(Monday July 4) - America

AMERICA

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. 

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.   

I can’t stand my own mind. 

America when will we end the human war? 

Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. 

I don’t feel good don’t bother me. 

I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. 

America when will you be angelic? 

When will you take off your clothes? 

When will you look at yourself through the grave? 

When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? 

America why are your libraries full of tears? 

America when will you send your eggs to India? 

I’m sick of your insane demands. 

When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? 

America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.   

Your machinery is too much for me. 

You made me want to be a saint. 

There must be some other way to settle this argument.   

Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.   

Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?   

I’m trying to come to the point. 

I refuse to give up my obsession. 

America stop pushing I know what I’m doing. 

America the plum blossoms are falling. 

I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. 

America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. 

America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.   

I smoke marijuana every chance I get. 

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.   

When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.   

My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble. 

You should have seen me reading Marx. 

My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right. 

I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer. 

I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. 

America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. 

I’m addressing you. 

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?   

I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. 

I read it every week. 

Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.   

I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. 

It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.   

It occurs to me that I am America. 

I am talking to myself again. 

Asia is rising against me. 

I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance. 

I’d better consider my national resources. 

My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions. 

I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. 

I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. 

My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic. 

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? 

I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes. 

America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe 

America free Tom Mooney 

America save the Spanish Loyalists 

America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die 

America I am the Scottsboro boys. 

America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy. 

America you don’t really want to go to war. 

America its them bad Russians. 

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.   

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages. 

Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. 

That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.   

America this is quite serious. 

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.   

America is this correct? 

I’d better get right down to the job. 

It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. 

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. 

Berkeley, January 17, 1956

William Burroughs, 1976 - 2 (Raudive)

                             [Konstantīns Raudive (1909-1974)]

William Burroughs lecture  from yesterday continues

WSB: Now to consider Raudive's experimental procedure. The experiments were carried out in a soundproof studio. A new blank tape was turned on and allowed to record. Then the tape was played back and then the experimenter, listening through headphones, detected quite recognizable voices and words, that were found to be recorded on the tape. Let me say at once that I have not yet performed this experiment though it's an obvious extension of the experiments I did perform - Well why not? - Well, it simply didn't occur to me. A step becomes obvious when someone takes it. Conversely, it did not occur to Raudive to take his recorded words and voices (he could have used copy-tape of course) (and) run them through echo-chambers, overlay, inch, speed-up, slow down, scramble them, and what not. I now intend to perform Raudive's experiments with a number of variations and I hope that some of you will do the same.

Raudive had recorded one-hundred thousand phrases of these voices. The speech is almost double the usual speed and the sound is pulsed in rhythms like poetry or chanting.These voices are in a number of accents and languages, often quite ungrammatical. Here's one - "You I friends where stay". Sounds like a Tangier hustler! - Now, reading through the sample voices in Breakthrough, I was struck by the many instances of a distinctive style reminiscent of schizophrenic speech, certain dream utterances, some of the cut-ups, and delirium voices like the last words of Dutch Schultz. Many of the voices allegedly come from the dead, There's Hitler, Nietzche, Goethe, Jesus Christ, anybody who is anybody is there, (having undergone a marked deterioration of their mental and artistic faculties - Goethe certainly isn't what he used to be, and Hitler certainly had a bigger and better mouth when he was alive). On one level the recorded voices' procedure is a sophisticated electronic table-tapping, and table-tapping is one aspect to the cut-up experiments I've described. After all, what better way to contact someone than to cut and rearrange his actual words. Certainly an improvement on the usual scene where Shakespeare's announced, to be followed by some excruciatingly bad poetry. Now whether there is actual contact with the dead (or not) is an academic question so long as there is no way to prove or disprove it.

