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OCCUPYING THE MEDIA

By Daniel Simpson

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro…”

- Hunter S. Thompson

Life’s too short to waste in a dead-end job. When that dawned on me this time last decade, I was working for The New York Times as a foreign correspondent, and my colleagues were enabling the invasion of Iraq. I was naive enough to be shocked by their propaganda, and too ambitious and too junior to challenge it. The only way ahead was to resign, and try to start a revolution.

The form this took was determined by my circumstances. Since I’d been hired to report on the Balkans, I was stationed in Serbia, which ignited the wars that had killed off Yugoslavia. My brief was to ask if “The Serbs” had accepted guilt. This got me ridiculed as a hypocrite: young Serbs were resisting their leaders all along, whereas I was employed by a paper that whitewashed warmongers.

I didn’t have an answer to that, except to get stoned. My editors showed minimal interest in Balkan news, so I had plenty of time to dream up other plans. I’d met a man who suggested we organise a music festival, on an island in the Danube in Belgrade. We convinced ourselves we’d start a Summer of Love, drawing crowds from the neighbouring countries Serbs attacked. We could also revive a dormant student protest movement, which helped topple a Serbian president two years earlier. We’d even lure some tourists from afar, by promoting ourselves as Ibiza crossed with Glastonbury. All told, it was “constructive ethnic cleansing”, a way of reclaiming Serbia from its past. Hell, The New York Times might even cover it.

To facilitate this, I invented an alter ego. That way I could interview myself, and talk us up in print to raise some cash. I set to work at once on laying a paper trail. A few days later, the Times ran a letter from Raoul Djukanovic, who ranted about the flaws in U.S. policy. “Western officials should consider how they can become a catalyst for change in the Balkans,” the text harrumphed, “by investing heavily in economic revival.” Like by funding the ECHO Festival in Belgrade!

Raoul’s fear and loathing subtext went unnoticed. His name was a Balkanised remix of Raoul Duke, the pseudonym of the volatile Hunter S. Thompson. And as the doctor of gonzo explained: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Before quitting, I made my job a kind of protest stunt. Armed with promotional brochures and a film, I hustled contacts for assistance, in the middle of scheduled interviews for the Times. I asked NATO to lend me a pontoon bridge, in the name of improving relations with people they’d bombed. I urged the European Union to sponsor the event, and promote itself to Serbs instead of vice versa. And when both said no, I tried a Nobel Prize-winning Auschwitz survivor, and begged him to ask his friends for a million dollars, with a promise to foster reconciliation.

My business partner found these stunts amusing. “If you are Raoul,” he said, “I wanna be archetype of Balkan refugee, like a Goran Needsavisavic of no man’s land. Together we make Utopia in shithole.” Our venue seemed well suited to this task. Its name was Big War Island, and it once marked the edge of the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires. “Now we make here anarchistic Interzone,” my partner said. “What can be better location to come on with love-in?”

Inspired by his zeal, I got radical ideas. “Imagine if Serbia legalised soft drugs,” I said. “They could call it learning lessons from The Hague. Coffee shops are full of foreign smokers. If we ran one, this place would be crawling with Western cash.” I’d already been importing hash in bulk, re-routing work trips so I could smuggle it on expenses. The next step was to court some politicians. This got easier once we’d scrounged loans from shady businessmen, who doubled as their friends.

Backed by the national airline and Serbia’s minister of tourism, I hijacked a stand at the world’s largest travel trade fair in Berlin. Our video blared on auto-loop for days. “It’s 2003 in the Balkans and everyone’s bored,” the soundtrack declared, over footage I’d nicked from the BBC and EXIT, another festival in Serbia. “That means the biggest crowd since the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. Only this time everyone’s out to have fun.” And so it boomed on to its cheesy finale: “Come and watch Belgrade get back in tune with the rest of the world!”

Meanwhile, back in Serbia, the prime minister was being shot dead outside his office, by gangsters from a suburb near our island. I returned to be told to file a front-page story. Although I’d resigned, I was technically serving out my notice. I did the minimum, fearing the impact on our festival. Most of my story was copied off the news wires. It ended with a made-up comment from a man in the street. Compared to false pretexts for war, this seemed quite tame. So I also concocted quotes from Western diplomats. The New York Times seemed none the wiser.

Subversion was all I could muster at the Times, where news is routinely skewed to suit the powerful. It’s the same every day in newsrooms round the world. To quote official liars is objective, but saying someone’s lying makes you biased. To challenge who sets the agenda, I later made a fake Financial Times, depicting a world less addicted to ruinous growth, and explaining how the media serves big business. Though I gave away thousands of copies to commuters, and journalists let me tell them their shortcomings, it’s fair to say this didn’t change the world.

As for the festival, well, that also got subverted; by the well-armed men we hired as our security, as “recommended” by the government. My attempts at resistance proved futile, strengthening the forces I opposed. Even so, they set me free from disillusionment. Our festival’s marketing slogan still applies: “life is an illusion; choose a nice one.”

Daniel Simpson is the author of A Rough Guide to the Dark Side

This item How a weirdo turned pro, and sabotaged his job appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

An excerpted passage from my memoir; a series of extracts is posted here.

SONIC YOUTH & SERBIAN MAYHEM

By Daniel Simpson

Putting on a festival was alchemy. If we hadn’t transcended our limits, it couldn’t have happened. G’s magic had simple principles at heart: [my mysterious partner had] clarified intentions at the outset, and detached himself completely from the outcome. While he hoped to see his vision fully realized, everyone was left to do as they pleased, and this free-for-all was ECHO’s fatal flaw. But it also proved a vital source of strength.

By Monday night, there wasn’t a puddle in sight. Countless feet had trudged them into sludge. The atmosphere backstage was reverential. Higher powers blessed us in the end; the heavens above were fair, and the field was full. I was dumbstruck by the vista from the stage. Rippling away in the moonlight, the crowd was pulsing like a human graphic equalizer. It roared in a wave of souls merged as one. There must have been eighty thousand, at least. The police locked thousands more outside the gates. They feared stampedes. To a fanfare of cymbals and chords, Sonic Youth took the stage.

‘Thank you for inviting us here to beautiful Belgrade,’ drawled Thurston Moore. His hair alone was a time warp to 1990, a Ride on Inspiral Carpets to happier Mondays.

In a leopard-print dress on bass, Kim Gordon whispered sensuous invocations. ‘Spirit desire,’ she trilled over dreamy arpeggios. ‘Spirit desire. Spirit desire, we will fall…’

Lee Ranaldo and Jim O’Rourke strummed up the noise. Distortion pedals got stepped on, and the kick drum thwacked us back to where we’d started. “Teenage Riot” was originally titled “Rock and Roll For President.”

