THE CUT-UP METHOD OF BRION GYSIN ~<\/p>\n
At a surrealist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara the man from
\nnowhere proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out
\nof a hat. A riot ensued wrecked the theater. Andre Breton expelled
\nTristan Tzara from the movement and grounded the cut-ups on the
\nFreudian couch.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1959 Brion Gysin painter and writer cut
\nnewspaper articles into sections and rearranged the sections at
\nrandom. “Minutes to Go” resulted from this initial cut-up experiment.
\n“Minutes to Go” contains unedited unchanged cut-ups emerging as
\nquite coherent and meaningful prose.<\/p>\n
The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been
\nused by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still
\ncamera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the
\nunpredicatble factors of passersby and juxtapositon cut-ups. And
\nphotographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . .
\n. writers will tell you the same. The best writings seems to be done
\nalmost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made
\nexplicit-all writing is in fact cut-ups; I will return to this point-had
\n no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannot will
\nspontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous
\nfactor with a pair of scissors.
\nThe method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this
\npage. Now cut down the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . .
\none two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four
\nwith section one and section two with section three. And you have a
\nnew page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes
\nsomething quite different-cutting up political speeches is an
\ninteresting excercise-in any case you will find that it says something
\nand something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy.
\nHere, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have
\nlost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem
\nand type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the
\npage. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many
\nShakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: “Poetry
\nis for everyone.” And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled
\nhim from the movement. Say it again: “Poetry is for everyone.”
\nPoetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in
\nRimbaud’s place. Here is a Rimbaud poem cut up.
\n“Visit of memories. Only your dance and your voice house. On the
\nsuburban air improbable desertions . . . all harmonic pine for strife.
\n“The great skies are open. Candor of vapor and tent spitting blood
\nlaugh and drunken penance.
\n“Promenade of wine perfume opens slow bottle.
\n“The great skies are open. Supreme bugle burning flesh children to
\nmist.”
\nCut-ups are for everyone. Anybody can make cut-upws. It is
\nexperimental in the sense of bein something to do. Right here write
\nnow. Not something to talk and argue about. Greek philosophers
\nassumed logically that an object twice as heavy as another object
\nwould fall twice as fast. It did not occur to them to push the two
\nobjects off the table and see how they fall. Shakespeare Rimbaud live
\nin their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices. Cut-
\nups often come through as code messages with special meaning for
\nthe cutter. Table tapping? Perhaps. Certainly an improvement on the
\nusual deplorable performances of contacted poets through a medium.
\nRimbaud announces himself, to be followed by some excruciatingly
\nbad poetry. Cut Rimbaud’s words and you are assured of good poetry
\nat least if not personal appearance.
\nAll writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard
\noverheard. What else? Use of scissors renders the process explicit
\nand subject to extension and variation. Clear classical prose can be
\ncomposed entirely of rearranged cut-ups. Cutting and rearranging a
\npage of written words introduces a new dimension into writing
\nenabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation. Images
\nshift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound
\nsound to kinesthetic. This is where Rimbaud was going with his color
\nof vowels. And his “systematic derangement of the senses.” The place
\nof mescaline hallucination: seeing colors tasting sounds smelling
\nforms.
\nThe cut-ups can be applied to other fields than writing. Dr Neumann
\nin his Theory of Games and Economic behavior introduces the cut-up
\nmethod of random action into game and military strategy: assume
\nthat the worst has happened and act accordingly. If your strategy is
\nat some point determined . . . by random factor your opponent will
\ngain no advantage from knowing your strategy since he cannot
\npredict the move. The cut-up method could be used to advantage in
\nprocessing scientific data. How many discoveries have been made by
\naccident? We cannot produce accidents to order. The cut-ups could
\nadd new dimension to films. Cut gambling scene in with a thousand
\ngambling scenes all times and places. Cut back. Cut streets of the
\nworld. Cut and rearrange the word and image in films. There is no
\nreason to accept a second-rate product when you can have the best.
\nAnd the best is there for all. “Poetry is for everyone . . .
\nNow here are the preceding two paragraphs cut into four sections
\nand rearranged:
\nALL WRITING IS IN FACT CUT-UPS OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC
\nBEHAVIOR OVERHEARD? WHAT ELSE? ASSUME THAT THE WORST
\nHAS HAPPENED EXPLICIT AND SUBJECT TO STRATEGY IS AT SOME
\nPOINT CLASSICAL PROSE. CUTTING AND REARRANGING FACTOR YOUR
\nOPPONENT WILL GAIN INTRODUCES A NEW DIMENSION YOUR
\nSTRATEGY. HOW MANY DISCOVERIES SOUND TO KINESTHETIC? WE
\nCAN NOW PRODUCE ACCIDENT TO HIS COLOR OF VOWELS. AND NEW
\nDIMENSION TO FILMS CUT THE SENSES. THE PLACE OF SAND.