An element of precision could be introduced using voice-prints where recordings of someone's voice exists. (I mean, someone turns up on the tape and pretends to be (Jack) Kerouac, you can check it against Kerouac's voice-print). Now voice-prints are as individual as fingerprints and they could be compared of course to the voices on tape (of course it is not impossible that a voice-print could be precisely imitated). Messages from the dead or not, the voices frequently refer to the thoughts and preocccupations of those present at the session, or to people connected to those present. Now here is an example from the Handbook of Psychic Discoveries:

"New experiments began with a surprise. The German team lost their way. At the same  time one of the group was stricken with a very severe toothache. Meanwhile, Jurgenson decided to try a recording session on his own. Replaying the tape he heard the German words , "Sie kommen bald. Zahrnatz Zahrnatz" (They will arrive soon. Dentist. Dentist)"

Now I've pointed out a stylistic similarity between the voices recorded by Raudive, dream speech, schizophrenic speech, words spoken in delirium, and cut-ups, and this does not apply to all of the material in many of these categories, much of which may be quite banal and undistinguished. For example, a  frequently recurring phrase in Raudive's book is "Heat the bathroom. Company is coming". Well I thought this was some kind  of an esoteric code, but it simply refers to a Latvian custom - When they are expecting guests, someone goes into the bathroom and lights the stove. So it's a question of selecting the material which is stylistically interesting, or which may contain references of personal, or prophetic in some cases, significance, I've already given some examples of cut-ups and here are some examples of dream-speech. This first one is from one of my students at New York City College who encountered (Ernest) Hemingway in a dream and asked him how he could be there when he was dead and then Hemingway replied,  "We can come out when shadows cover the cracks". 
And these are, mostly, from my own dreams  - "You need black money here. We still don't have the nouns. Do you like to get lost or patrol cars. The symbol of the skull and the symbol of soap turn on the same axis. Can't you keep any ice? The Inspectorate of Canada is banging on the door. I suppose you think Missouri is a lump. You have an airforce appetite. The lair of the bear is in Chicago, The unconscious imitated by cheesecake. A tin of tomato soup in Arizona. Where naked troubadors shoot snotty baboons, Green is a man to fill is a boy. I can take the hut set anywhere. A book called Advanced Outrage. An astronaut named Platt. First American shot on Mars. Life is a flickering shadow with violence before and after it. A good loser always gives up control for what the situation would be if control wasn't there to look around in it (if there wasn't any question of control)."

And here are two examples of dream slang - "An ounce of heroin is a beach, you can lay around in it for a month" and "to camel" is dream-slang for "fuck". 

Unfortunately, I do not have examples of schizoprenic speech,  just a few from my memory, and collecting this material would be a very useful project. And I just have two here that I remember - "Doctorhood is being made with me. It's stylistically similar to the Inspectorate of Canada" - and "Radius radius it is enough",

And here are a few quotes from the last words of Dutch Schultz. He was shot on, I believe, it was Thursday, in 1935, and he died twenty-four hours later, and I believe there was a police stenographer at his bedside the whole time - about two thousand words, I'm just giving you a very few. And he had a temperature of one-hundred-and-three, he'd been shot through the liver: 

"The glove will fit what I say. I wanted to break the ring. I get a month.. He was a cowboy in one of the seven days a week fight. In the olden days they waited and they waited. Let me in the district. Please let me get in and eat. This is something that should not be spoken about.Be instrumental in letting us know. No, it is confused and it says no. A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. (that's supposed to be the most enigmatic line, I wonder what the police made of it). Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's commander. Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast. They are French people.It was desperate. I am wobbly. I don't want harmony/I want harmony. Open this up and break it so I can touch you. The baron says these things. Come on open the soap duckets. The chimney-sweeps take to the sword. Let me in the district..French Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone."

Now here are some of the phrases from Raudive's book (and I have taken these phrases out of what might becalled a minimal context, because they weren't very much in context anyway) for illustrative considerations:. 

