My Latest News

[ October ]

Awarded a Toronto Arts Council Grant. Go figure. What a surprise.

I opened the letter and it started with, "I'm pleased to inform you that..." I couldn't help but assume the rest of it had to be positive. In my negative mopey parallel universe, the completed sentence sounded something like: "...you are a gargantuan goofball and should give up all hopes of being any kind of writer, you unfortunate man-child." I lucked out on that one. That was a good day.

Invitation to the 215 Festival in Philadelphia.

We're off this weekend to take part in the 215 Festival in Philadelphia. I've been invited to read at one of the events on the Saturday called the "Tossed Art" event. I'm on just before Neil Pollack, which is good, I guess, because he's kind of a draw, and well, I'm not. Not yet anyway. Jonathan Ames, Dave Eggers, John Hodgman and the usual suspects will be there, along with a slew of cats I've never heard of but am interested to meet. Should be a trip. Neat, eh?

I'll be reading one of my cynical but heartfelt essays on Thanksgiving and something from my book, "Timfoolery: Tales of a Third Rate Junkie". I'll report back to you once we're home in one piece. I'm brimming with glee and merriment. And nerves. *Note to self: Bring fresh socks and underwear and convey your passion for the word sincerely.

Planning to hunt down and ingest the Philly cheese-steak concern I've heard so much about in a 'George Plimpton kind of participatory-journalistic' sort of way. As Homer would say, "MMMMmmmmm cheese." (Not the Ilead guy, the heavy set, pudgy-fingered, slothy one).

Thanks to all who have staying in touch. It's nice to have inspiration around me.

[ September ]

Utter Ha ll of Fame Award

* * *

My Latest Story

Well now, the latest Timber Masterson story to be received by the world is a tale about elephants. Well, not exactly, it’s more about having an attitude about being and feeling like an Elephant Man. It is a tale of woe, low self-esteem and off-the-charts-delusions of grandeur. Big surprise. The group that picked up the story is a swifty little outfit called WANDERING ARMY. 

The Last Week of August:
The John Merrick Free-Associative Piece
My Happy Elephant End of Summer Submission

by Timber Masterson

John Merrick is a newly found out relative. It all makes sense now. Every time I’d see his image, I’d long for that kind of attention: the keen focused energy of a downtrodden, halfway-in-the-bag, run-down and crinkly rat-faced carnie, sticking his wooden cane in my cage, prodding me to do my ‘tricks’ as onlookers wince and guffaw at my alarming deformities. The show had honesty. It had guts. I had nothing to hide.

Entirely appealing for me is the not rising early thing: no more having to run out into the callous, treacherous world full of hurtful dingbats and lamebrains in order to sell my soul at some sub basement telemarketing scam operative so as just to pay the rent, some ridiculously overpriced dug-out suburban dwelling, hot-plates, brown bar fridge and a Murphy bed concern. No, I was special. To them. They told me I was. Also attractive and salivatory, those dreamy and kaleidoscopic notions of cushiony Cornish scullery maids on roller skates sliding plates of gruel serendipously under my very own private hospital doorway.

Visiting well-wishers would need special designer name tags to gain entrance to my area. I would ask “WHAT NEWS OF THE GAMING TABLES?!” expecting to be told, well, just what the news was over at the gaming tables. My roped-off private corridor would be complete with sheets of only the highest thread count, hand-made by Pirate-shirt-wearing maidens with dispositions responsive to my needy nature. The administration along with the Gilda Radnerish coily-haired things, not much to look at, yet reciprocal to my predictable punch lines, they trained to cope with just my type of internal epidemic, captive at this cushion kingdom where my picture’s painted on the wall, (like Mao, somehow) 20 feet by 40. These sheets have been sewn by starved and underpaid sweatshirt-wearing-sweatshop workers, whose machines grind away at the cream-colored oh-so-soft bedding products for me to bath luxuriously in. I’ve arrived.

