Frazer Nido is a man whom I sometimes wish I could be, and a man I would never want to be in reality. He is a man of very few words, no friends, and a tremendous amount of ideas and execution of those ideas. This man is both absolutely brilliant and a total recluse, cut off to the world in all ways, instead dwelling in his own numerous inventions. He is efficient and extremely secretive, lacking a sense of trust for humanity. This lack of trust comes from his heart being too badly broken when he was a young man and he thus evades all close ties to people, in order to prevent his heart from ever again being broken. After thirty or forty years of self-enforced ostracism, he (in his mind) befriends and chats with a young man at his place of employment. This young man is the only person to show up at Nido’s funeral, and resultantly inherits his estate. The main bulk of the story is actually Whitmann, the young man, and his wife discovering the interesting things that Nido did with his life during his isolation at home. I am a little unsure of the details and plausibility of the story, as it is not entirely convincing in my mind, the way a lot of it is executed, so if you feel similarly, I do apologize. Eventually I hope to revise it to make it work better, and of course it must be beared in mind that this is a work of fiction and ultimately contrived.
Nido is a character I’ve long had in my head and one that I am eager to discover and write more about. I came up with the idea in the Summer of 2004 while I was working as a Machine Operator at Ball Metal Container. Being a machine operator, essentially meant for me, that I was a part of the machine itself in a way, that I was as automated in my actions and what I did as any other part of the process for twelve hours a day repeating the same actions more than once a minute. When you get that used to doing something that repetitive for so long, you start to be able to devote your mind to other things and think a tremendous amount. This was an interesting position for me, because I spend every second of my life thinking anyway, but during the school year I always had to concentrate more on whatever it was I was studying than what I would be thinking about if my mind had license to wander freely, the way it did here. At Ball, I could think about any and every thing to get me through the day, and I must confess my first year there, I hated it, I was always so bored every single day with nothing to do but think. Then, I learned how to occupy my head with many thoughts of interest and get through this time. One of the ways I did it was to think of stories and things like Frazer Nido, among other things like that.
Frazer was inspired initially by a guy at Ball, named Mike who was a maintainer (mechanic) there, as well as by myself. Mike was older with a wrinkled face and white hair, kind of a cowboy sort, who never really talked to many people and always seemed like a bit of a loner to me. Of course, I don’t think he really was that much, and outside of work I am sure he was a lot more sociable and probably had a wife and family and rather normal life, but from my brief perspective of him he seemed rather alone. I wondered what it would be like for someone to be in a position like I was, but for a much longer time, and have no one to talk to. This is in many ways a very implausible situation, because usually someone would not be able to not make acquaintances at least, and would most likely be promoted eventually (especially after staying in for as many years as Mike had). The other strange thing about it, is people who had been in my position as the same kind of machine operator tended not to do much thinking it appears, at least whenever I asked them about it, they always said so, and when they got to the press, they just kind of dazed out. I was fortunate at Ball, as I was only there for four summers and had a break of school between each to keep my sanity.
What does this all have to do with Frazer, a lot really. Because of all the time I had to think at work, I wondered how much more someone could think of, if they stayed in a position like mine for years and years (around forty). I also wondered what someone could do if they had no social life, as mine is often a nuisance for working on things like Frazer does. What could a man do who worked in a place where he thought and thought for twelve hours a day, with four days off at a time, for forty years? So, from all this experience and understanding of things, I thought someone could achieve vast amounts of accomplishments like this, if only they applied their mind to the right things in that time. This guy of course would have to have a pretty high intelligence, and the desire for solitude to the degree of becoming a hermit, but if you had these elements together, some amazing things could happen. Thus, Frazer was created. I felt that when I told this story, though, the actual work and what this man did would not be so interesting as looking back on a lifetime filled with what he did. I was inspired in part by Citizen Kane, to make a story about a man after he died, only in this version there could be no flashbacks from other characters, because he has no one else in his life, no, this would need to be told by Frazer himself through his work and accomplishments.
The other major thing that inspired this was Leonardo Da Vinci, a man who I truly admire and respect. He spent most of his life inventing and creating and sketching brilliant ideas. I figured Nido, would be in part, Da Vinci, or at least his personality would have a great deal in common with Da Vinci. The names Frazer and Nido are a tribute to my best teacher ever, Stephen Frazer, and my favorite god in mythology, Odin, the god of wisdom, war, poetry and so on. I wanted to pay homage to them for forming who I am today in many ways (especially Mr. Frazer). Frazer is obviously the last name of Mr. Frazer as well as being one of my favorite characters from television Frasier Crane; Nido is just Odin backwards. Also, like in the Secular Monastery, this is a means for me to express different ideas I have through a book. In this, Nido gives me a means to invent a language, and draw out several ideas I have long wanted to produce and demonstrate. Writing has always been my greatest talent of the artistic sort, and I felt this would be a great way to express myself and set forth a great idea that I would love to share with people.