"Cheers, here are the non-dead. Here are the cunning ones. We are here because of you. We are all longing to go home. Politics, here is death. Take the grave with you. It snows horribly. We see Tibet with the binoculars of the people. Give reinforcement. Diminish the stopper. Sometimes only the native country loves. I am expensive. We are coordinated, the guard is manifold. You belong probably to the cucumbers. Telephone with restraint comrade. It is difficult in Train A. Covering fire. Send orders. Are you without jewelry?. 
A lecture is taking place here. We have become accustomed to our sick ones. Get out of the defensive position. Speed is required. Leave it in full gear. Have done with the seemingly apparent. Please to use studio postulated to you. Faustus, good morning. I demand our authorities. This is the aunt's language. Identity card. Passport. Bind death, obey death. Bring a halibut.You can refuse. It is permitted. A pistol is our man. This is operational. Even the wolves do not stay here. Into battle. The long life flees. We ignite. It is bad here. Here the birds burn. Are you without jewelry? It smells of the operational death. Knowledgeable Goth, the deed of the future. Believe. Separated, Here is eternity. The far away exists. You are the contract. Are you in salt? We have been loooking all over the place for human beings. Oh good the sea. Professor of non-existence, the body is evidence of the spirit. The natural key. We are the language here. The doctor is on the market. Good evening our chap, are you making mummies to standard? It is enough. Reason submitted. Called at a bad time. This is operational even in the middle. With binoculars at the border, you have nevertheless to fetch our clothes. Prepare trousers in the bathroom. Why are you a German? Clean out the earth. The new Germany. Hitler is a good animal-infesting louse. Have you stolen horses with him?  Yo siento. Man pricks. Buena cosa man. Draw the spirit to the plata. Hurry to make the flutes. Facts see us. I am practically here. A good crossing. The earth disintegrated."

It sounds very much like some kind of a code and I tried to interpret some of it. 
Now, "We see Tibet with the binoculars of the people" -  now this means something to me because in 1970, about the time that these recordings were made, I wrote a story about a Chinese patrol who finds a Tibetan monastery taken over by the CIA to test a radioactive virus. I'll just read a paragraph from that:

"The scouting party stopped a few hundred yards from the village on the bank of a stream. Yen Lee studied the village through his field glasses - (through "the binoculars of the people") -  while his men sat down and lit cigarettes. The village was built into the side of a mountain. The stream ran through the town and water had been diverted into pools on a series of cultivated terraces that led up to the monastery. There was no sign of life in the steep winding street by the pools. He lowered his glasses, signalling for the men to follow. The men crossed a stone bridge, two at a time covered by the men behind them. If any defenders were going to open fire now would be the time and place to do it. Beyond the bridge, a street twisted up te mountainside. On both sides there were stone huts, many of them fall into ruins.Keeping to the sides and taking cover behind the ruined huts, Yen Lee became increasngly aware of a hideous unknown odor. He motioned the patrol to halt and stood there sniffing - (I think he was smelling the pickle-factory)
"You belong probably to the cucumbers" - I don't know how many of you are familiar with the term used to designate the CIA, it's "the pickle-factory". "He works for the pickle-factory" means he works…he's a CIA man. I think this designation was mentioned in Time or Newsweek and I'd already heard it from some acquaintances in the CIA. Well, what would be the derivation of the term? - To be "in a pickle" is to be in a quandary and a bbad spot, and what is the CIA manufacturing but bad spots and quandries, so I think it's quite possible that that is the reference.
"Telephone with restraint comrade" - Watch what you say over the phone - the cucumbers are listening  in."
"Are you without jewelry" - Well this may refer to the laces, the first laces were actually made with rubies, I believe, or whatever the ingredients necessary
"Bind death, obey death" - compare to Dutch Schultz's last words "I don't want harmony/I want harmony"
"Are you in salt? We have been loooking all over the place for human beings" - Now salt could refer to any basic commodity. In this case, since the voices are discarnate, the reference is probably to human bodies. Your blood, as you know has the saline content of sea-water ("Oh good, the sea"). Now to say "Are you in blood?" would sort of blow your vampiric cover (that would be a little crude)
"Have you stolen horses with him?" is a German proverb meaning "can you trust him?"  
"Draw the spirit to the plata" - Now, Raudive considers this utterance inexplicable. Apparently he did not know that "plata" is a general Spanish slang term for money. 
"A good crossing. The earth disintegrated" - Some years ago, scientists drew up a plan for  aspaceship to be propelled by an atomic blast - and that would be a motive for blowing up the earth - propulsion to healthier areas.

