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http://vook.tumblr.com The boys of Cinematheque, all have AIDS. They tumble downstairs bleary-eyed. The espresso machine has grown hot. Some are dressed. Some in underpants; one is in pajamas. This is the Sustiva group. Everyone here takes a nighttime cocktail that includes an antiviral drug call Sustiva. Sustiva is a very, very powerful drug. It is one of the fre capable of suppressing HIV within the brain. It's a horse-sized pill. Orangish-brown, spotted yellow, like a desert lizard. It give us extraordinary dreams. Dreams whose only analogy is to LSD. It's not unlike taking LSD before you go to bed every night and you wonder if the trip is going to be a gentle one or one more like a wild ride on a Harley-Davidson with no brakes. My own take on Sustiva is that it's one scary trip through hell. It is a trip down a river of things you know, things you do not know, and things you do not want to know; and all of it illuminated hot as an electrical snap with a whip that is cutting deep and deeper into your brain. I know this: it help to talk about it with people who are going through the same wild ride you are. Most people could not even begin to imagine what it's like to drop a potent form of acid every night for ten years. Not everyone with AIDS is on Sustiva. The rest of the house is noisy and they sort of roll their eyes and walk around us. Last night I dreamed I was with Anna Mae Aquash when she was shot in the head and pushed into a ditch at the side of a road to die. We go around the group. People turn into animals. Birds. Or they walk among dead relative, dead lovers, or death itself which seems to take many forms. We dream of internment camps. It help to not watch too much television or movies. Books can be as bad. The scientific literature refers to some intense dreaming. It seems to de-emphasize the experience. Some people become acclimated to the drug and claim they no longer dream at all. It's rare that any of them -- being adolescent boys, whores, thieves, junkies, literary frauds, artists, nude models, skateboard heretics, S/M playwrights, dancers, photographers, poets, cultural castaways -- would bring anything to read to the group. But when they do it tends to be Genet or Coleridge. We talk about dreams and seas and mysteries and mariners who have been dead since the fall of Rome so what matters any of it. We have reached the point now where we rarely leave either the studio or the house. Most have paired off into relationships. I have slowly eased out of the role of leader. I am not the captain of this ship. No one could even try. This ship has set its own course, through it's own turbulent seas, and whatever destination it might have, it does not tell us any of its secrets. From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Vook.com

http://vook.tumblr.com Most people think of Tim Barrus as a writer involved in literary scandal. Even at publications as radical as Drummer and Mach magazines, both gay leather/sm publications, Barrus was their most controversial editor. Then, he went mainstream in disguise. Esquire (nominated for a national Magazine Award). Houghton Mifflin. Time. Random House. PEN. The New York Times. Tim Barrus was denounced by the Wall Street Journal. Yet Barrus does not even see himself as a writer; certainly not one who belongs to a community or a genre. Tim Barrus is a whore, and says so. He is banished from the United States. The issue is identity. Barrus does not allow the superficiality of a literary scandal slow him down. He moves to France and creates Cinematheque Films. Cinematheque Films, based in Paris, is guerrilla education for a collective of at-risk adolescent HIV+/AIDS boys studying art in radical, self-directed ways. Prostitutes, junkies, thieves, and potential suicides. Traditional education has failed them. They are from the street. Tim Barrus connects with the writer, Mary Scriver -- or Prairie Mary -- through Arts Journal. She intrigues the boys of Cinematheque with the publication of her book, Bronze: Inside and Out. The boys of Cinematheque are connected at the hip to computer technology. It is how they communicate. Mary Scriver and Tim Barrus begin a dialogue that delves deeply into the ideas of censorship, the Internet, journalism, writing and publishing fiction, black lists, and how these things have a direct bearing on the lives of young boys struggling to create art, and struggling to survive. As creatures of the street, the boys have left "the life" of the Pigalle, the Parisian red light district. They are not strangers to how organized crime functions, how the drug culture still flourishes, and they are all too familiar with human trafficking. How the boys of Cinematheque Films become involved in extricating other adolescents just like them from the legacy of human trafficking is the story behind The Fallen and the Flight. A VOOK. Whose fictional narrative employs both text and video. This is the VOOK query for The Fallen and the Flight by Tim Barrus -- aka Nasdij -- and Mary Scriver -- aka Prairie Mary. Videos represented here are Cinematheque class assignments, mash-ups, photographic assignments, and poetry projects created by the boys of Cinematheque. They are represented here simply as creative examples of work that could correspond to the text and narration of the VOOK. The synopsis of the Fallen and the Flight is represented here as well in the linear order the VOOK adheres to. Most VOOKS contract out the video content to Hollywood-based production companies. The premise of The Fallen and the Flight is that the video would be created by the same people who created the text. Cinematheque Films: Arts Education: Students are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Representations and facsimiles posted here are presented as teaching tools and instruments employed to instruct students in the techniques and application of mixed media art and collage. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows art-teaching entities the fair use of such materials in classroom and teaching-research applications. Clicking the NEXT button at the bottom of each page will take you into the linear outline of the book. Again, as such, this is the QUERY. Each video and each chapter is accompanied with observations by Scriver and Barrus. THE FALLEN AND THE FLIGHT: MEMORY'S PROFANE PERSISTENCE

A Vook by Tim Barrus and Mary Scriver http://vook.tumblr.com