation (even from a commenter herein), often enough to think that a nice little trickle of cash meant for the desperate plight of Refuge House and its Keane-eyed inhabitants helped augment the Barrus family fortunes. It was a trickle twice over, as well, for a similar appeal was a feature of his wife's blog, itself an odd, flat series of vignettes about children with autism, airless and repetitive, that promoted her own aggrieved worldview and underappreciated stewardship of the vulnerable.
NasTim's writing about his time as Nasdijj quickly dispel any lingering notion that the identity he had created was anything but a cynical ploy:
"I became someone else.
The truth is that it amused me.
I don't write for you. It's not a crime. It was time to turn the tables.
It's fun being Other People. Especially in print...
Here's Another Thing Other Writers will never, ever tell you: I did it for the money.
My life may be dramatic but it's very definitely not cheap.
I've been Indian. I've been an African-American...
Two of my fake lives were turned into serious Off Broadway plays and I sell movie rights like cotton candy to diabetics.
I did three author tours as a Native American. That was pushing the envelope. But let me tell you something: The Brown Palace in Denver is a great hotel and they have fantastic champagne. Room service. What the world needs is more room service. The Brown Palace even had a special poochie bed for my dog with her name engraved on it. Seriously.
I've been crippled. I've been a teacher. I've been a scientist..."
Like Whitman, one may say, he has contained multitudes. All of them, it seems, looking for an angle, for the main chance, for the weak spot he can use to manipulate readers he despises. Now, post-"Navahoax," that grift has become a whole lot harder.
Some magicians can handle the challenge of an audience on to their illusions; the knowing winks of Penn and Teller only enhance the joy of witnessing their skill. As a writer less keen on craft than impact, though, that awareness puts NasTim at a distinct disadvantage. Stripped of the sympathetic sighs of readers keen to share (and support) his outrage at "the real scandals," he is left with only his writing as itself: messy, all too often formless, and, invariably, obsessed with his own wrongs and his fiercely impenetrable self-image.
He's tired of the Internet. After the frenetic weeks of creating A Debris of Stones, most of it has been taken down, off into the haze into which Immolation, Year of the Hyena, Islands in the Dream and so many other projects have vanished. Perhaps the attractions of being a suave Eurotrash cineaste faded even faster than those of being a leather daddy, a shaman, or paterfamilias to a tribe of lost boys did. Maybe he just realized there was less money in it.
And wouldn't you like to know more about those Off Broadway plays? Do you suppose he is his own wife? Did Larry Kramer kiss him? Is he a lapsed-Catholic Ethel Merman fan? I suppose we'll never know...
Well, I prefer to think that, rather than screaming, I myself murmur in a bemused, whiskey-voiced sort of way, but that is neither here nor there. If I had to diagnose the source of NasTim's anger at Senator Stevens's series of tubes, I would attribute it not to either gossip or volume, but rather to its reach, to the ease with which information posted on it can be accessed, and how both of these, in the wake of the revelation of Barrus's deceptions, have cut him off from what was previously a source of affirmation for his fantasies and, it seems, something of a cash cow.
A reader (and there does appear to be, much to my surprise, one or even two) has commented in response to a previous post, that I am "dismissive" of those who believed NasTim's tales of woe, that I do not believe that what was done to them was wrong. That is far from so. One of the nastiest, dankest, most irredeemable aspects of the whole bizarre NasTim story is that he has, from the start, gone beyond mere imposture and well into the kind of territory more usually trod by fortunetellers, televangelists, and other scammers. He performed a sort of literary 419, each of his sad stories about beautiful, doomed boys and his selfless work to save them from the cold, cruel world adorned, bottom left, with a curt "Donate please" and that cyber-equivalent of the old tin cup, a PayPal button.
"I want to get them in the outdoors. Where they can learn something of the spirituality of the place and how that spirit is about a self-reliance... Alone in the hour of the dead, our dark garments will be from roots and fecund and magic djinns that move in turn in river’s bed so rich it perishes upon the tongue," he wrote, his plea an overwrought variation on Miss Cleo's ceaseless "Call me now!"
I don't suppose he ever got rich off the results of his begblogging, but here and there online one comes across admissions of having made a donation (even from a commenter herein), often enough to think that a nice little trickle of cash meant for the desperate plight of Refuge House and its Keane-eyed inhabitants helped augment the Barrus family fortunes. It was a trickle twice over, as well, for a similar appeal was a feature of his wife's blog, itself an odd, flat series of vignettes about children with autism, airless and repetitive, that promoted her own aggrieved worldview and underappreciated stewardship of the vulnerable.
NasTim's writing about his time as Nasdijj quickly dispel any lingering notion that the identity he had created was anything but a cynical ploy:
"I became someone else.
The truth is that it amused me.
I don't write for you. It's not a crime. It was time to turn the tables.
It's fun being Other People. Especially in print...
Here's Another Thing Other Writers will never, ever tell you: I did it for the money.
My life may be dramatic but it's very definitely not cheap.
I've been Indian. I've been an African-American...
Two of my fake lives were turned into serious Off Broadway plays and I sell movie rights like cotton candy to diabetics.
I did three author tours as a Native American. That was pushing the envelope. But let me tell you something: The Brown Palace in Denver is a great hotel and they have fantastic champagne. Room service. What the world needs is more room service. The Brown Palace even had a special poochie bed for my dog with her name engraved on it. Seriously.
I've been crippled. I've been a teacher. I've been a scientist..."
Like Whitman, one may say, he has contained multitudes. All of them, it seems, looking for an angle, for the main chance, for the weak spot he can use to manipulate readers he despises. Now, post-"Navahoax," that grift has become a whole lot harder.
Some magicians can handle the challenge of an audience on to their illusions; the knowing winks of Penn and Teller only enhance the joy of witnessing their skill. As a writer less keen on craft than impact, though, that awareness puts NasTim at a distinct disadvantage. Stripped of the sympathetic sighs of readers keen to share (and support) his outrage at "the real scandals," he is left with only his writing as itself: messy, all too often formless, and, invariably, obsessed with his own wrongs and his fiercely impenetrable self-image.
He's tired of the Internet. After the frenetic weeks of creating A Debris of Stones, most of it has been taken down, off into the haze into which Immolation, Year of the Hyena, Islands in the Dream and so many other projects have vanished. Perhaps the attractions of being a suave Eurotrash cineaste faded even faster than those of being a leather daddy, a shaman, or paterfamilias to a tribe of lost boys did. Maybe he just realized there was less money in it.
And wouldn't you like to know more about those Off Broadway plays? Do you suppose he is his own wife? Did Larry Kramer kiss him? Is he a lapsed-Catholic Ethel Merman fan? I suppose we'll never know...
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Scandals Literary and Political...
I wonder: what do you suppose NasTim is making of the unfolding story of Mark Foley?
The reality of fetishizing adolescence, at least based on the congressional correspondence we've seen so far, would seem to be considerably less mythopoetic than the fantasy of hanging out with a circle of hyperartistic Greek celebutants. On the other hand, MAF50-something's tender missives seem, creepy as they are, a hell of a lot healthier than the eroticization of abused boys with HIV...
The reality of fetishizing adolescence, at least based on the congressional correspondence we've seen so far, would seem to be considerably less mythopoetic than the fantasy of hanging out with a circle of hyperartistic Greek celebutants. On the other hand, MAF50-something's tender missives seem, creepy as they are, a hell of a lot healthier than the eroticization of abused boys with HIV...
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