William S. Burroughs – citazioni / quotes
Monday, March 31st, 2008
William Seward Burroughs
Da Wikiquote, aforismi e citazioni in libertà.
William Seward Burroughs (1914 – 1997)
Citazioni di William Seward Burroughs
* Lo psicotico è uno che ha scoperto come vanno le cose. (citato in Gustav Hasford, Nato per uccidere, traduzione di Pier Francesco Paolini, Bompiani, 1989)
Senza fonte
* La cosa più pericolosa da fare è rimanere immobili.
* Nessun problema può essere risolto. Quando una situazione diventa un problema non ha alcuna soluzione. I problemi sono per definizione senza soluzione. Nessun problema può essere risolto, e tutte le soluzioni conducono ad altri problemi.
* Nulla è vero, tutto è permesso.
* Parole, colori, luci, suoni, pietra, legno, bronzo appartengono all’artista vivente. Appartengono a chiunque sappia usarli. Saccheggiate il Louvre!
* Una società di persone che non sognano non potrebbe esistere. Sarebbero morti in due settimane.
Ragazzi selvaggi
Incipit
L’obiettivo è l’occhio di un avvoltoio in volo sopra una zona di cespugli, calcinacci e costruzioni incompiute alla periferia di una città messicana.
Una costruzione di cinque piani senza pareti né scale… gli accampati hanno messo su delle abitazioni provvisorie… i piani sono collegati da scale a pioli… cani abbaiano, polli chiocciano, un ragazzo sul tetto fa un gesto di sega mentre l’obiettivo passa.
Avvicinandoci al suolo vediamo l’ombra delle nostre ali, cantine asciutte invase dai cardi, rugginose sbarre di ferro che sporgono come piante metalliche dal cemento screpolato, una bottiglia rotta al sole, fumetti a colori sporchi di merda, un ragazzo indiano contro un muro con le ginocchia in su, che mangia un’arancia spruzzata di pepe rosso.
L’obiettivo fa uno zoom e oltrepassa un edificio di mattoni rossi tutto a balconate dove vivaci camicie da ruffiani porpora, gialle, rosa, sventolano come le bandiere di una fortezza medioevale. Su queste balconate vediamo fiori, cani, gatti, polli, un caprone legato, una scimmia, un’iguana. I vecinos si sporgono dalle balconate a scambiare chiacchiere, olio da cucina, kerosene e zucchero. È una vecchia scena di folklore recitata anno dopo anno da nuove comparse.
Citazioni
* Siamo in una zona di correnti sessuali elettriche. Di colpo abbiamo formicolii nello scroto e poi cominciano immagini di quello che stiamo per fare come dire che si guarda un’immagine di sé mentre lo si fa e si casca dritti nello schermo con una stretta deliziosa, Alì e Farja che si inseguono e fanno la lotta per tutto il film. (p. 76)
* Mi vedo filare attraverso il cielo come una stella a lasciare la terra per sempre. Cosa mi trattiene? È il contratto per il quale soltanto sono qui. Il contratto è questo corpo che mi tiene qui. Ho quattordici anni sono un ragazzo magro biondo con gli occhi blu pallido. La mia mente si muove da un oggetto all’altro in una serie di fermate fredde ed efficienti. Adesso sono fermo di fronte al country club. C’è un custode. Resto lì finché non si cura più di me. Se resto fermo in un posto abbastanza a lungo la gente smette di guardarmi ed io posso camminare in mezzo a loro. La gente smette di guardarmi e allora posso farlo io. Le donne al mercato mi chiamano «El Niño Muerto» (Il Bimbo Morto) e si fanno il segno della croce quando passo. Non mi piacciono le donne né giovani né vecchie. (Il bimbo morto; 1979, p. 97)