The publication of Breakthrough in England caused quite a stir, and Peter Bander wrote a book, Voices From the Tapes describing the circumstances surrounding the publication. There were articles in the press, radio and television programs and much discussion pro and con. Some people protested that if these voices come from the dead, they seem to be living not in celestial realms but in a cosmic hell. In consequence the voices may be misleading, interested, even downright ill-intentioned. Well, what did they expect? a chorus of angels with tips on the stock market?  Others protested that contact with these voices is dangerous, inciting the use of black magic and invocation of lower astral entities by Nazi leaders. An article written by a psychic researcher, Gordon Turner, [Psychic News, May 15,1971]  typifies the "dangerous-for-the-unitiated" line. Turner's article was written in answer to an article by someone named (R.A.) Cass, in which he, Cass, says, "If a door has been opened between this world and the next then the masses, armed with their cheap transistor sets and five-pound Hong Kong recorders will participate despite Gordon Taylor, the Pope, and the Government". And here is Turner:

 "I believe Breakthrough should not have been published. Does Cass think it is safe for anyone and everyone to open themselves to this kind of influence? Has he the slightest conception of how dangerous this might be?" - Dangerous to who exactly? When people start talking about the danger posed by making psychic knowledge available to the masses, they are generally tryimng to monopolize this knowledge for themselves. In my opinion, the best safeguard against the abuse of such knowledge is wide dissemination. The more people that know about it the better.  A large number of independent researchers is the best insurance against monopoly or misuse by power-oriented groups or individuals. The time has come to dump all these secrets on the table, Secret weapons, secret doctrines, the lot. They are less dangerous in the hands of the general public than in the hands of intelligence agencies and the military, and I feel that knowledge belongs to anyone who can use it.

I'd like to stop here for some questions and discussions because we've really covered an awful lot of ground in this lecture so far. Questions?

to be continued 

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-six minutes in and concluding at approximately forty-seven minutes in]

(An earlier version of this transcript appeared  in Talking Poetics From Naropa Institute - Annals of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - Volume 1 - (edited by Anne Waldman and Marilyn Webb), Shambhala, 1978)

William Burroughs 1976 - 1

                                                          [William S Burroughs (1914-1997)]

We continue with transcriptions of William Burroughs'  Naropa lectures
See earlier segments here, here, here and here
This second lecture was delivered on July 27, 1976

WSB: Ready?
Anne Waldman (on behalf of Naropa): I don't think Mr Burroughs needs much of an introduction..

WSB: What I'm trying to do in these two lectures to give you something you can use and apply, something you can do, experiments you can perform. And I'm indicating some areas of experimentation in the hope that some of you willl carry these experiments further and come up with something new.In fact, some of you may already have done so - And some books that may turn you on to something. Now the first book that I'm using is the Handbook...
[Anne Waldman interrupts]
 - There's a sound problem. If you can project a little more and we're going to close these doors..
WSB: Okay..
Anne Waldman: And move closer too..
WSB: Now can you all hear me?
Anne Waldman: There's no amplification.
WSB: Oh.. I see…now I understand..  I'll start over…

WSB: What I'm trying to do in these two lectures to give you something you can use and apply, something you can do, experiments you can perform. And I'm indicating some areas of experimentation in the hope that some of you willl carry these experiments further and come up with something new Perhaps, some of you may already have. And some books that may turn you on to something. Now the first book that I'm going to use is the Handbook of Psi Discoveries (which doesn't seem to be in stock in any of the bookstores, but it's on order and will be here, I think, in about ten days or two weeks. How many of you read the first book, Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain? - yeah - well this is a sequel to it, which is a real "how-to" book, "how to do Kirlian photography, or whatever with the equiplent necessary. And what I'm going to be discussing is tape-recorder experiments, and this book gives a very clear, concise, summary of the experiments which I will be discussing during these lectures. It's Chapter 15 - "Your Tape-Recorder - A Tracking Station for Paranormal Voices?".

 It seems that recordings made with no apparent in-put have turned up unexplained voices on the tape. Now I'm quoting from the book - "Voice phenomena are done with a tape recorder and microphone set up in the usual way and using factory-fresh tape. No sounds are heard or emitted during the recording but on reply faint voices of unknown origin appear to have been recorded. Visible speech diagrams and voice prints have confirmed that these actually are recorded voices and the most complete source-book is a book called Breakthrough by Konstantins Raudive (that's actually pronounced Rau-di-vay, it's Latvian, but I think I'll just stick with Raudive, or Raudy, for short). Published in 1971 by Taplinger Publishing Company in New York City.. Well, Raudive was one of the pioneer researchers in this area and he has recorded a hundred thousand phrases, selections from which are transcribed in his book (and other investigators have achieved  similar results, including Dr Walter H Uphoff, who teaches parapsychology at the University of Colorado here in Boulder (I've been trying to contact him but haven't been able to reach him yet) and these voices do seem an appropriate topic to take up at the (Jack) Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