Thurston’s words reminded me of G. ‘Looking for a man with a focus and a temper who can open up a map and see between one and two,’ he sang. ‘It’s a teenage riot in a public station. Gonna fight and tear it up in a hyper nation for you.’

The song was even eerily prophetic. ‘He acts the hero, we paint a zero on his hand…’ Then on to the climax: ‘It’s time to go round, a one-man showdown, teach us how to fail…’ And away they screeched in guitar loops of feedback.

Rather than set them ablaze, or smash up the monitors, the band caressed their instruments with drumsticks, coaxing mesmerizing reverb from the strings. Thurston took his Fender off and embraced it, stroking the length of the neck until it shrieked. Kim wielded hers at the speakers like a rocket launcher, teetering on dainty red heels. Thurston took to rolling on the apron. The crowd went wild. And so did an old friend of G’s, the Serbian radio equivalent of John Peel.

‘Music has to be provocative,’ he said. ‘It must open up your mind to let you enjoy different spirits and possibilities.’ He smiled his blessing. ‘It was like God sent us the rain. Everyone came because it was free, and the people just don’t have any money.’

It was always going to be tough to top Sonic Youth. Carl Craig stuck around for a go on a special DJ stage, dropping Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” with its paranoid refrain: ‘they eat off you, you’re a vegetable.’ Then came the aptly named Billy Nasty, who blasted a darker techno path to daybreak.

But first there was Fun-Da-Mental’s agit-pop. Led by an aging Pakistani punk, who used to use the stage name ‘Propa-Gandhi,’ they specialized in rabble-rousing mash-ups. They were Rage Against The Machine’s more cultured cousins, fusing British Asian Muslim Black Power. And unlike the average band they had a credo.

‘Until the philosophy that holds one superior and another inferior is finally and permanently dismantled and abandoned,’ it said, ‘THERE SHALL BE WAR!’

Aye.

To prepare for their set, they got stoned and sparred backstage, in a fusion of Capoeira and Tai Chi. Then they stomped on with a choir of half-naked Zulus. To industrial beats and a snake-charming lilt, two rappers strutted out a Maori haka.

‘More chaos!’ one yelled to get started. ‘More motherfucking chaos!’ He was clad in camouflage combats and a headdress, and his message had a resonance with Serbs. ‘Maybe the West is demonizing us!’

Loud cheers rang out, but aimed elsewhere: at a portly Qawwali backing singer, who let rip a lung-busting solo from his harmonium. A group of people started pogoing.

Stage right, an enormous Stars and Stripes unfurled. It was daubed with the mantra: ‘No. 1 TERRORIST’. This time, the crowd roared on cue.

As Old Glory was tossed to one side, another rapper called Dave peeled off his shorts. Removing his underwear too, he seized the flag. He pressed it to his groin. Then he fucked it.

The fabric bulged to his grinding pledge of allegiance. While the band played on, he tied it round his waist, and stripped off his top to expose a khaki wife-beater. Thus attired, he hopped off the stage to meet his public.

He resurfaced a few tracks later, right on cue.

‘There is too much war,’ a fellow rapper squealed. ‘TOO MUCH… WAAARRRRR!!!’

This was the signal Dave had been awaiting. Accompanied by tambourine and tabla, he laid down the central Fun-Da-Mental doctrine. ‘Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, regardless of race, everywhere is war!’ he preached. ‘War… What the fuck is it for?’

Draping a microphone cable round his neck, he pretended to hang himself. ‘Too much war!’ he boomed. ‘I don’t want it, I said stop it. STOP IT! STOP IT!’

Two projectiles flew up from the shadows. One laid him out. The music stopped. The band had the clearest view of what transpired.

‘D got hit in the head with a bottle by a skinhead,’ one of them explained. ‘The crowd then turned on him and his two skinhead mates, who escaped. Security grabbed the other guy, who kind of stood defiant until the promoter head-butted him. He was taken out and given such a bad beating that even I felt sorry for him.’

You might have thought rants at America would appeal, but being black and Muslim undermined them. To swivel-eyed patriot fantasists in Serbia, their people are the guardians of Christendom, defending it from dark-skinned foreign infidel.

Compounding this weirdness, ‘the crowd were throwing nationalist salutes,’ the Fun-Da-Mentalist observed, ‘while singing along to Sufi Muslim songs. Ironic. A lot of Serbs seem to be in denial of the massacre of my brothers and sisters in Bosnia. They seem to believe it was some kind of civil war. May Allah protect the Muslims and have mercy on the rest.’

Perhaps a different message might have helped. They used to aim their ire at wider targets. Wherever they played, they’d scream: ‘The Problem Is You!’

This item On screwing the Stars and Stripes, live onstage appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

In a front page article this morning, The New York Times told a tale of expats from Jamaica, who like to “Get Party to Come to Them, via DVD”.

Their passion for watching films of far-flung nightlife was deconstructed in great depth, including this detailed analysis of the contents:

The hallmark of a good DVD is outlandish dancing. Egged on by the evening’s M.C., called a “selector,” and a shouted running commentary over furious reggae-inflected beats, women pinwheel their legs while standing on their heads.

The author, Sarah Maslin Nir, used to be a party correspondent, or “Nocturnalist” (regaling us with life in royal “we” form). She now writes about Queens, where she encountered dancehall culture. I wondered if she might have been misled:

This might sound trivial, but bear with us. She replied as follows, in the negative:

Since she gave no source for her assertion, I supplied one, apparently showing she was wrong:

Sidestepping, like a dancer, she responded:

Er, DJs are rappers, and selectors are MCs? So, who’s on the decks?

Since this yielded no clarification, I provided further sourcing:

A few minutes later, Sarah favourited this tweet. The text of her story is unchanged. Perhaps it’ll wind up corrected but I doubt it.

So what’s the point of all this carping? It shows how resistant reporters are to challenges (unless made by the powerful of course). This makes it hard to change the way they frame the news.

The more serious the story, the less yielding they become. Confronted with facts and sources on a colour piece, all Sarah said was: “Thanks for reading!” Twice. In other words: “bye bye reader, off you fuck!”

This item Bo’ Selecta! New York Times spins bogus factoids appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

A report which draws on research for an unmade film, and the script for a short.

The elephant in the room the media still won’t mention: Iraq was a war crime

By Daniel Simpson

In all the words churned out by journalists marking 10 years since the invasion of Iraq, one remains apparently taboo: crime.

