{"id":6046,"date":"2014-12-05T16:52:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T16:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eoisabi.org\/?p=6046"},"modified":"2026-04-03T17:00:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:00:38","slug":"william-s-burroughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishroam.com\/?p=6046","title":{"rendered":"William S. Burroughs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/h6>\n
1914 – 1997<\/h6>\n
\u00abDeath smells… I mean death has a special smell; over and above the smell of \u00a0cyanide, cordite, blood, carrion or burned flesh. It is a gray smell: stops the heart and cuts off the breath. The smell of empty bodies, the smell of field hospitals and gangrene…\u00bb \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>[The Private Asshole]<\/address>
\u00a0<\/address>
\u00abI remember a dream of my childhood. I am in a beautiful garden. As I reach out to touch the flowers they wither under my hands. A nightmare feeling of foreboding and desolation comes over me as great mushroom-shaped cloud darkens the earth. A few may get through the gate in time. Like Spain, I’m bound to the past.\u00bb<\/address>\n

[closing paragraph – Cities of the Red Night, 1981]<\/p>\n

\"a_man_within\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00abLove? What is it?<\/span><\/address>
Most natural pain killer what there is – LOVE\u00bb<\/span><\/address>\n

WSB’s last diary entry [Aug 1st, 1997]\u21d2\u00abA Man Within\u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a4 \u00a0Interview<\/strong>s … \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u2192[1]\u2190 <\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u2192[2]\u2190<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u2192[3]\u2190 \u00a0<\/a>. . .\u00a0London<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2191\u00a0 On the cut-up technique\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 technique had already been used in painting at that time for fifty years, which was in fact the time […?].\u00a0Brion copied out phrases in newspapers and magazines, then took a scissors and cut these selections into pieces and rearranged the fragments at random. And these cut-up experiments appeared in ‘Minutes To Go’<\/em> in 1959 …<\/p>\n

When you experiment with cup-ups over a period of time, you find that some of the cut-ups in rearranged texts seem to refer to future events. I cut up an article, written by John Paul Getty, and got: \u00abIT’S A BAD THING TO SUE YOUR FATHER.\u00bb This was a rearrangement and wasn’t in the original text, and a year later, one of his sons did sue him. We had no explanation for this at the time, perhaps suggesting that when you cut into the present the future leaks out.<\/p>\n

Well, we simply accepted it and continued the experiments. The next step was cut up some tape-recorders, and Brion was the first to take this obvious step. Now, here’s 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 in one phrase:<\/p>\n

. . . \u00a0calling \u00a0 all \u00a0 agent \u00a0 active \u00a0 re . . .\u00a0<\/strong><\/address>\n

\u2666 \u00a0The Junky’s Christmas<\/a> \u00a0\u2193<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n