Before discussing the experiments carried out by Raudy, I will describe experiments performed with Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, 12 years before Breakthrough was published, and, in fact, before it was written. Now these experiments started not on tape-recorders but on paper. In 1959, Brion Gysin said that "Writing is fifty years behind painting", and applied the montage technique to words on a page and this tecjnique had already been used in painting at that time for fifty years, (it was, in fact, kind of old hat in painting). For a more detailed description of the method I can refer you to Loka, where a lecture I gave last summer (1975) has been transcribed. Brion copied out phrases from newspapers and magazines, then took his scissors and cut these selections ino pieces and rearranged the fragments at random. And these "Cut-up" experiments appeared in Minutes To Go in 1959 and I'll read you a few selections so you can get the idea of the style and what they sound like.

September 1959 a collage from the Paris Herald Tribune, the London Observer, the London Daily Mail, Life magazine advertisements. Now this cut-up was made by Brion Gysin and there's not a word of his own in it. It comes entirely from the source material:

"It is impossible to estimate the damage. Anything put up up to now is like pulling a figure out of the air. I'm going right back to the Sheraton Carleton and call the Milwaukee Braves. Miss Hannah Pugh, the slim model drew from a piggy bank a talent which is the very quintessence of the British female sex..". "Ahead ahead ahead!", they chanted in EW ORK, ONOLULU, ARIS, OME, OSTON. "Tobacco is our middle name".. "There seemed little doubt however that Mr Eisenhower said, "I weigh 56 pounds less than a man, flushed and nodded curtly. Asked whether he had a fair trial he looks inevitable and publishes: "My sex was an advantage. He boasted of a long string of past crimes highlighted by a total eclipse of however stood in his path when he redid her apartment." "Rich because beautiful bought brain. I said,"Bravo!" To think that a million men were fitted into long slots in an absurd position for the highest products of creation. Crowds stopped the traffic and it took more than 30 police to disperse them." "Captain Bain was arrested today in the murder at sea in Chicago. He is one of the great Americans to see people from the front and kept laughing during the dark" "He streaked across the sky like a comet and crashed." "Witnesses, from a distance, observed a roaring blast and a brilliant flash as the operator was arrested. A petite blue-eyed blonde streaked across the sky and clashed with Glasgow police. She had wielded a gavel with a walrus moustache and was thrown overboard. Her father, a well-known Artist until a bundle of his accented-brushwork blew up in the sky said, "We can't do that yet. The reason I'm buying a new couch is to save money.She should have known better." "If I'd known you were coming" " Some looks are simply good right there.You hit her in this new revised edition of "After The Great Awakening". "The sure way is with arrangement and also military appeal. Deep-eyed features and the rapt faces of discursive charm come from the sheer shining color of police" "I, Sekula, perfected this art," along the Tang dynasty". Might be just what I am look."

Now that was made by Brion and here's one that I made and you'll see that they have, although the same criteria applies that there's no words of our own in either one of these, but the selection, the whole thing will be different from one person to another.This is from San Diego up to Maine and, this time, it's (the) New York Herald Tribune, (a) cut-up of articles on juvenile delinquency:

"The solemn accountants are jumping ship sir..All of them, sir..in the last skimpy surplus, sir…"Room for one more outside, sir", they said and plunged Seventh Teen Age Future Molotov Cocktails last seen swimming desperately in sewage.Allies wait on knives.Valiant crowns drew a short 22 and heavy commitments.The Carribbean swells to a roar..A Negro snapped the advantages. Our show went on we're proud of it. Who  was rape and idleness. Anyone over homicide big enough to take punishment Wisconsin Milwaukee and later lesser crimes pudgy and not pretty. The words included "assault", "murder", "stratosphere" and his feet devoid of reality. Will Hollywood never learn? Unimaginable disaster royal nights teenage future time."

and I'll read one more, a short selection here (this was also my cut-up material):

"One ounce, said the druggist, of shit. Burn down the city. Savvy shit. Had a book he gave out . Ich Sterbe. they were drafted. Marks fourth day. We just dropped in to see some friends. A population of patrols. Mr Flynn seeks position in rigged quiz show. Yeah but why? Swedish, unwelcome visitor to the warren?  Talent was gone. The temple reeked of time principal and agents in force. Bobo has attractions. More fun than a barrel of keys. He makes a pig of ice. Tomorrow is always white and blue. A fine vigorous failure all members are worst this century .A sixteen-year-old boy might burn in continuous operation. Everyone has left Paris. I dislike facts. Professor killed accident in U.S. Don't let me die this way." 