Outspoken columnists rue the “catastrophe”, “horror” and “obscenity” of the war, which killed hundreds of thousands of those it was meant to be helping. But few find space to mention criminality. The timid still passively say “mistakes” were made.

News reports list “failures”, “setbacks” and “lessons” for “the West”, while relating “sectarian tensions” that could yet split Iraq into several countries. But there’s never a line of background saying the people who started the war are now criminally liable.

Of course, reporters wouldn’t be objective if they used “emotive” labels. Style guides warn them off this sort of thing. At Reuters news agency, where “freedom from bias” is an advertising slogan, it’s known as “overlaying our own prejudices” on a story.

Or as the Channel 4 Newsreader Jon Snow explained when I asked why he wouldn’t call Tony Blair a war criminal: “We shall do so the moment someone like you manages to persuade the war crimes people in The Hague to bring a case.” However compelling the evidence, stating it baldly would be biased, whereas sweeping it under the carpet somehow isn’t.

Most reporters agree. They used similar logic to play down attempts to have Blair impeached. Since there weren’t enough members of parliament backing the plan to make it work, it was covered as news in brief, or plain ignored. Doing otherwise would have been labelled as crusading, not working to uphold the rule of law.

Long after Blair had resigned, not much had changed. The Guardian noted last year that he was “pursued by protesters everywhere – some have even tried to arrest him.” Its response was not to assist them in their efforts, but to ask: “Who are these people, and what drives them?” As if demanding simple justice were unhinged.

In 2005, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland railed at MPs for not holding the prime minister to account, in terms that also applied to his employers: “There is no outrage, just a shrug of the shoulders.” This column was buried on page 31 of the paper, which had earlier published a book called The War We Could Not Stop. Labour’s Clare Short described its contents as “predominantly the authorised Downing Street version”.

Two years later, the Guardian’s security editor, Richard Norton-Taylor, wrote a play, which heard arguments for putting Blair on trial. “Committees in parliament are pretty weak,” he said. “So we decided to have a hearing ourselves, in the theatre.” But not on the front of the leading liberal newspaper, which could have at any time laid out the case for prosecution, while revealing what prevents one being brought.

TV is worse. Apart from a one-off panel chat on Newsnight, and comments from the audience on Question Time, the BBC has sidestepped criminality. Like the Guardian, Channel 4 preferred a sideways take, screening a satire that ended with Blair being flown to The Hague. Dismissing ideas for a serious documentary, the man who commissioned it said: “There’s nothing worse than the dripping sore of a whining intellectual who complains.”

Perhaps mindful of this, Norton-Taylor’s play was nuanced. “For me it’s quite obvious what Blair has done and what have been the consequences,” he said. “However, to say that he’s committed a particular kind of international crime or war crime is a jump.”

A Foreign Office lawyer was more forthright. When she resigned at the start of the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst wrote: “an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression,” one of the “crimes against peace” for which Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg.

As the tribunal’s American prosecutor said, starting a war for any reason other than self-defence is “not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” He stressed: “the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgement.”

The Nuremberg Principles, drawn up in 1950, criminalised “a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.” The International Criminal Court in The Hague has jurisdiction over these crimes, but signatory states won’t allow prosecutions until 2017, and retroactive charges can’t be pressed.

It’s been clear all along in the United Nations charter: war is legal if you first “seek a solution by negotiation” and “an armed attack occurs against [you]” afterwards. The only other defence is the backing of the UN Security Council. In the absence of that, invading Iraq was illegal, as the government’s own advisers always argued, until they were told to do the opposite.

For Blair to be put in the dock for the crime of aggression, the UK would have to pass it into law, or a country that did so already would need to request his extradition. For either to happen, public protest is required. But if the crime is effectively normalised by the media, it could be tough to build momentum.

One exception is the Guardian’s George Monbiot, who runs a fund rewarding anyone attempting a citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister. Monbiot concedes this is “symbolic”, but a man who confronted Blair still sees the point. “It is important that the pressure is maintained,” Tom Grundy said, “that the media spotlight is constant.”

If reporters had written of crimes before the war, it would have been harder to ignite. Instead, they became the invasion’s “complicit enablers,” to quote a former White House spokesman. Having failed to set agendas for themselves, they wound up serving someone else’s.

The worst offender was The New York Times, which pumped out propaganda on Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”. These lies could have been refuted at the time, with facts already available to the public. And the paper should have framed its stories differently. When the war began, it was branded one of the “most ambitious military ventures since Vietnam”. World opinion was buried away in a passing aside: “Germany, France and Russia have declared that the war is, in essence, illegal”.

It would have been factual and no less objective to write: “America and Britain defied the international community on Wednesday, launching an attack on Iraq that repeats, in essence, the crime of aggression for which Nazis were hanged after World War II.”

To most editors, this would sound “unfit to print”. That tells us how little was learned these past 10 years.

Daniel Simpson has worked for Reuters and The New York Times. He’s the author of A Rough Guide to the Dark Side, the story of why he abandoned his career.

This item Criminal negligence: the media cover-up on Iraq appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

My debut dispatch from a place billed as “journalism and travel, together at last”.

YOGA HIDEOUT, GERMAN BAKERY

By Daniel Simpson

Back in the Seventies, when hipsters lived in Kabul, most backpacker trails converged on Kathmandu. When he got there, a German named Klaus missed wholegrain bread. So he made some himself, in clay pots on a kerosene stove. Before long, he’d upgraded to ovens, and started selling his loaves to fellow travellers; in Nepal and down in Goa by the beach, where he opened a restaurant with a bakery attached. Four decades later, there are probably more “German Bakeries” in India than McDonald’s.

Which isn’t to say that Klaus controls a franchise. He only opened a handful of outlets, then retired. The rest have mostly copied his basic recipe: create a space for foreigners and locals to mingle, and fill them up with glutinous golden brot, among other European treats. The German Bakery in Pune became such an icon of comity that Islamist terrorists blew up the building in 2010. It just reopened.

Many others are effectively holes in the wall with a sign, hawking croissants, cakes and cookies with the loaves. They’re found near ashrams, in far-flung Himalayan trekking valleys, and in most of the tourist ghettoes round the country. The holy town of Rishikesh has around ten. Even the largest has no connection whatsoever to the original, although its manager and his staff are from Nepal, where Klaus got started. With the resplendent title “Devraj Coffee Corner German Bakery & Restaurant”, it perches on a cliff beside the Ganges. It’s little more than a glorified shack with an open front, but its vantage point provides views of the fast-flowing turquoise depths below, and of the shaky bridge across to high-rise temples.