\nGAMBLING SCENES ALL TIMES COLORS TASTING SOUNDS SMELL
\nSTREETS OF THE WORLD. WHEN YOU CAN HAVE THE BEST ALL:
\n“POETRY IS FOR EVERYONE” DR NEUMANN IN A COLLAGE OF WORDS
\nREAD HEARD INTRODUCED THE CUT-UP SCISSORS RENDERS THE
\nPOCESS GAME AND MILITARY STRATEGY. VARIATION CLEAR AND
\nACT ACCORDINGLY. IF YOU POSED ENTIRELY OR REARRANGED CUT
\nDETERMINED BY RANDOM A PAGE OF WRITTEN WORDS NO
\nADVANTAGE FROM KNOWING INTO WRITER PREDICT THE MOVE. THE
\nCUT VARIATION IMAGES SHIFT SENSE ADVANTAGE IN PROCESSING
\nTO SOUND SIGHT TO SOUND. HAVE BEEN MADE BY ACCIDENT IS
\nWHERE RIMBAUD WAS GOING WITH ORDER THE CUT-UPS COULD
\n“SYSTEMATIC DERANGEMENT” OF THE GAMBLING SCENE IN WITH A
\nTEA HALLUCINATION: SEEING AND PLACES. CUT BACK. CUT FORMS.
\nREARRANGE THE WORD AND IMAGE TO OTHER FIELDS THAN
\nWRITING. – William Burroughs
\n~ BRION GYSIN ~
\nA biography\/appreciation by Terry Wilson . . .
\nBRION GYSIN
\n(19 January 1916- )
\nSELECTED BOOKS
\nMinutes to Go, with William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Sinclair
\nBelles (Paris: Two Cities Editions, 1960; San Francisco: Beach Books,
\n1968);
\nThe Exterminator, with William Burroughs (San Francisco: Auerhahn
\nPress\/Dave Haselwood Books, 1960, 1967);
\nThe Process, (New York: Doubleday, 1969; London: Jonathan Cape,
\n1970);
\nOeuvre Croisee (The Third Mind), with William S. Burroughs (Paris:
\nFlammarion, 1976; New York: Viking Press, 1978; London: John
\nCalder, 1979).
\nBrion Gysin is regarded as one of the most influential and visionary
\nof living poets and painters. In 1958, a chance encounter with
\nWilliam Burroughs on the Place St. Michel in Paris resulted in him
\nmoving into the famous Beat Hotel at no. 9 rue Git le Coeur in the
\nLatin Quarter. He confided to Burroughs his inventions, the Cut-ups
\nand Permutations, and thus began the most important collaboration
\nin modern literature.
\nA naturalized US citizen of Swiss extraction, Gysin was born in
\nTaplow House, Taplow, Bucks, UK. After the loss of his father when
\nhe was nine months old, his mother took him to New York to stay
\nwith one of her sisters and then to Kansas City, Mo., to stay with
\nanother. He finished high school at the age of fifteen in Edmonton,
\nAlberta, and ws sent for two years to the prestigious English public
\nschool, Downside. While there, Gysin began publishing his poetry
\nbefore he went on to the Sorbonne. In Paris, he met everybody in the
\nliterary and artistic worlds. When he was nineteen, he exhibited his
\ndrawings with the Surrealist group, which included Picasso on that
\noccasion.
\nGysin is an entirely self-taught painter who acquired an enviable
\ntechnique without putting foot in an art school or academy. At the
\nage of twenty-three he had his first one-man show in a prestigious
\nParis gallery just off the Champs Elysees. It was a glittering social
\nand financial (even a critical) success, with an article in Poetry World
\nsigned by Calas. But it was May, 1939. World War II caught Gysin in
\nSwitzerland with an overnight bag. When he got to New York,
\neverybody asked: “How long you been back?”
\n~ HERE TO GO: PLANET R-101 ~
\nAn excerpt from Here To Go: Planet R-101, by Terry Wilson
\nT: How did you get into tape recorders?
\nB: I heard of them at the end of World War II, before I went to
\nMorocco in 1950, but unfortunately I never got hold of good
\nmachines to record even a part of the musical marvels I heard in
\nMorocco. I recorded the music in my own place, The 1001 Nights,
\nonly when it was fading and even in later years I never was able to
\nlay my hands on truly worthwhile machines to record sounds that
\nwill never be heard again, anywhere.