* Stanza vuota proprio così. Adesso so che roba sono le crociate. I giovani sono una specie aliena. Non ci sostituiranno con una rivoluzione. Ci dimenticheranno e ci ignoreranno fuori d’esistenza. Il Posto delle Volpi del Deserto era soltanto uno spettacolo qualsiasi con appena la giusta sfumatura di dimostrazione. Lasciateci in pace. («Chiamatemi semplicemente Joe»; 1979, p. 128)
* La difficile primavera del 1988. Con il pretesto del controllo delle droghe stati polizieschi oppressivi sono stati messi su in tutto il mondo occidentale. La programmazione precisa del pensiero emozione e impressioni sensoriali apparenti secondo la tecnologia descritta nel bollettino 2332 mette gli stati polizieschi in grado di mantenere una facciata democratica dietro la quale denunciano a gran voce come criminali, pervertiti e drogati tutti quelli che si oppongono alla macchina di controllo. Eserciti underground operano nelle grandi città disturbando la polizia con informazioni false attraverso telefonate e lettere anonime. […] Malgrado i diversi scopi e formazioni dei suoi membri costituenti l’underground è d’accordo sugli obiettivi base. Intendiamo marciare contro la macchina della polizia dappertutto. Intendiamo distruggere la macchina della polizia e tutti i suoi archivi. Intendiamo distruggere tutti i sistemi verbali dogmatici. La cellula familiare e le sue cancerose espansioni in tribù, paesi, nazioni noi la sradicheremo alle sue radici vegetali. Non vogliamo più sentire nessuna storia di famiglie, storia di madre, storia di padre, storia di poliziotto, storia di prete, storia di paese o storia di partito. Per dirla in parole povere ne abbiamo sentite abbastanza di stronzate. («Mamma ed io si vorrebbe sapere»; 1979, pp. 130-131)
Explicit
THE PENNY ARCADE PEEP SHOW
Ragazzi nudi in piedi di fianco a una sorgente savana per sfondo una testa di giraffa in lontananza. I ragazzi parlano in grugniti e ringhi, brontolii e guaiti e si mostrano i denti a vicenda come cani selvatici. Due ragazzi fottono stando in piedi schiene contratte denti stretti, peli ritti sulle caviglie, increspature di pelle d’oca sulle gambe guaiscono e mugolano.
Nei giardini di carne marcia languidi ragazzi Bubu con neri sorrisi grattano piaghe erogene malati putridi dolci i loro corpi nudi evaporano una nebbia color seppia di soffocanti vapori nitrosi.
Verde ragazzo lucertola accanto a un ruscello stagnante sorride e strofina i suoi logori calzoncini di cuoio con un lento dito.
Fioca strada su abiti insudiciati un ragazzo è in piedi nudo con la camicia in una mano e l’altra mano sta grattando il culo.
Due giovani nudi con i capelli neri e ricciuti e orecchie a punta da Pan giocano a dadi di fianco a una fontana di marmo. Il perdente si china in avanti guardando il proprio riflesso nella vasca. Il vincitore si mette in posa dietro a lui come un dio fallico. Tiene allargate le lisce natiche bianche con i pollici. Le labbra si arricciano sui denti bianchi e aguzzi. Una risata scuote il cielo.
Ragazzi aliante planano giù dal tramonto su ali rosse e fanno piovere frecce dal cielo.
Ragazzi fionda scivolano attraverso la vallata sulle loro ali nere di plastica come fogli di mica al sole vestiti stracciati che sventolano sulla dura carne rossa. Ciascun ragazzo ha una pesante fionda attaccata al polso con una cinghia di cuoio. Alla cintura hanno borse di cuoio piene di pietre nere rotonde.
I ragazzi pattinatori si lanciano giù da una collina in un turbine di foglie autunnali. Tagliano attraverso una pattuglia della polizia. Il sangue spruzza le foglie secche nell’aria.
Lo schermo sta esplodendo in crateri lunari e argentee macchioline bollenti.
«Ragazzi selvaggi molto vicini adesso.»