Subsequently, we cut up the Bible, Shakespeare, Rimbaud and our own writing and anything in sight and we made literally thousands of cut-ups. Now when you cut and rearrange words on a page, new words emerge. For example, you have "h-a"  on one cut page and you place that on another section and the line falls on "t" cut from another word and you now have the word  "hat". , which was not in the original text. A new word has been created by cutting the text. And words change meaning. For example, the word "draft", as into the army, moved into a context of blueprints and contracts gives an altered meaning. New words and altered meaning are of course implicit in the process of cutting up and could have been anticipated. Other results were not expected. When you experiment with cut-ups over a period of time, you find that some of the cut-ups and rearranged texts seem to refer to future events. I cut up an article on.. written by John Paul Getty, and got "It's a bad thing to sue your own father" (this was a rearrangement and wasn't in the original text) and a year later one of his sons did sue him (I mean, it was purely extraneoous information, it meant nothing to me, I hadn't.. no, nothing to gain, on either side). In 1964, I made a cut-up and got what seemed at the time a totally inexplicable phrase - "And there is a horrid air-conditioner" (I didn't have an air-conditioner at the time). In 1973, I moved into a loft with a broken air-conditioner, which was removed to put in a new unit (but) you couldn't get anyone to take it away. And there is three-hundred pounds of broken air-conditioner on the floor, a really horrid disposal problem, heavy and solid and emerging from a cut-up ten years ago. There are quite a few examples of this, and, as I say, if you experiment, I think you'll turn some up sooner or later. We had no explanation for this at the time, just suggesting, perhaps, that when you cut into the present, the future leaks out. Well, we simply accepted it and continued the experiments.

The next step was cut-ups on the tape-recorder and Brion was the first to take this obvious step. A step becomes obvious when somebody takes it - like, five hundred years of cannonballs before someone got the idea of a cannonball that explodes on contact (and that happened in the American Civil War, towards the end of the American Civil War - (and)  probably dismissed as impractical by the military). From that point, of course, a series of steps led to long-range artillery and inter-continental missiles. Now why does it take so long for such obvious developments? Well, perhaps because the way is blocked by preconceptions, people just don't think of it. Well, the first tape-recorder cut-ups were a simple extensions of cut-ups on paper. You record... There's many ways of doing these, but here's one way. You record, say, ten minutes on the recorder. Then you spin the reel [sic] backwards or forwards, just like that, without recording, stop at random, and cut-in a phrase (now, of course, when you cut in a phrase you've wiped out whatever's there and you have a new juxtaposition. Now how random is random? We know so much that we don't consciously know that we know that perhaps the cut-in was not random. The operator, on some level, knew just where he was cutting in. As you know, on some level, exactly where you were and what you were doing ten years ago at this particular time, You couldn't.. (most of you couldn't, there are a few freaks that can) make that knowledge consciously available. And in the same way, while you're doing the tape, on some level, you know just exactly where your words are. So "cut-ups" put you in touch with what you know and do not know that you know.

Now, of course, this procedure on the tape-recorder produces new words by altered juxtapositions, just as new words are prduced by cut-ups on paper. Well, we went in to exploit the potentials of the tape-recorder - cut up, slow down, speed up, run backwards, inch the tape (that means work it back and forth across the tape-head), play several tracks at once, cut back and forth between two recorders. Now here are some tapes which Brion made with all the technical facilities of the BBC in London, and they show, I think, what can be done with the human voice and one phrase…[Burroughs pauses here to discover that he doesn;t have the tape] - quite clearly, unfortunately, I don't have this tape.I may have it for the next session, I'll ask Brion to send it along. 

The point is that, as soon as you start experiments with slow-downs, speed-ups, overlays and so on, you'll get new words that were not on the original recordings. There are then many ways of producing words and voices on tape that did not get there by the usual recording procedure, words and voices, that are quite definitely and clearly recognizeable by a consensus of listeners and sometimes you can clearly recognize the voice of someone who was not present at the session.