On a sunny late winter morning, all but one of its twenty tables is in use; the darkest in a corner at the back is still unoccupied. I sit and request a glass of fresh mint tea. Before long, I’ve heard at least a dozen languages (Hindi, Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, German, Chinese, Russian, French and Portuguese, plus several others I can’t place). The woman at the table in front of me sounds American. She wants to know how big the pizzas are. “Like, for one?” she asks, then settles on a soup.

From her flowing pyjama attire, and a fistful of paperwork, I assume that she’s come to study something yogic. If you listen to sages in loincloths by the river, Rishikesh is as old as the forested hills above. To Hindus, it’s an abode of ancient Gods, among them Mother Ganges herself. Pilgrims and mystics flock here from all over India and beyond. In the words of Lonely Planet, still the bible of choice for a chunk of the visiting white population, the town “styles itself as the Yoga Capital of the World.” As Yoga Journal puts it: “when you go to Rishikesh, your destination is ultimately the Self.”

I ask the American if she’s here to learn to teach. It’s hard to walk a few steps in Rishikesh without seeing adverts for a yoga teacher-training course. Several provide Yoga Alliance certification, an internationally recognized piece of paper, available here at cut-price rates. What it certifies other than attendance isn’t clear: you can often sign up with next to no experience. Four weeks later you’re a teacher.

The American giggles. “No, I’m reading my horoscope.” She points to the page. “A Vedic astrologer said my 40th year’s gonna suck.” This from a woman who, from the looks of it, isn’t yet 30. She says she resigned from a bank for a four-month “spiritual tour” of India. Her last stop was the biggest human gathering on Earth: the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, where millions of Hindus descend for a bath at the sacred confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna.

“I spent five days camping with sadhus,” she says: dreadlocked ascetics who often commune with the Lord through a hash pipe. “One of them taught me to meditate. I had some amazing visions. Maybe that was the opium.”

She orders a muffin. It comes with a steaming glass of cocoa. “I need a chocolate hit,” she grins. She hasn’t yet encountered the ubiquitous “Daily Needs” shops, which cater to foreigners’ tastes with imported bars of Lindt, Lavazza coffee and cosmetics, and several brands of king-size rolling papers. I ask if her breakfast hit the spot. “It tastes like a vegan muffin,” she says, apparently unperturbed. It probably is. Eggs are illegal ingredients in Rishikesh. In fact, the whole town of 100,000 people is fully vegetarian by law. When a local trader challenged this last decade, India’s Supreme Court reaffirmed the “complete restriction on trade and public dealing in non-vegetarian food items, including eggs within the municipal limits.” (You can read the full judgment here, if you’d like to know more about the rules on handling “obnoxious items”, such as animal carcasses.)

Unlike vegans, Indian vegetarians guzzle milk. But eggs are potentially animals, even when unfertilized. That doesn’t stop many restaurants from serving omelets, regardless of whether they’re listed on the menu. It’s unclear where the boundaries are drawn, and who enforces them, but you won’t find meat or alcohol sold openly. For that, you need to drive ten miles outside of town to some roadside sheds, where the “English Wine And Beer Shop” plies its trade. A cage of chickens stands outside, along with a handful of drooling red-eyed Hindu men.

Back at the bakery, the American departs. I switch to a table up front and grab a menu. There are 250 items to choose from. I scan the cafe instead. An Indian woman in Gucci shades whines into her iPhone. “This place is so ugly,” she protests in lilting English. In front of her, an overweight couple tucks into what looks like a noodle “Chinesh Dish”, as it’s written on the menu. They’re also Indian tourists, here for rafting, as a leisurely bump down the river is widely advertised.

Then there’s a travel agent trying to do business with two Russian girls. No one gets into the dress code here as flamboyantly as Russians. One sports full-moon party flares covered in pockets. The rest of her is fluorescently accessorized. Her sidekick has gone for the virginal white-lengths-of-cloth look. Their guide keeps muttering reassurance. “I have no worries making,” he says, while skinning up a joint. All the tables have ashtrays, and they’re frequently in use. Cigarette smoke is the closest thing to incense here.

This jars a bit with the wholesome clientele. A Korean girl coughs and removes her headphones in frustration. I keep reading the menu. I can’t get worked up about “Mashed Potato”, let alone “Fried Bean Curd Veg Mush”. I hear a girl ask the waiter: “what’s the best thing you have?” He replies: “Oh my God, that’s an impossible question.”

I return to the counter’s display case of fresh-baked goods. Only two of these seem to be savory: spinach pie and burnt croissant. I order both and return to my seat with a bottle of Coke. The lunchtime crush has brought me company. A French girl now sits opposite, addressing Canadian friends to my right. All three wear bum-hugging yoga tights, which would raise eyebrows beyond the borders of the yoga capital: despite the recent gang rape and murder that galvanized Indians to stand up to sex crime, there’s still a more everyday penchant for groping, known as “Eve teasing”.

My egg-free spinach quiche provides distraction. It’s made with onions and a thick cheese crust, which caves in on the base when attacked with a fork. Its heaviness makes a change from rice and dal. I chew an end off my croissant. It reminds me of the vacuum-packed variants sold in the Balkans: a doughy blend of cake and sodden cardboard. My attention drifts again.

The yoga girls have been joined by two male friends. They’re all in their thirties, the average age here. A few are considerably older. Some wear luxurious trekking kit twinned with ethno-garb. There aren’t any college kids. That suits the manager. He says his business depends on attracting upscale backpackers, not the penny-pinching types who spend hours nursing one black tea.

My neighbors are getting excited about almond triangles. “Mmm,” says one of the girls. “It’s kind of like a pecan square, but with almonds.”

“And a triangle,” adds her friend.

“Trikonasana!” chuckles the third. “Sorry, too much yoga.”

One of the guys is from England. “This morning,” he announces, “I decided to give up sugar. But now you’ve tempted me.”

Behind us, a woman puts up posters for a course: “The Art of Conscious Living”. It’s traditional Ayurveda with a twist, she says. She’s Czech, but spends her winters out in India. A lot of the people I meet here do the same. Rishikesh is difficult to leave. I’ve come six times in the past 18 months, practicing yoga and working on writing, while avoiding London rent. It feels a bit like living in a bubble. Occasionally, I think I’ve had my fill. I settle the bill. It costs $2.

As I stand, a towering presence blocks my path: a man wearing nothing but a thin strip of cloth and a brightly colored waistcoat. His eyes gleam like pearls with a hint of trickster sadhu. “Coke!” he barks, as a single word of greeting. I wobble my head non-committally. He lifts my bottle, demanding another from a waiter, then looks at me. “You pay!” he declares, cackling wildly.