Il buio scende sui sobborghi in rovina. Un cane abbaia in lontananza. Fioche malferme stelle stanno volando via attraverso un vuoto cielo luccicante, i ragazzi selvaggi sorridono.
* William Burroughs, Ragazzi selvaggi (The wild boys, 1969), traduzione di Giulio Saponaro, SugarCo, Milano, 1979.
Estratto da http://it.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Seward_Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
From Wikiquote
William Seward Burroughs (1914–02-05 – 1997–08-02), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs, was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word
performer. Much of Burroughs’ work is semi-autobiographical, drawn from
his experiences as an opiate addict, a condition that marked the last
fifty years of his life. He was a central member of the Beat Generation, an avant-garde author who influenced popular culture as well as literature. In 1984 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
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Sourced
- 1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than
you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait).
3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.- On drug dealing, Daily Telegraph, in 1964
- A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what’s going on.
- As quoted in Friend magazine, 1970
- England has the most sordid literary scene I’ve ever seen. They all
meet in the same pub. This guy’s writing a foreword for this person.
They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just to scrape by. They’re all scratching each other’s backs.
Naked Lunch (1959)
Grove Press, 2003, ISBN 0-802-11639-6, 289 pages
- Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside. (p. 11)
- From the chapter entitled "Rube"
- A functioning police state needs no police. (p. 31)
- From the chapter entitled "Benway"
- I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane,
and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look
of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness… When I
speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any
preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred
Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group… There is no
evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical
dependence. (pp. 199-201)- From "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness," the introduction to the 1960 edition
- Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror. (p. 201)
- From "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness"
- The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he
sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his
merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. (p. 224)- From "Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs," Written in 1956, first published in The British Journal of Addiction, vol. 52, no. 2, p. 1 (January 1957) and later used as footnotes in The Naked Lunch. In the Grove Press edition, it is printed as an appendix.
The Soft Machine (1961)
- Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash
the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill!
Kill!
Exterminator! (1979)
- As a young child Audrey Carsons wanted to be writers because
writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon
smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in
Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy
and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and
languidly caressing a pet gazelle.
– "The Lemon Kid"
Cities of the Red Night (1981)
- Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.
- There is simply no room left for ‘freedom from the tyranny of
government’ since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water,
transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you
want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree,
died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or
a disaster could restore it.
The Western Lands (1987)
- Remember the Italian steward who put on women’s clothes and so
filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was
born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and
shame."- Page 6.
- Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to
shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any
more than you can fake a good meal.
Painting the Internet (1996)
- It would be certainly a very foolish thing: try paint the Internet,
start making oil-on-canvas paintings out of the computer world.
William S. Burroughs, "Conversations", 1996
Unsourced
- A paranoid-schizophrenic is a guy who just found out what’s going on.
- America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American
non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The
dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control
system set up by the non-dreamers.
- Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
- Kerouac (editing Naked Lunch): Bill, what is all this stuff about young naked boys being hanged in limestone caves?
Burroughs: No idea. I know I’m some kind of interplanetary agent but I don’t think my signals are decoding properly.
- Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it.
- The Ticket That Exploded
- Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.
- Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who
can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to
escape.
- General procedure: Read and learn all you can about problem. Look
at problem from a point of zero preconception. Devise variations and
alternative solutions. Check back to see if your solution has workable
advantage over solutions previously arrived at . . . To carry the
method a step further than solution of purely technical problem where
purpose is implicit in the artifact: devising more efficient gun, tool,
boat, signal system, medical or interrogation procedure.
- Heroin is a vitamin…don’t let anyone tell you different heroin IS
a vitamin…there’s nothing in the game plan…that says that all
vitamins have to be good for you.
- I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be
liked by all the people around them.I don’t care if people hate my
guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they
are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being
concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile
attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.
- I think all novelists particularly are engaged in the creation of
Tulpas. That is exactly what they are doing. Ahh… they are trying to
create characters that have an existence apart from the novel, apart
from the page.