Now another procedure is to run.. a recording of words.. yes, to run recordings of words through a speech-scrambler, and I'll quote here - "In 1968 with the help of Ian Sommerville and Antony Balch, I took a short passage of my recorded voice and cut it into intervals of one-twenty-fourth-of-a-second on movie tape. Now movie-tape is larger and much easier to handle. Splicing ordinary tape is a really laborious.. of course, you can make cut-ups that way, but it's an awful lot of work, and rearrange the order of the twenty-fourth-of-a-second intervals of recorded speech. The original words were quite unintelligible but new words emerge. The voice is still there and you can immediately recognize the speaker. Also, the tone of the voice remains (if the tone is friendly, hostile, poetic, sarcastic, or whatever, this will be apparent in the altered sequence).(Now) I didn't know at the time that I was using a technique that had been in existence since 1881, and I quote from an article in New Scientist, June 4, 1970 by Richard C French entitled "Electronic Arts of Non-Communication" - "Designs for speech-scramblers go back till 1881 and the desire to make telephone and radio communications unintelligible to third parties has been with us ever since. The messags are scrambled  in transmission and then unscrambled at the other end. There are many of these speech-scrambling devices that work on different principles..In another device..the signal is chopped up into elements, a tenth or a hundredth of a centimeter and these elements are taken in groups and frames and rearranged in a new sequence" - So you just take your tape and cut it up into very small pieces and the pieces are rearranged into a new sequence. And this can actually be done, and gives a good idea what speech sounds like when scrambled in this way (unfortunately, I don't have a tape of scrambled speech). And I've got words and voices from barking dogs - (and, no doubt, you can do much better with dolphins - So if you (just) hear English words from a dolphin, it doesn't just mean that the dolphin 's mastered the English language at all, it simply means that they've said something that sounds like English). Now words will emerge.. Also words will emerge from recordings of dripping faucets. In fact, almost any sound that is not too uniform may reproduce words. You know the song "Every little breeze used to whisper Louise"... and the very trees, the very tree-branches brushing against her windows seemed to mutter "murder, murder, murder"  - Well, the branches may have muttered just that, and you could hear it back with a recorder. Everything you hear and see is there for you to hear and see it. (If you didn't hear or see it on some level, it would have no meaning for you).

Now we're so accustomed to the erroneous either/or antithesis,  objective or subjective - what I think and feel is one thing, what I hear and see in the street is purely random and therefore meaningless - that people may think that they're losing their minds when they find that what they see and hear in the street has personal meaning for them.
Some time ago a young man came to me and said he was going mad, because street signs, overheard conversations and radio broadcasts seemed to refer to him in some way. I told him, "Of course they refer to you. You see and hear them!"  

Now you can scan words out of a foreign language of which you do not know a word (and let me confess that I do not know a  word of Arabic. Well, years ago, Ian Sommerville, Stewart Gordon, and your reporter had turned into the Rue de Vignes,  just off the Place de France in Tangier. Walking ahead of us was a middle-aged Arab couple, (obviously poor people, down from the mountains), and one turned to the other and said, " What are you going to do?"
We all heard it.  Now perhaps Arab words just happened to sound like that (if I had an Arab person I could've checked that out) or perhaps it was a case of consensual scanning. I had a friend who went "mad" in Tangier. He was scanning out personal messages in English from Arab broadcasts. Now this is the more subjective phenomenon of personal scanning patterns. I say "more", rather than pose the either/or subjective/objective alternative since all phenomena are both subjective and objective. He was, after all, listening to radio broadcasts.

to be continued 

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the start of the tape and concluding at approximately twenty-six minutes in]

(An earlier version of this transcript appeared  in Talking Poetics From Naropa Institute - Annals of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - Volume 1 - (edited by Anne Waldman and Marilyn Webb), Shambhala, 1978)

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 274

We've featured Seth Brigham's photos before (for example, here). The images above are taken from his epic (and, by his own account, literally, manic) documentation of the Beats and Rebel Angels Conference at Boulder, Colorado, in July of 1994, with, not only Allen, but also, a host of Beat luminaries and Beat-related souls and pioneers, gathered in attendance - Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Robert Creeley, Ed Sanders, Michael McClure, Amiri Baraka, Joanne Kyger, Anne Waldman, Ken Kesey, David Amram… The list, like they say, (like the beat, in that unavoidable, and certainly fitting, cliche), goes on.   