Once upon a time, I’d have done so, and spent the rest of the day getting blasted on his hash pipe. Instead, I shrug and walk away.

Daniel Simpson is the author of A Rough Guide to the Dark Side, a book about quitting his job at The New York Times to get mixed up with Balkan gangsters.

This item A postcard from the drug-assisted yoga bubble appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

A rendition of the story behind A Rough Guide to the Dark Side, live at Spark.

The theme of the evening’s event was “Open Heart”, as in:

Hearts are funny things. They break; they stop; they beat faster; they burn. We can give them to someone else. They allow us to live. Are you open hearted? Do you give your heart freely? Is your heart reliable? Do you have heart problems? We want stories about our most essential organ and the love that it symbolises.

I took this as a cue to relive my twisted Balkan Summer of Love… also known as the ECHO Festival.

This item On standing up and selling my book onstage appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

Words can’t bring Doug Hamilton to life. To call him a journalist’s journalist makes him sound like the pompous clichés he despised. And quoting him doesn’t do justice to his wit, or the kindness that inspired so much affection. He cared about colleagues, not impressing those with power. He also strove to tell the truth, in ways that were rarely appreciated by Reuters, for all its advertised commitment to “accuracy and freedom from bias”.

Had he worked elsewhere, he’d have had more freedom to express himself. Yet even though its limits drove him mad at times, he believed in the value of writing for a news wire, from which the rest of the world’s reporters lift ideas. If it were edited with Doug’s humanity and insight, we’d all be better informed, with far less cant.

When I first met him, he’d recently interviewed Noam Chomsky, for a feature on the politicised hypocrisies of “justice”. I can think of no one else at Reuters who’d dare conclude with the comment: “the operational definition of war crime at Nuremberg was a crime that they committed and we didn’t.” Doug not only filed such lines routinely; he fought the desk to put them out. If he was prickly when dealing with editors, it was often because they failed to see what mattered, mistaking exactitude for preciousness.

I got to know him as a young reporter in the Balkans. He set an example I admired. He rattled out authoritative analysis in the time I took to craft a simple headline. And he did it with an effortless panache. I feared he must be full of himself to begin with, but he generously offered advice, and shared his box of fine cigars. He was never a preachy dogmatist, or dull. He wrote as he spoke to his friends when he’d had a few drinks, and not what he thought he ought to say at work. The staid confines of style guides couldn’t constrain him. Though formidably read, he abhorred pretentious prose, and what Orwell called “words [that fall] upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.”

He did his best to expose propaganda, but his most incisive work was censored, in the name of preserving a spurious objectivity. Doug explained how this made reporters “complicit enablers”, to quote the former White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan. But he couldn’t do much to stop that by himself, except to state the bleeding obvious. “Death-dealing weapons are depicted as antiseptic tools, soldiers as men of peace,” he wrote in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. “Old generals hired by television give advance play-by-play of the action. War, they dutifully intone, is not inevitable. Maybe so. But if it begins, charred flesh and mangled bodies, death and dismemberment will be.”

When Reuters restrained his opining, he’d find a source to do it for him, preferring cartoons to the comic pieties of analysts. “I miss the first Gulf war, when we had actual allies,” he quoted from Doonesbury in early 2003. “This time we’ve been reduced to bribing our allies not to oppose us.”

Doug’s frustrations didn’t prevent him having fun. His pastiches from the Olympics were hilarious. He lampooned “Las Vegas chorus-line” synchronised swimmers, the “four-legged Fred Astaires” of dressage and the enigma of women’s triathlon, which moved him to free associate in wonder: “Why does the Weakest Link stand there and let himself be humiliated when he could jump out and throttle the compere?”

Instead, the compere throttled Doug, spiking his satire on gymnastics. Its geopolitics was deemed “too far out” for Reuters’ strictures. “An unknown athlete from a Rogue State mounts the pommel horse and executes an exquisite Axis of Evil,” he reported. U.S. agents pounced at once. It wasn’t like Cold War “Winning by Mass Doping (WMD)”, when “forehead veins at the Pentagon would pop at the CCCP emblem,” and “athletes had the 1,000-yard stare of clean sporting enmity.” No, in the 21st century, “we combat WMD by what’s known as National Technical Means – three armoured divisions, a couple of nuclear aircraft-carrier battle groups, a strategic bomber wing and it’s all over in five years or so.”

Doug’s ambitions were hard for Reuters to accommodate. He held himself, and other people, to high standards. Reality often fell short of expectations. This depressed him as much as knockbacks from his bosses. He could have left to be another Robert Fisk. But he’d rather have been Bob Dylan or William Faulkner, and if he couldn’t do better than them, he’d stay at Reuters.

May the spirit he embodied live on in those who loved him, and the agency he served until he died. Although he enlivened the humdrum business of reporting, one of his most heartfelt publications was this letter, which he wrote in the summer we met in Macedonia. He went out of his way to help me find my own. I’ll miss him and I hope he rests in peace.

In Defense of the World’s Holden Caulfields

Published: July 6, 2001

Regarding “The Tiresome Legacy of Holden Caulfield” (Meanwhile, July 3) by George F. Will:

Mr. Will’s attack on “The Catcher in the Rye” betrays all the buttoned-down aridity of the far right in America. The dried-up intellectualizing of this pencil-sucking dweeb smells of the grave. He has never been broke, got drunk or smoked a joint. More to the point, has never gone wrong or felt wrong. What a sad boast. He reminds me of Chekhov’s “Man in a Case,” wrapped in a mental overcoat and galoshes in all seasons.

Holden Caulfield, for all his gauche phrase-making, felt empathy for those who were not of the herd. As Nietzsche said: “The strong are weak when confronted with the organized instincts of the herd.” May the likes of Mr. Will never ride herd on America. It would suffocate.

DOUGLAS HAMILTON

Amen.

This item The finest reporter I met in my career appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

The author has written a memoir; see here for a taste of his reflections.

Pain on Both Sides

By Kenan Trebincevic

Daniel Simpson

A Rough Guide to the Dark Side 
(Zero Books, 2012)

Julia Lieblich and Esad Boskailo

Wounded I Am More Awake: Finding Meaning After Terror 
(Vanderbilt University Press, 2012)

On the 20th anniversary of the brutal Balkan war’s ethnic cleansing crusade, two fascinating memoirs out by small presses try to reconcile the past and provide a message for healing. A Rough Guide to the Dark Side by Daniel Simpson, and Wounded I Am More Awake: Finding Meaning After Terror by Julia Lieblich and Esad Boskailo, visit my still-conflicted homeland and try to make sense out of the political insanity of the former Yugoslavia.