- If you’re doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in
writing. His word isn’t worth shit. Not with the good lord telling him
how to fuck you on the deal.
- I’m running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
- Images. Millions of images. That’s what I eat.
- I say we are here in human form to learn by the human hieroglyphs
of love and suffering. There is no intensity of love or feeling that
does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this
risk, to love and feel without reserve or defense.
- Jesus Christ, by their fruits ye shall know them, not by their disclaimers.
- On Kerouac’s later apparent disavowals of Beat creeds
- Language is a virus.
- Variant: Language is a virus from outer space.
- Variant: Language is obviously a virus as it depends on replication.
- Used as a song title by Laurie Anderson
- Love! What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE
- Madness is confusion of levels of fact… Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
- Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to
remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is
designed to remain a tadpole.
- Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who
can’t mind their own business, because they have no business of their
own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
- No job too dirty for the fucking scientists.
- No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
- Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making
something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that
they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it ‘creative
observation’. Creative viewing.
- Now the perpetrating of miracles constitutes a brazen attempt to
loosen up the universe. When you set up something as MIRACLE, you deny
the very concept of FACT, establish a shadowy and spurious court
infested by every variety of coyote and shady fixer beyond Court of Fact.
- Shoot the bitch and write a book. That’s what I did.
- Of questionable veracity.
- Son, never listen to a priest or a policeman…the only thing they have is the key to the shithouse.
- Survive, it’s the name of the game. Would I give a shit about these people?
- The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right.
- The ‘Other Half’ is the word. The ‘Other Half’ is an organism. Word
is an organism. The presence of the ‘Other Half’ is a seperate organism
attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be
demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common ‘hallucinations’ of
subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled
through the subject’s body at an angle…yes quite an angle it is the
‘Other Half’ worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From
symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The
flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic
organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern
man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try
to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a
resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.- The Ticket That Exploded
- There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.
- There is no line between the ‘real world’ and ‘world of myth and
symbol.’ Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.
- There’s something wrong with that boy. He frowns for no good reason.
- To his secretary after a visit from Kurt Cobain
- Thou shalt not be such a shit, you don’t know you are one.
- Thou shalt not blow pot-smoke into the face of my pet. Say’s whom who want’s to get high.
- Thou shalt not drop an atom bomb or even shit one out in the first place – I’m talking to you, Robert Oppenheimer.
- ‘Treatment is symptomatic’ – which means in the trade there is none.
- When I become death, death is the seed from which I grow.
- Word is a virus.
- Words, colors, light, sound, stone, wood, bronze belong to the
living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the
Louvre!… Steal anything in sight.
External links
- RealityStudio.org — A Burroughs community featuring a moderated forum, Burroughs texts, exclusive interviews, news, and more.
- William S. Burroughs — A French website dedicated to William S. Burroughs featuring news, Burroughs texts and quotations, a gallery and more.
- Beat — A film (2000) based on his and Joan Burroughs’s life leading up to her death.
- Lines of Advance — Burroughs audio, image, text.
- William S. Burroughs at Literary Kicks
- Interzone.org 5 linked websites on William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
- William S. Burroughs Internet Database
- Master Musicians of JoujoukaPhotos Gysin ’56, Burroughs 50s, Hamri 50s, 71, Master of Joujouka, Paintings Hamri]
- The Western Lands
- Link to 1973 Oui article by William Burroughs on visiting Joujouka with Ornette Coleman, Hamri, Brion Gysin and Robert Palmer
- Brion Gysin, Tangier Beat Generation, Joe Ambrose, Joujouka
- Reporters Redacteurs d’Interzone
- Other Minds Archive: William Burroughs Press Conference at Berkeley Museum of Art on November 12, 1974 Streaming audio.
- Naropa Audio Archives: William S. Burroughs class on the technology and ethic of wishing (June twenty fifth, 1986) Streaming audio and 64 kbit/s MP3 ZIP file.