***

Professor: I first came across Mr. Snubbles in a locked ward in Raleigh North Carolina. He’d been there approximately four years and had shown little change. Something about his flights of fancy caught my attention while on rounds, slipping the bonds as they did of the constraints of the heaviest dosages of psychotropic medications. In a form of manic defense, and in contrast to those patients who catastrophise, what we see here is what we might call spectacularizing, a form of omnipotent grandisosity. His self-diagnosis of "Delusional-off-the-scale-Ego-Attention-Dire-Need-of-Validation-and-Security-Psycho-somnia", a ‘manifold diagnosis’ which, he adds, is rare in ‘Straight White Male Only-Children in their 30’s’, in fact captures some truths about what troubles this man. It will be noted that the needs being served here are of the very earliest and infantile kind; and the need to be recognized, to be fed, to be made physically comfortable – thus to be made safe, secure and contained, mentally and physically.

A chorus line of Chefs and cuisinart-protein-virtuosos from Finland and select provinces in America, would be carriaged in to work on the meal schedule: a delectable custom-made menu designed to cater to my special dietary needs. The gentlemen in white hats, aprons and hairnets are cutting up wild exotic and delectable road kill rendering it palette-ready for my elephantitus-like appetite.

I would limp, but only when out on my nightly strolls, and this, so old ladies would offer to lend a hand, and hopefully offer me some yummy Turtle chocolates, whilst crossing the rain-soaked London streets. It’s always been my strategy to have one leg up when the other foot drops. It’s a good way to meet people, and have them set me straight on my cinematic misconceptions, I figure.

There’s the grand fondness for my backside being propped up by multiple pillows, in the single malt bachelor bed constructed especially for me, and being read to by pontificating Oxford-scholars in need-of-community-service-credits. The dimensions of my sleepytime apparatus are suited to my alarming curvature of the perplexingly distorted sense of self I so wholeheartedly embrace - my massive inflated afflictions riding shotgun, and along for the ride, since birth.

* * *

Professor: Experienced clinicians will recognize the obvious zonal confusion but perhaps less obvious is the anthropomorphasizing of symptoms, which then become experienced as companionable. Defensive isolation is maintained through a dangerously addictive, solipsistic fantasy system which, provides the comforts of relationship without the real risks associated with attachment to real objects: loss, frustration and misunderstanding.

I would look forward with earnest zest to “Observation Test Time”, being wheeled-down to the auditorium where ‘the gawking strangers’ would sit with Mead notebooks eagerly awaiting to receive the results of my many tests. Society’s elite pay top dollar to ‘view me’, make feverish observations, reporting on my every irregular breathing and slurpy inhalation. The massive distortion of the head assimilated into the core of my being, what I’ve become, a not very funny blind date. Here’s the downside: ‘her’ taking no pleasure in my ultimately annoying tiflorously-challenged screaming whilst we’re at the eatery, “He’s the greatest freak in the world,” while I’m pre-occupied with the vast trays of meats and horns of goodies and plenties. “Are there no olives at this buffet?" I found little comfort.

* * *

Professor: The need to be seen as special at whatever, cost to mental health, underlies an identification of this type with such an unlikely literary character. Though it should be noted that the core of this identification, however far beyond the reach of conscience, is with the deep and profound suffering of the character. To tap into this is where the real work of therapy would lie – the opportunity for healing, growth and change rests here.

I’ve always found attics (addicts?) terribly charming in that oh-so-elegant rustic and romantic kind of way. The sloped ceilings, a descending scale of depravity, slip sliding into Paul Simon melodic minor nines, segueways of blind affection, a cowardly reproach.

* * *

Professor: This image of the attic is of interest. The wish to hide oneself, is paired, as Freud taught us, with its opposite - exhibitionistic inclinations. This was the child who may have run about the home dressed in mittens, hat, rubber boots and a mask but minus pants. Adult intimacies can be expected to be similarly complex: the conflict betw een characteristically teenage narcissistic preoccupations with self-showing and the infantile need for affirmation of identity through recognition are paired with a compelling shame at being seen, touched or known. Shame and guilt for a ‘fundamental’ flaw deficiency or deformity are the central unconscious affects.