Thirty-eight-year-old British journalist Simpson’s humorous, rollicking first-person story follows the young, principled, and ambitious New York Times foreign correspondent as he travels to the post-conflict Balkans in 2003, believing he can stop the next conflict. He tries to help Serbia recover its reputation and economic prosperity through a “Serbian Woodstock.” Simpson becomes Belgradian and learns nothing is ever simple in the Balkans. 



With the region still ravaged from bloodshed, Simpson ignored his superiors and embarked on a quest for the “real truth.” He wanted young Serbs to start making decisions and stop blaming such sadistic leaders as former president Milosevic for all of their lingering problems. After he took the podium in 1989, spreading Serbian Nationalism throughout Yugoslavia, former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia declared their independence from Yugoslavia. Then Orthodox Christians turned against Muslim and Catholic countrymen, determined to exterminate them for the benefit of Greater Serbia. The head of the U.N. expert commission investigating war crimes in 1994, estimated the death toll at around 200,000.



Simpson fantasized he could transform the area by launching a widespread festival that would spread to Bosnia and Croatia; all the different ethnic factions would prosper through entertainment and tourism. Immersing himself in the Serbian culture of stubborn self-defeatism, where every contact had a hidden agenda or conflict of interest, Simpson believed the younger generation could change. Good idea. Unfortunately he thought they would achieve this goal with the help of psychedelics, which he smuggled in for the festival. A gin drinker and a drug addict who modeled himself on Hunter S. Thompson, Simpson unwittingly got involved with local mafia. These criminal bosses were wartime paramilitary leaders with army connections and arsenals. They worked closely with lawmakers and corrupt officials, each helping keep the other in power. 



Not surprisingly, Simpson’s “summer of love and conscience-raising” fell short of expectations. He barely managed to pay his staff due to corruption, bribes, and partners robbing him. Everyone he thought was his friend betrayed him, recreating a bizarre microcosm of the greed Bosnian Muslims faced in the same place a decade earlier.



Unlike Serbia’s neighbors, Simpson got off easy: He didn’t get executed nor was he sent to a concentration camp by his business partners. 



Simpson’s addiction spiraled out of control and he came to the conclusion that this place was hopeless. He realized that his fantasy of saving Serbs from themselves was a delusion. Simpson concluded they were stuck between denial and liability for the horrors they committed. He finally realized that most Serbians believed all the documented massacres were fabricated. His illusion of a festival of peace and love was replaced with the Serb’s demented popular belief: that Muslims attacked Sarajevo themselves. Defeated, he went back to Western Europe to write this story.



Simpson chose the wrong side to help move forward. Historically, those persecuted needed to be consoled, not their persecutors. Simpson mentioned being tired of Bosnians dwelling and mourning. He became too Belgradian, blaming everyone but the guilty. Unlike Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia were pummeled with artillery and snipers for four years, while Belgrade youth enjoyed ice cream outdoors. As Simpson tripped on E-pills and acid with local Rastas, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Science continued to bind new plans of Greater Serbia by following their decades old version of educational systems’ school curriculum, “hate thy neighbor.” With Serbia’s radical leaders only filling Milosevic’s shoes, the Balkans are still a barrel of gunpowder. The only way Nazi Germany moved forward was through Allied occupation, Germany’s forced war reparations, a forceful 360-degree system educational change and, most important, letting go of their nationalistic pride. It’s hard not to agree with Simpson: Serbia has no hope for change in the near future.



Wounded I am More Awake: Finding Meaning After Terror, the more poetic and earnest of the two books, tells the other side. It chronicles the life of a Bosniak doctor who survived six Bosnian concentration camps and emerges with a courageous, powerful story of recovery. Lieblich, a Jewish-American human rights journalist based in Chicago, and her coauthor Boskailo, a Muslim psychiatrist, both in their late 40s, met at a conference on traumatic stress disorders. After Boskailo’s family was exiled to Chicago, he began counseling refugees at the Bosnian Mental Health Program. Originally trained in general medicine, he completed his specialty in psychiatry in Phoenix, where he currently works with survivors of trauma, from domestic abuse to war. The intriguing juxtaposition of the reformed Jewish Lieblich, and Boskailo, a secular Bosnian Muslim, illuminates two different European Holocausts. Unlike most books on the Balkan War, Lieblich escorts the reader through six concentration camps, a fellow witness, as Boskailo recreates what happened to him. She makes readers sit on the edge of their seat by re-experiencing the intimate betrayals Boskailo endured. You feel as if Lieblich was there with him, suffering herself, as he lost his best friends, and was tortured by the same people he once laughed with in cafés. As Lieblich tours Bosnia with Boskailo, she attends an annual burial of victims identified from mass graves. She mourns Srebrenica’s 8,372 killed with her coauthor and buries herself in understanding Bosnian culture. 



Boskailo became an army doctor for the Bosnian-Croatian forces in 1992. He expected the worst from Serb ethnic cleansing. Then, unexpectedly, his Croat comrades turned against Bosniaks too. Boskailo was arrested at gunpoint by neighbors he’d treated for wounds while defending their hometown from Serbs. He spent a year in concentration camps reciting poetry to help keep prisoners sane, treating their wounds with a needle and a thread he hid in his underwear. He was forced to lie naked on concrete for hours under the searing sun. A year later, Boskailo weighed 100 pounds less than his 240 pound, six-foot frame. The same camp guard who stole his medical dictionary tells him, “We are on the same side again” and asks, “Was I really that bad?” 



Boskailo’s poignant and deeply personal account helps mental health care practitioners and survivors of loss understand the long-term effects of trauma and the remedies that can help people find inner peace after terror.



Although the books have opposite themes, tones, and conclusions, they both illuminate the worst side of human nature along with the near impossibility of ever truly reconciling genocide.

This item Review: a “rollicking” Balkan moral crash course appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

NEWSLETTER » A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE DARK SIDE

I spent the early part of autumn on a Greyhound, touring around the U.S. to promote my memoir. People said the trip would make a book. Others thought the first should be a film. Either way on either, it was fun.

I spoke in 18 cities in roughly 30 days, which meant I spent more time stuck on buses than elsewhere. The story I told evolved along the way. What began as a talk about “Why I Quit The New York Times To Join Balkan Gangsters” wound up as “Careers Advice I Wish I’d Got At School” (delivered to journalism students).

Among other mutations were “Of Course We’re Being Lied To, But Why?” (to Texan sceptics and conspiracists) and “Why I Threw Away My Job To Be An Activist” (in various twisted incarnations).

Though friends offered valuable help, I made up the tour from day to day; few of the dates were booked before I left. Audience participation varied: some venues were packed, others less so; at least when I got there.