- Naropa Audio Archives: William S. Burroughs lecture on public discourse. (August eleventh, 1980) Streaming audio and 64 kbit/s MP3 ZIP file.
- Interzone Creations Creations inspired by Burroughs & Gysin’s work.
- The death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs Research by James W. Grauerholz concerning the shooting of Joan Burroughs
- Shooting Joan Burroughs at Beats In Kansas.
- Essay on Junky by Will Self.
- Article on Counterculture and Burroughs by Jonathan Leyser
- Zed TV: "Ah Pook is Here" Animated film by Philip Hunt, inspired by Burroughs’s text.
- Studio AKA: "Ah Pook is Here" Excerpt from animated film by Philip Hunt.
- Language Is A Virus Online Cut-Up Machine, the cut-up writing technique
- 1984 and 1985 audio interviews of William Burroughs by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio
- Blue Neon Alley – William S. Burroughs directory
- Ubuweb arts website contains authorized MP3s of many Burroughs recordings, as well as online video of The Cut Ups short film and other works
- Official Site of Underwires — French band inspired by the work of William S. Burroughs.
- [1] John Gilmore on William S Burroughs Paris 1959
- Burroughs Book Covers A selection of worldwide front covers of books by William S. Burroughs
- Pictorial Map of The East Village—Featuring William Burroughs and other luminaries.
- Audio book (mp3) :incipit of My Education, translated in French by Sylvie Durastanti
William Seward Burroughs in UbuWeb Sound:
1. K-9 Was in Combat with the Alien Mind-Screens (13:29)
Early cut-up of tapes made by Ian Sommerville and WSB around 1965, probably in New York and London.
2. Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups (3:43)
From a lecture given by WSB at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, April 20, 1976.
3. Recalling All Active Agents (1:25)
Excerpt from tape made in 1960 by Brion Gysin at BBC Studios in London, using BG’s permutational technique.
4. Silver Smoke of Dreams
Tape made in early 1960s by Ian Sommerville and WSB, using the "drop-in" method.
5. Junky Relations (2:56)
Excerpt from a radio talk by WSB in 1961 in London. "A Day in the Life of a Junkie." Tape courtesy of the University of Kansas Libraries.
6. Joujouka (1:30)
Excerpt from live tape made by WSB at the Joujouka Fetival in the hills of Morocco with Ornette Coleman, Jan. 18, 1973.
7. Curse Go Back (1:12)
From early 1960s tape, WSB chanting an anti-curse.
8. Present Time Exercises (2:18)
Casette work by WSB in London, ca. 1971, using radio, television, several tape recorders.
9. Joujouka (0:42)
10. Working with the Popular Forces
WSB cut-ups with Dutch Schultz’s last words and news texts, shortwave radio noise. Mid ’60s, London
11. Interview with Mr. Martin (2:59)
Excerpt from WSB performance at the ICA in London, Feb. 28, 1963.
12. Joujouka (1:26)
13. Sound Piece (2:14)
Produced by Ian Somerville using the inching technique, 1960s?
14. Jojuka (2:39)
15. Burroughs Called the Law (1:34)
WSB routine recorded mid-1960s – dropping a dime on the Nova Mob.