My monsterly somnambulant sloth shuffle, at times, entirely endearing, my little claim to fame: these original quick jerky movements based in a cornucopia of creativity I knew to be revered, made me a grand-spectacled hit at parties, the center of attention, though too often sticking around absurdly late. When the hosts are cleaning up, saying, ”Boy, we ought to be heading off to bed”, I’m like, just settling in, to share secrets of how I felt being used by Camilla, an all too boisterous guest from Staten Island who used me as “Pin-the-tale-on-the-ghoulish-low-self-esteem-troll”. Also how I was told to "act like a piñata", by partygoers with miniature baseball bats, that as it turns out weren’t that miniature. There are untold sweets in me.

* * *

Professor: Here we gain some clarity regarding the anxiety underlying the pathological preservation of the isolating grandiosity - the fear of being damaged, harmed ultimately emptied by others – thus, better to look pretty and move fast - and to hold your arms tightly across your chest.

The huge hairy mitt type fin-thing for an appendage where a human hand should be, advantageous more often then you’d think, the feeling of being chosen first to play outfield, brought a high-watt smile, though fewer friends ask me to assist them in typing their metaphysics essays. I like being different.

* * *

Professor: Often, as we see here, the individual tells themself they relish how different they are from their fellow mankind. This, of course is a lie, as internally they, to quote this patient, “a cart-wheeling trauma moat, empty, blind and drowning”. Such patients may be attractive on the outside, yet the turmoil of ugliness, the scars of hatred turned inwards make for such a muddled composition of self, that there is no true vision, and no secure concept of self. Thus the search for a stable identity and the nature of the internal fantasy of self leads to this identification with this recognizably malformed creature and what we might call this "Elephant Man Complex".

Note to self: call a specialist in Zurich and make a note to name all my children Connie, if I can find a willing and suitable female companion.

* * *

Professor: He will often, to make himself feel more important, create emergency concerns, and may try to enlist the aid of imaginary European doctors. He does this by pressing a good thirty or forty numbers in a row into the telephone pad, believing (again fooling himself) that he knows how to call these ‘clinics’ where they will tend to his needs with proper nurses, high thread-counted billowing pillow products and meals brought to his private attic dommiserrie in an at some private hospital. Once he comes down from such a manic mood and realizes that not only such an outfit/organization doesn’t exist, realizing he hasn’t even the train fare to negotiate such passage, he will mope about and more often than not, visit Swiss Chalet three times a day and order the repulsive "dark meat chicken dinner with cole slaw", delivered by balding and sweaty thick-wristed hairy Polish waiter types in heavy brown stockings, reminiscent of some cold, dark and snowy Castle-ish Kafka nightmare thus going against his core inner sense, destroying all. This is known in the biz as "throwing in the towel".

I have mixed feelings of the day. I take a stroll, a break from all this crippling self-analysis and come across my old schoolyard…

Only thinking of me, as not too give me a big head, children at recess time tossed acorns and half finished apples my way, and casually asked just why it was I had another chap’s ass stapled to my forehead. “What is that repugnant and spiraling hooded figure doing looming near the kids?!” The hosing down portion of my acceptance to the schoolyard suited me fine, nice to be reintroduced to familiar looking teachers and janitors who charged outside to take time from their busy schedule so that they can make sure I’m spiffy freshly squeaky cleansed and supple. My confidence, now bolstered, to that of what one would expect a diseased millipede sandwich might be.

Later, I would get my act together and join a Seattle heroin musical outfit called “The Incurables”. On stage we all wear heavy burlap sacks, and play all wind and string instruments with sweaty woolen mittens, to show the persecution of people who lie and tell you that, yes, those are group showers they are marching you off to, in order to cut down on the city’s water supply.

I lumbered off my stage thinking of priests hired to work gay weddings but giggle uncontrollably through the ceremony. This, momentarily made me feel better, though knowing deeply, to return to such a scornful sullen unhopeful place had never done me that much  good.

Some other good fun...
Purple Prose
The Beat
Numb Magazine
Girls with Insurance

The new site, almost done:
timbermedia.com

Our word event, planning soon for Fall:
Word Substance Spatula

A Moist and Sincere,
Timber Masterson
www.timbermedia.com

*Extra DVD feature*
Neil Diamond once heartily sang, "Home’s the most excellent place of all", alas, this was barked despairingly from the fifth floor of a Betty Ford Detox…not that that should cancel out entirely the heartfelt sentiment, I’m just saying.

Some upcoming work in:
Deek Magazine
Noo Journal
Wonkavision