Though all had distinctive features, from The Writer’s Garret armchairs in Dallas, to a gallery in the melting pot of Hamtramck, my favourite was a poetry bookshop in Colorado. Like many, that event was scheduled a few days beforehand. It still drew a crowd.

A last-minute hostage to fate, the tour was a flashback to Belgrade; as anarchic as the ECHO Festival, but minus Balkan gangsters so less stressful. I even sold books to random passers by, as well as those who came to talks.

Although I was hard on journalists (me included), the media proved surprisingly receptive. Here’s a short TV interview about New York Times propaganda.

And here's a lengthier one on Texan public radio, with the focus on my Balkan misdemeanours.

For more on what’s wrong with the news business, try this half-hour chat on Radio New Zealand.

And if you’d rather hear my story’s bare essentials, here’s all you could want (and more) in pithy soundbites.

Archived interviews are available on my website, along with this profile in a Californian magazine.

There’s also further in-depth coverage, including this from a former Reuters Belgrade bureau chief.

To set up an interview, or order my memoir for review, please contact me here.

I’m also scheduling more talks for the coming months; here’s a flyer and information from my agent.

If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, please say so on Amazon (.com and/or .co.uk); and share this email with anyone else who might be interested. Thanks.

This item Light on darkness, from Seattle to New Zealand appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.

The author of this profile has also just written a novel, as summarised here.

Interview with Daniel Simpson

By Anita Venezia

I was more interested in Daniel Simpson the journalist, than Daniel Simpson the concert-promoting drug-dealing addict. I told him that drugs did not define him, his brilliance as a writer is what defines him.

I interviewed Daniel Simpson at Danville’s READ Booksellers, promoting his memoir, A Rough Guide to the Dark Side. Had I not sat down with the author and heard his story first-hand, I may have imagined his memoir was fantasy. It was not.

As an ex-New York Times foreign correspondent, he is shrewdly well-seasoned and knows how to hit a nerve. The memoir is a journey to the dark side of reporting – and tweaking stories to fit NYT paradigms of Iraq war-time sensationalism, and smorgasbords of drugs.

The book’s theme is an acutely biting and critical indictment of modern media practices, and how Simpson got mixed up with Serbian underworld thugs. His adroit use of language, peppered with politics, moves through a mazelike exposé of journalistic practices that he deems to be, not only untrue at times, but often having objectives to purposely mislead. He states, in keeping with media convention, some facts are more factual than others, contending that the NYT is a blatant propaganda megaphone.

Daniel Simpson, 37, is an English Cambridge-educated historian. He cut his journalistic teeth at Reuters as financial correspondent in Frankfurt, and then war-torn Macedonia. In 2001 he covered Romania after regime change when Stalinist dictator Nicolai Ceausescu and his wife were assassinated in 1989. He interviewed the assassins whose act had put Ion Iliescu in power, but the executioners got no glory.

NYT noticed Simpson’s Reuters reporting and hired him for the Belgrade bureau to cover political turmoil after Yugoslavia disintegrated. Most Balkan war correspondents had been dispatched to Afghanistan after 9/11.

Simpson was twenty seven; admits to being enormously naïve about NYT expectations, and the post-war Serbian mood. Former Yugoslavia was an ethnic mosaic; many murdered for their beliefs and some Serbian war criminals already at the Hague tribunals.

News about WMDs and terrorism was leaking from many sources after 9/11; the U.S was preparing to invade Iraq. NYT asked Simpson to hype some “news” about Yugoslavia defense companies developing cruise missiles for Iraq. He writes “news came from the Belgrade U.S. embassy; robo-diplomats claimed to have some documenting evidence.” Foreign deskers “wanted stories ‘faked’ to align with the president’s plans.” Editors tweaked his filed reports. The Washington Post had already run with the story. Simpson states he wasn’t big on faked sensation; so he went AWOL on ecstasy.

At the onset of his journalism career, Simpson had had fantasies of adrenalin-inducing excitement, being a front-line correspondent, dodging bullets, scooping stories. The Balkans beat did not offer near-death experiences, albeit Serbia was in post-war turmoil. NYT, publisher of all the news fit to print, wasn’t challenging enough for Simpson; the idealist longed to change things, wanted to revolutionize Serbian youth with music.

“I really thought I could change the world,” he said wryly.

So, with a solid dose of cannabis-fuelled idealism, Simpson partnered with G, a gregarious Serbian concert promoter. The duo burst onto culture-starved post-Milosevic Belgrade to spearhead the 2003 ECHO music festival on the heels of the EXIT extravaganza held each summer in a northern provincial town.

His vision of promoting such an event did not include the doom factor, due diligence, or that he was navigating into the dangerous Serbian mafia underworld.

Distracted by festival planning, and disgusted with the NYT demands to sensationalize stories – Simpson quit. He had bigger fish to fry. So, in true gonzo journalistic style, he put himself in the middle of the action, the neophyte rock-star wannabe starred in his own story. But the protagonist was about to get ripped off.

DARK SIDE GETS DARKER

Although Daniel Simpson quit the New York Times a decade ago, he unabashedly references his former gig to promote his memoir, A Rough Guide to the Dark Side. “It opens doors for me. When someone hears I am an ex-New York Times reporter it adds clout. They all want an interview,” Simpson smiled.

Ten years ago, the then-27-year old journalist had reached a crossroad; the festival was a “transition mechanism” of magnanimous proportions. Sans street-cred or connections, except for G, he chucked journalism to produce the music festival. The man who earned a living asking questions, asked himself the sublime question – why? The answer to the esoteric question revealed he wanted to change things – he yearned to make a difference, bring the Balkans’ fractured factions together with music. He confesses he was heavily into drugs, and dealing.

Daniel Simpson’s avant-garde memoir, A Rough Guide to the Dark Side, reveals his journey; Kerouac’s On the Road comes to mind. Chapter titles reveal the mood; ZERO, LUST, HERESY and REVELATION, as does author’s note; “I hope this isn’t fiction, or one-sided…”

Simpson, with journalistic page-turner brilliance, starts with the killer first line, “I never really meant to join the underworld. I fell in.” He expected to connect with the youth, alter conflict-scarred Serbia by staging ECHO, a summer-of-love Rock Music Festival on Belgrade’s Big War Island in the Danube. He envisioned eclipsing the EXIT festival, a musical marathon-cum-political-protest that boasted 300,000.

Simpson’s memoir reads like fiction, but it’s not. Hooking with politically-connected street-savvy Serbian partners, the ECHO event emerged as Burning Man meets Woodstock.