William S. Burroughs – Various Tracks
16. from Naked Lunch (1977)
17. from "The Wild Boys" (1974)
18. What Washington, What Orders (1974)
19. Keynote Commentary / Roosevelt After Inauguration (1978)
20. Benway (1978)
21. from The Gay Gun: This is Kim Carson / Just Like The Collapse of any Currency / The Whole Tamale (1978)
22. What the Nova Convention is About (1978)
23. Conversations | William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine, and Robert Anton Wilson (1978)
24. When Did I Stop Wanting to be President (1975)
25. "This, gentlemen, is a death dwarf…" (1965)
26. "Mister Bradley Mister Martin…" (1965)
27. William S. Burroughs – Introducing John Stanley Hart; He Entered the Bar with the Best of Intentions
28. William S. Burroughs – Twilight’s Last Gleamings
29. William S. Burroughs – My Protagonist Kim Carson
30. William S. Burroughs – The Do Rights
31. William S. Burroughs – Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr. Hart, Kim Has a Dark Side to His Character
32. William S. Burroughs – Progressive Education
33. William S. Burroughs – The Wild Fruits
34. William S. Burroughs – The Unworthy Vessel
35. William S. Burroughs – Excerpts from The Western Land: The President, Colonel Bradford, Everyman a God
36. William S. Burroughs – "Dinosaurs"
37. William S. Burroughs – "The Chief Smiles" from The Wild Boys (1974, 6:50)
38. William S. Burroughs – The Green Nun" from The Wild Boys (1974, 3:32)
39. William S. Burroughs – excerpt from "Ah Pook Is Here" (1975, 12:00)
40. William S. Burroughs – excerpt from "Cities Of The Red Night" (1975, 10:00)
41. William S. Burroughs – excerpt from "103rd Street Boys" from Junkie" (1975, 7:29)
42. William S. Burroughs – excerpt from "Naked Lunch" (1975, 20:28)
43. William S. Burroughs – "From Here To Eternity" from Exterminator (1974, 3:40)
Tracks 1-15 From the CD Break Through in Grey Room (Sub Rosa CD006-8)
Track 16, 2:14, St. Marks Chruch, NYC, April 9, 1977, from the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets Big Ego
Track 17, 8:20, 6:53, Recorded Duke Street, London, Nov. 19, 1971, from the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets
Track 18, recorded GPS, April 1, 1974, from the LP Dial-A-Poem Poets Disconnnected
Tracks 19-23, recorded at the Nova Convention, NYC, 1978 from the LP The Nova Convention
Track 24-26, Nova Express, excerpts read by the author, from Aspen No. 5+6
Track 27-34 from Dial-A-Poem-Poets: "You’re The Guy I Want To Share My Money With"
Track 35 from Dial-A-Poem-Poets: "A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse" (1985)
Track 36 from Dial-A-Poem-Poets: "Better An Old Demon Than A New God" (1984)
Track 37-43 from Dial-A-Poem-Poets: "William S. Burroughs / John Giorno" (1975)
During the 1960s, William Burroughs was in Europe and England. The Vietnam War, the Cultural Revolution, hippies and the acid gospel, the U S. in tumult, all these were dispatches to him. Living between Paris and London, his only excursions to America were in 1965, when he lived for a year in New York at the Chelsea Hotel and 210 Centre Street, and revisited St, Louis and Palm Beach; and in 1968, when he covered the Democratic Convention in Chicago for Esquire in the company of Genet, Southern and Seaver. Burroughs had quit the States in 1953 exactly because he foresaw these police-state conditions.
But now the wild boys were in the streets, in London and Paris too, and Burroughs was inspired to hope that the world could really change. In the creative world-switchboard of the Beat Hotel, in various London hotels, in a house in the Arab Quarter of Tangier, he experimented with tape recordings, hoping to cut the pre-recorded time line of pre-sent time, and let the future leak through.
Many of these tapes are as much Ian Sommerville’s work as Burroughs or even more. Ian’s technical background enabled him to contribute to the early development of sound-and-light shows in London, and at one point he worked in a studio furnished by Paul McCartney.
Ian was a sorcerer’s apprentice, and the other sorcerer was the late Brion Gysin. The development of all the early cut-up techniques was a pure collaboration between Gysin and Burroughs. It was Brion who led the way on a crusade to rub out the word, and with Antony Blach the cut-up was applied to film, in Towers Open Fire, The Cut-Ups, and Ghost at N° 9.
It is a long way back to the 1960s and sometimes hard to remember the sense of urgency and revolution then, of danger and discovery, that informed the literature of opposition. That there is now, in 2001, a market for these archival materials shows that this work was seminal, even though it has been little distributed until recent years.
