Tim Barrus: Jared Leto

I would not have minded if the book critic had taken issue with my work. But no. They always go after me as a human being. I am, of course, the monster, the criminal, the itinerant, the Boogeyman, Coyote. I will gladly take Coyote. The coyotes around my cabin eat…

Tim Barrus and Alex

This is where I get separated from the rest of you. I have the pills. This is Appalachia. Not Paris. The drugs are not a theory. They’re an option. It’s not politik or religious. A place only I know about. A forest not bulldozed under. When they find my bones,…

Icon

Iconography is the Jack Russell chasing its crazy tail. Stripped down to what is important but probably not to the dog. To the dog, you either feed it or you don’t. Icons seek an audience. A holiness beaten bitter by its complete failure to find a god. Anywhere. Anywhere.

Everything is Boxes

You are not listening. You are not looking at me. The whole angry eye thing is disingenuous. Mickey Shivers tells me there are so many second selves in there, beyond your stubborn skull, the only way to make you listen is to glue your booboo to your ear. Yes, it’s…

I Stole the Camera

I did not know the neighborhood. It was more a village than a town. 3 traffic lights. We will stone you, too. Most of my friends wound up at the wire factory. Where they all became beaten men. Forgotten men. Blue veinsd across your forehead. The identity of a stoop.…

Rain on the River

“Rain on the River” was a huge project for any sixteen-year-old to tackle. I learned far, far more working on the film than anything I learned from a high school I never attended anyway.  

Emerges From the Darkroom

We fabricate fictions not so that the false will seem true but to tell the most salient unspeakable truths and all of this will disturb the horses. You need a new light on the door that says you are occupied in there. Code for: I am jacking off in the…

RED

Blue Ridge Mountains

The only way up here is you take this path or go home. I have a bunch of signs that said: Radiation Zone. Any of the horses around here will know this path, and they also know that they will be well-fed. I am getting hate mail again. I am…

Shake Your Kitty

The Ha Ha

The layering makes a lot of sense. When we want to connect with other people, it’s more a matter of two brains scanning each other. The operant word here is: smell. Those with it are like the witches in the father christmas tales where it has to be in the…

Autism

I just can’t belong to the autistic tribe. And they don’t want me, anyway. You can’t keep all the hurtful stuff at arm’s length and that is expressed in compelling ways, I was diagnosed with autism at age 6 by school psychologists. Why. Because I was reading. Especially Marx, physics,…

He Jests at Scars But Never Had One

It took him a long time of agony and fear to say “Good morning,” And yet his eyes flashed just at the same time I was telling him it was nice to see him, and in this social setting he flinched a lot. Then, his eyes kept their slow cosmic…

Don’t Open That Door

I think there was this lizard thing (I’m not sure it was alive) under the bed.

The New York Times Blacklist

Tim Barrus and Lars Eighner

I totally underestimated Lars Eighner’s seriously disturbed hatred of me following me every day for literally a decade. He published my address. I had it shut down and deleted. I never saw his viability as a writer and I rejected his work he threw at Drummer and it was a…

Fusion Ignition

Behind the Demon’s  Head We were hiding in the trunk of a car. From Authority. Which usually meant hominids would be – all out cock hard– no, harder, much harder. Cheap Stock and Trade.  Jack was the flashback of New Orleans. Busted for Grand Theft Auto. Auto. He told me…

Book Publishing Has Always Been a Train Wreck

For Pam Paul at the New York Times: Publishing lives and dies by the blacklist. The blacklist decides. Not the editor. Not the PR guys. Not the publisher. It simply shows it’s not about what you write. It’s about the writer. Why did you write this. How many children do…

They Would Die 4 A Dirt Bike

So, I gave them dirt bikes. A lot of people – mommies – were going to hate my guts. The point of it was to distract them. Anger can limit so much of vision into a drunken blur. Dopamine runs wild as does adrenalin. Usually all around the lens that…

If You Have Ever Been Abandoned, This Is For You

Abandonment because it is a measurement as is time and fate. We do not know what time is because the now becomes the forever at the speed of light. The universe is determanistic.

Tim Barrus: Your Houses

I can’t really work inside houses because what I do requires so much space. Especially in painting on canvas. But a video might require a set. I am compelled to make sets that are a reflection of where the lyric is gone, or having arrived, or it was all too…

You Are Not Alone

Digging Graves

Everything Is Conflicted

This Is What I Hear

Don’t tell me you don’t hear voices in your head cuz, baby, you do.