Politicians and money-men met with Simpson on the strength of his NYT connection; it gave him clout. He knew the U.S. funneled funds to the Otpor youth group to mount resistance to oust Milosevic; some from three-letter U.S. agencies. EXIT had secured 200K. So Simpson, imbued with anti-establishment idealism, and armed by a drug-fuelled ignition switch, secured funding for the project. Drunk with resolve to make a fortune, and unbounded naïveté about the Serbian culture, he and partners succeeded in pulling off the ECHO Music Festival; albeit at great personal cost.

He conceptualized that ECHO would be the magnet to rally dissidents against political corruption, police brutality and decades of discontent, not permitted during Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. Simpson orchestrated ECHO unaware he was treading on dangerous territory; gangsters waited in the wings.

Simpson, still a NYT correspondent during festival planning, filed regularly. When Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was shot in broad daylight near Simpson’s flat, the Times wanted a sensational front page story. Bullets had shredded him; some thought the hit came from the Zemun underworld. Simpson had to work fast to file for the front page. He had a lot of distractions.

“I was lost in listening to hip-hop music, visions of how everything could be explained… I trusted G, not knowing if he would hoodwink me, he was a gambler man, fearless, charismatic… maybe he knew ECHO would be doomed. I didn’t want to just do a couple of DJ nights – I wanted a full blown Woodstock.”

He had to file the Prime Minister’s assassination quickly. Instead of doing “man on the street” interviews, Simpson asked his translator and her friends what they thought. He settled for ‘rent-a-quote’ opinions, and extrapolated from news wire cheat-sheets. He faked interviews with fake diplomats. “I can’t defend that ethically.” His memoir answers many questions, and tells why he made up stories for the New York Times.

The production of ECHO festival on Big War Island in the middle of the Danube was a logistical nightmare in post-war Serbia. Paramilitary security contractors with guard dogs were hired to protect money-takers and ticket-holders. Scuba divers searched the river for bombs. Simpson was peddling class A drugs at the festival, an offense that could entail jail time. But precautionary measures did not prevent what was yet to go down with the Serbian mafia.

Over 150,000 attendees showed up for the 4-day raver; 100 acts and 300 artists on four stages. The Serbian army had erected a 600-meter pontoon bridge from Zemun to Big War Island in the middle of the Danube. Four circus elephants ridden by Russian acrobats lumbered across the bridge on opening day. Visitors from several nations flocked to the love-in at 25 Euros apiece. Cash rolled in. All went well until torrential rains knocked Sonic Youth out of the line-up on the last day. It was an island of mud. The storm was a harbinger of what was to come.

Simpson’s grandiose dreams were dashed – all the money was stolen. The catastrophic finale of the big cash rip off proved that maybe politicians and partners were in cahoots with the Serbian mafia. Simpson is not sure what role G played in the scenario, and what went down with the gangsters.

Simpson admits to naiveté about encroaching on mafia domain. Manic idealism, high achievement tendencies and continual stonedness convinced him that techno, funk, salsa and soul music of Sonic Youth and Burning Spear could bring unity to disintegrated former Yugoslavia. He confesses to having cynical jadedness as first, describing the Belgrade war zone as “a miserable pariah”. But when he met G, nothing seemed impossible – charisma overtook judgment. Maybe things got lost in translation; G called American money the ‘one-eyed pyramid’. “Music had revolutionary potential…” In retrospect; perfect for ‘washing cash’.

He saw more than revolutionary potential; a blockbuster would generate cash while bringing splintered factions of the Balkans together. So Daniel Simpson, sporting a new Serbian soubriquet, Raoul Djukanovic, interviewed himself, generated a buzz, clinched funding and pitched the ECHO deal dreaming magnanimous dreams. Drugs were big in Belgrade, and being “mentally jellified”; the nightmare was yet to follow.

DESTINATION: OBLIVION

The festival had ample sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, but with the lack of due diligence of Serbian culture – ECHO failed. The promoters filed bankruptcy; police and printers threatened, performers’ expenses went unpaid. Some accused Simpson of being a British spy. His change-making dreams crumbled. Serbian underworld gangsters had struck a coup de grace with a vengeance.

Simpson said booking the bands was tough; “names bring faces…” Disappointing everyone was a fiasco, no one got paid. Maybe scalpers printed tickets; maybe security and partners were in on a scam. There was a lot of cash—who knows how it disappeared?

So ECHO did not end well for the ex-New York Times foreign correspondent, now seeking answers, trying to find himself. “I wrote A Rough Guide to the Dark Side as a catharsis; to be kind to myself… I wanted to be a better journalist. I needed to look inside myself, in reality I was lonely, I had anxiety and depression, I quit my job, lost a fancy title, took risks, had to look inside me, had to learn how to love others and myself. I searched for the meaning of life on a rollercoaster adventure.”

Simpson admits he may not have had the clout to produce ECHO had he not been with the New York Times, confessing to mild deceit. “I wanted to say something, do something; be someone.”

I was more interested in Daniel Simpson the journalist, than Daniel Simpson the concert-promoting drug-dealing addict. I told him that drugs did not define him, his brilliance as a writer is what defines him. At first I said I would not mention much about the drugs, or that he was a stoner, but I would be dishonest not to. The crux of his memoir hinges on drugs; it is the tour de force of his past.

I read A Rough Guide to the Dark Side and numerous NYT articles. Daniel is bright, has swift wit and a quick smile. The high-achiever is hard on himself, demands perfection, cuts himself no slack. He is very likable and laughs a lot. “I have not used drugs for four years,” he says, “I practice yoga; it has been a way of life since long before organized religion. I write about yoga.”

My final question was a surprise. My quest was to penetrate the masquerade; I needed more backstory on my interviewee. “Daniel, if you were to interview yourself, what would be your first question?”

Daniel Simpson’s answer was long; I would have to paraphrase and condense. His forthrightness surprised me. He frankly flaunts his failings, maybe to shock, maybe to be honest. A Rough Guide to the Dark Side tells his life in gripping staccato style. His dark side chronicles hallucinatory time passages through a hip-hop culture – evoked to sanction the retreat from himself and his outrageous actions.

I asked Daniel Simpson about his grueling book tour at Blackhawk’s READ, and wished him Godspeed. “I launched A Rough Guide to the Dark Side in London. I’m traveling by Greyhound across the United States, with stops in New York, Texas, North Carolina, California, Oregon, Washington, back to London, and then to India to be with my girlfriend.”

www.roughguidedarkside.com, at READ Booksellers, Danville and Amazon.

This item A modern Kerouac with “page-turner brilliance” appeared first on A Rough Guide To The Dark Side.