Tim Barrus Blog
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What Is Art: A Manifesto
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Art is this unruly animal created by artists. It only is. It has no purpose. But to live without it reminds humanity that humanity itself is an ugly emptiness, condemned by its very cruel structures to live in perpetual grayness, a moral poverty, and humanity is stupid. It only is.…
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If I Make Art
If I am making art, and they see that I am making art, then they make art, and that is the point that they, too, make art, and through this making art, they make themselves, they make themselves through what they see, and while they are making art, they see…
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GAY BOYS RAPED AND DETAINED
It started with the gangs and what is called corrective rape in Central America. It would morph into government police and corrective rape at a police station in a suburb of El Salvador. Javier and Rafael had had enough. When the gangs and the cops represent the combined presence of…
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SWIMMING TO THE OTHER SIDE: I THINK SHE KNOWS
Arriving here, I must meet the dead.
The boys I knew at that time had all lost their lives in Vietnam. The ones who survived as maimed and crippled had lost their lives as well.
Many simply blew their brains out. When they fully realized what had become of them,…
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Loving Boys At-Risk: Just Before the Cure
I am acutely aware of the fact that no one in a million years would dare to publish this. That does not mean I do not need to write it. I needed to write it. Yet I can see where it fits tightly into JUST BEFORE THE CURE which is…
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All Those Years & We Never Knew Him
i had
suspected
he had
been seeing
other women
for some
time
but i had
no evidence
of it
it was
just a
feeling
turns out
i was right
it was
awkward
and confusing
we did
not know
where we
fit in
anymore
maybe he loved
her
and not
us…
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He Cannot Swim
I knew right away that this kid was going to push every button he could push.
And then, he did.
He’s draining but I have this magic weapon I can and do use which is called I CAN TURN AWAY AND STOP GIVING HIM ATTENTION WHEN HE BEGINS ANOTHER DESTRUCTION…
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Tim Barrus: New York Times
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There are times when I do not write about the Smash Street Boys. It is not always appropriate. There are other takes on life. There is life with kids. A huge part of who I am and what I do. There is life in Art. There is inner life. The…
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It Was Just Shopping 4 Groceries
They needed food.
They always need food.
You could put five truckloads of food into one of their mouths and it would still need food.
It was only going to the store for groceries. That is all it was.
Walmart groceries.
They sell food there.
They have a parking lot.…
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We Need Assisted Suicide
We need assisted suicide.
So you don’t fuck it up, and awaken to find yourself strapped down to a hospital bed having barely survived a coma you’ve been in the past three years.
It happens every day. Don’t be stupid and think it doesn’t because it does. Killing yourself is…