Liam

Tim Barrus (Director, Show Me Your Life)

From above, we see what appears to be perhaps a family walking along an Irish beach beneath the sea cliffs that tower over them.

One of those people would be Liam. The lions lived alone.

A witness.

To torture. To anarchy. To the violence of a church. To a plunge he takes to disappear. Into the darkness running like a train.

We see someone, perhaps it is nothing more than a shadow, in the background following Liam.

If you do not see it, you do not see it. You need external evidence. I have none to give you. And I do not care. About you. You are the audience. You mean nothing to me.

Are you real. What is the evidence for it.

Why is it I should care. It’s Liam I am compelled to hold.

Call it what you want.

Liam calls it the lions live alone. But there are no lions. You say.

Liam and his lions. To lay down among your many deaths. We see boys throwing Molotov cocktails from rooftops. The smell of gasoline and sweat And fear.

You do not see the lions so it cannot be true.

That is why you are the dead. Your churches are the dead. Your armies are the dead.  Your cultures are the dead.

Liam is not alone. Oh, Liam, I am with you. Every step. Every disappearance. Every plunge. Every glance toward every horizon. Every escape from every candle.

The lions live with other lions. I have seen them. I see them now. Lions everywhere.

Show me your life.

The council wasn’t there, just answer phone

The humans disappeared, they left their homes.

So the lions lived alone.

And all the towns we built,

we built them so the lions could escape,

so they could roam in houses of their own.

The council wasn’t there, just answer phone

The humans disappeared, they left their homes.

So the lions lived alone.

So the lions lived alone.

I am asking adolescent males at risk (females are welcome to contribute but few do) to show us their lives. And so they do. And when they add images the culture does not want to see, images that are, indeed, representative of their lives, the culture recoils, and censors them. “We told you so,” I am told time and time again. Before I die, just once, I would like to see any one of them, and they’re all over the planet, really show us their lives. Before I die, I just once would like to work with kids without having to worry about how the adults would punish us. Before I die, I would just once like to be able to look some kid like Liam in the eye, and say: this is your life. Not: this is your life and here is why we have to censor it.

Liam has been in Ireland. He’s sixteen. In the torrent of video content he has sent us, there are images that include scenes of soldiers raping boys, boys throwing Molotov cocktails from rooftops, Irish beaches, interiors and exteriors of Catholic churches, and one torture clip where soldiers have hung a tied-up kid upside down by a rope and are immersing the kid’s head in a bucket of water. Liam is attempting to show us a life that has been plagued by rape and violence.

I would rather have Liam working on videos versus throwing gasoline bombs from rooftops at cops and British soldiers. But no. I will be compelled to censor these images. Liam is a minor. With HIV/AIDS. We are very uncomfortable with the Liams in our midst. I know what it’s like to be raped. I’ve been raped. The rage is not inconsiderable. Before I die, I want to live.  I am surrounded by enough death and I want to fight back by making art. I have always said I am not unlike the boys I deal with. It has been the camaraderie in relationships, and medicine, and art, that have kept me alive.

I knew from Show Me Your Life videos being sent to me that Belfast was going to explode into rioting.

It just did.

I do not understand how people did not know this was coming.

The tension there is so thick.

You can see it.

Amhlaoibh

Timothy Patrick will help me write this. My thoughts and words just bloody muck it up. I am Amhlaoibh and the blonde boy sitting beside me is my brother, Keveon. Mitch. Schools sucks my knob. We were homeless in N. Ireland. Our dad was drawing the dole then he was up and gone. Drunk fucker. Keveon is a totally hot fag. I am straight. I got the gay fatigue. But I will do dick sex for money. We made some vids for a club. Then we beat a gimp up. We robbed him. They kicked us out the club. We are sick. But we did make sex vids. So we know video. Timothy Patrick said it might be good for us to show some responsibility. We will be video mentors. We are sending cameras so do not rip them off. Do no make a sex vid even if it is your life. We do no live that life. We are out. We are off the street. But if you are doing sex work we might be able to help you show me your life. So ok. Bye then.