\nI took Brian Jones up to the mountain to record with Uhers, and
\nOrnette Coleman to spend $25,000 in a week to record next to
\nnothing on Nagras and Stellavox, but I have to admit that the most
\nadventurous sounds we ever made were done with old Reveres and
\nhundred dollar Japanese boxes we fucked around with, William and I
\nand Ian Sommerville. I got hold of the BBC facilities for the series of
\nsound poems I did with them in 1960, technically still the best,
\nnaturally. I had originally been led to believe that I would have a
\nweek and it turned out to be only three days that we had, so in a
\nvery hurried way at the end I started cutting up a spoken text-I
\nthink the illustration of how the Cut-ups work, “Cut-ups Self
\nExplained”-and put it several times through their electronic
\nequipment, and arrived at brand new words that had never been
\nsaid, by me or by anybody necessarily, onto the tape. William had
\npushed things that far through the typewriter. I pushed them that
\nfar through the tapeworld. But the experiment was withdrawn very
\nquickly there, I mean, it was . . . time was up and they were made
\nrather nervous by it, they were quite shocked by the results that
\nwere coming back out of the speakers and were only too glad to
\nbring the experiment to an end. [“Well, what did they expect? A
\nchorus of angels with tips on the stock market?”-William Burroughs)
\n“The Permutated Poems of Brion Gysin” (as put through a computer
\nby Ian Sommerville) was broadcast by the BBC, produced by Douglas
\nCleverdon. (“Achieving the second lowest rating of audience approval
\nregistered by their poll of listeners”-BG) Some of the early cut-up
\ntape experiments are now available: Nothing Here Now But The
\nRecordings (1959-1980) LP (IR 0016) available on the Industrial
\nRecords label from Rough Trade, 137 Blenheim Crescent, London
\nW11, England.]
\nWhat we did on our own was to play around with the very limited
\ntechnology and wattage we had in the old Beat Hotel, 40-watts a
\nroom was all we were allowed. There is something to be said for
\npoverty, it makes you more inventive, it’s more fun and you get
\nmore mileage out of what you’ve got plus your own ingenuity. When
\nyou handle the stuff yourself, you get the feel of it. William loved the
\nidea of getting his hands on his own words, branding them and
\nrustling anyone else’s he wanted. It’s a real treat for the ears, too, the
\nfirst time you hear it . . . made for dog whistles, after that. Hey Rube!
\n– the old carny circus cry for men working the sideshows when they
\nsaw some ugly provincial customer coming up on them after they
\nhad rooked him . . . Hey Rube! – a cry to alert all the carny men to a
\npossible rumble . . . Hey-ba ba-Rube-ba! – Salt Peanuts and the
\nrude sound coming back so insistent again and again that you know
\nthe first bar of Bebop when you hear it. Right or wrong, Burroughs
\nwas fascinated because he must have listened to plenty of bebop talk
\nfrom Kerouac, whom I never met. He must have been a fascinating
\ncharacter, too bad to miss him like that, when I was thrown up
\nagainst all the rest of this Beat Generation. Maybe I was lucky. I
\nremember trying to avoid them all after Paul Bowles had written me:
\n“I can’t understand their interest in drugs and madness.” Then, I dug
\nthat he meant just the contrary. Typical. He did also write me to get
\ncloser to Burroughs whom I had cold-shouldered . . . until he got off
\nthe junk in Paris.
\nT: Who produced the “Poem of Poems” through the tape recorder?
\nThe text in The Third Mind is ambiguous.
\nB: I did. I made it to show Burroughs how, possibly, to use it. William
\ndid not yet have a tape recorder. First, I had “accidentally” used
\n“pisspoor material,”fragments cut out of the press which I shored up
\nto make new and original texts, unexpectedly. Then, William had
\nused his own highly volatile material, his own inimitable texts which
\nhe submitted to cuts, unkind cuts, of the sort that Gregory Corso felt
\nunacceptable to his own delicate “poesy.” William was always the
\ntoughest of the lot. Nothing ever fazed him. So I suggested to William
\nthat we should use only the best, only the high-charged material:
\nKing James’ translation of the Song of Songs of Solomon, Eliot’s
\ntranslation of Anabase by St. John Perse, Shakespeare’s sugar’d
\nSonnets and a few lines from The Doors of Perception by Aldous
\nHuxley about his mescaline experiences.