Cafe Dissensus Everyday (the blog of Cafe Dissensus Magazine - featured here last week) features a digest of the photos and a photo-essay by Seth.  In it, he observes:
"Perhaps it was all (just) a myth driven by the celebrity of a few. There were many from that time in space that were never recognized nor tried to be.. I met many participants during the "Tribute to Allen Ginsberg", and I found them no more than human, sometimes, it seemed, less than, no better than you or me. The point of my efforts [the point of these photos] is to encourage people, especially young people, to use their gifts, to help keep alive, continue, and bring about a spirit and an attitude that one person can make a difference..These photographs are a small chapter, like an ending to a long novel, a gathering to celebrate a group of artists. who, together, seemed to have made a difference in the lives of others.."  

   

"A group of artists. who, together, seemed to have made a difference in the lives of others"

- that would seem to be a quiet (and perhaps overly-modest) definition of "the Beat Generation", the range of artists being currently celebrated at the Pompidou Center in Paris (see also our spotlight in last Friday's "Round-Up). Further press response - from Time Out Paris - here, from Evous - here, from Liberation - here - and from Telerama - here. We noted last week the appearance of the famous On The Road scroll. What we neglected to mention was on show also is an extremely rare early original typescript of Howl (see below):

                     ["Howl" typescript at the "Beat Generation" show at Centre Pompidou in Paris, June 2016]

ActuaLitté  provides a provocative "Dix Choses qui vous ignorez sur la Beat Generation"("Ten things you didn't know about the Beat Generation") by Joséphine Leroy - 
(and don't forget to take the quiz - here) 

Speaking of ActuaLitté , their (her) review of the concurrent show at the Galerie Semiose of William Burroughs art is available - here  

                [Pleased To Meet You #1  William Burroughs (2016) (booklet from Galerie Semiose, Paris)] 
  

     [Beat Generation exhibition installation - "Beat Generation" show at Centre Pompidou in Paris, June 2016] 

[One wall at the "Beat Generation" show at Centre Pompidou, Paris - Sociological context -  June 2016] 

Last weekend's New York Times story on Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Sterling Lord is delightful and if you haven't read it you should - see here 

"The poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was sitting at his kitchen table in his North Beach apartment on a drizzly morning, telling a story about Allen Ginsberg, when he hopped up suddenly and bounded out of the room to retrieve his hearing aid. "At my age. if it's not one thing, it's another", he said cheerfully. Tall and agile at 97, with a neatly-trimmed gray beard and oval tortoise-shell glasses that magnified his glassy blue eyes, Mr Ferlinghetti could pass for a man in his 70s. He still writes almost every day - "When an idea springs airborne into my head"... 

The article focuses on Ferlinghetti's latest writing project, "unlike anything he's ever written,  "a novel he's been working on, in fits and starts, for the last 20 years" - "The book, titled "To The Light House" blends autobiography, fiction, and surrealist riffs on mortality, nature, and consciousness. It's the closest thing to a memoir he'll ever write.." 

[Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - San Francisco, May 1988 - © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

The Last Word on First Blues, Allen's recently-released 3-cd music set. We're not in a habit of reprinting verbatim, in their entirety, reviews, but - four stars from Mojo - "Ginsberg howls in tune" - the piece is by Michael Simmons - we couldn't resist reprinting this one:
"From Sappho to Dylan, poets have long sung their work. Already established in the quality lit racket, Allen Ginsberg was not some dilettante (Dylantante?) when he put music to words. A fan of pre-war blueswomen like Ma Rainey, he heard his own influence on Dylan; "A torch had been passed". John Hammond Sr. signed Allen to Columbia Records. but the suits found his lyrics "disrespectful", so Hammond self-released First Blues. Reissue producer, Pat Thomas collected those sessions and others spanning a decade on three discs and - helped by Dylan, David Amram, Happy Traum, and long-time accompanist Steven Taylor - it's a hoot 'n howl! Working in blues. folk amd rock forms. and with sexual, political and comedic themes, Ginsberg is vocally endearing and delightfully filthy. Nurse's Song, co-written with William Blake, is the catchiest collab twixt scribes spanning two centuries."