\nVery soon after that, Burroughs was busy punching to death a series
\nof cheap Japanese plastic tape recorders, to which he applied himself
\nwith such force that he could punch one of them to death inside a
\nmatter of weeks, days even. At the same time he was punching his
\nway through a number of equally cheap plastic typewriters, using
\ntwo very stiff forefingers . . . with enormous force. He could punch a
\nmachine into oblivion. That period in the Beat Hotel is best illustrated
\nby that photo of William, wearing a suit and tie as always, sitting
\nback at this table in a very dingy room. On the wall hangs a nest of
\nthree wire trays for correspndence which I gave him to sort out his
\ncut-up pages. Later, this proliferated into a maze of filing cases filling
\na room with manuscripts cross-referenced in a way only Burroughs
\ncould work his way through, more by magic dowsing than by any
\nlogical system. how could there be any? This was a magic practice he
\nwas up to, surprising the very springs of creative imagination at
\ntheir source. I remember him muttering that his manuscripts were
\nmultiplying and reproducing themselves like virus at work. It was all
\nhe could do to keep up with them. Those years sloughed off one
\nwhole Burroughs archive whose catalogue alone is a volume of 350
\npages. Since then several tons of Burroughs papers have been moved
\nto the Burroughs Communication Centre in Lawrence, Kansas. And he
\nis still at it.
\nT: The cut-up techniques made very explicit a preoccupation with
\nexorcism – William’s texts became spells, for instance. How effective
\nare methods such as street playback of tapes for dispersing
\nparasites?
\nB: We-e-ell, you’d have to ask William about that, but I do seem to
\nremember at least two occasions on whyich he claimed success . . .
\nUh, the first was in the Beat Hotel still, therefore about 1961 or ‘2,
\nand William decided (laughing) to “take care” of an old lady who sold
\nnewspapers in a kiosk, and this kiosk was rather dramatically and
\nstrategically placed at the end of the street leading out of the rue Git
\nle Coeur toward the Place Saint Michel, and, uh, you whent up a flight
\nof steps and then under an archway and as you came out you were
\nspang! in front of this little old French lady who looked as if she’d
\nbeen there since-at least since the French Revolution-when she had
\nbeen knitting at the foot of the guillotine, and she lived in a layer of
\nthickly matted, padded newspapers hanging around her piled very
\nsloppily, and, uh, she was of absolutely incredible malevolence, and
\nthe only kiosk around there at that time that sold the Herald-
\nTribune, so that William (chuckling) found that he was having to deal
\nwith her every day, and every day she would find some new way to
\naggravate him, some slight new improvement on her malevolent
\ninsolence and her disagreeable lack of . . . uh (chuckling)
\ncollaboration with William in the buying of his newspaper (laughter)
\n. . .
\nSo . . one day the little old lady burnt up inside her kiosk. And we
\ncame out to find that there was just the pile of ashes on the ground.
\nWilliam was . . . slightly conscience-stricken, but nevertheless rather
\nsatisfied with the result (laughter) as it proved the efficacity of his
\nmethods, but a little taken aback, he didn’t necessarily mean the old
\nlady to burn up inside there . . . And we often talked about this as we
\nsat in a cafe looking at the spot where the ashes still were, for many
\nmonths later . . . and to our great surprise and chagrin one day we
\nsaw a very delighted Oriental boy-I think probably Vietnamese-
\ndigging in these ashes with his hands and pulling out a whole hatful
\nof money, of slightly blackened coins but a considerable sum, and
\n(laughing) we would have been very glad to have it too – just hadn’t
\nthought of digging in the thing, so I said: “William, I don’t think your
\noperation was a complete success.” And he said: “I am very glad that
\nthat beautiful young Oriental boy made this happy find at the end of
\nthe rainbow . . .”
\nT: She consummated her swell purpose . . .
\nB: (Laughing) Exactly . . . exactly . . . (chuckling)
\nNow the other case was some years later in London when he had
\nperfected the method and, uh, went about with at least one I think
\nsometimes two tape recorders, one in each hand, with prerecorded,
\num-runes-what did you call them? You said William’s things-
\nT: Spells.
\nB: Spells, okay, spells.
\nT: Like-
\nB: (chanting)
\nLock them out and bar the door,
\nLock them out for e-v-e-rmore.
\nNook and cranny windo door
\nSeal them out for e-v-e-rmore
\nLock them out and block the rout
\nShut them scan them flack them out.
\nLock is mine and door is mine
\nThree times three to make up nine . . .
\nCurse go back curse go back
\nBack with double pain and lack
\nCurse go back – back
\nEt cetera . . . yeah . . . pow . . . “Shift, cut, tangle word lines” . . . sure
\n.
\nWell, that was for the Virus Board, wasn’t it, that he was gonna
\ndestroy the Virus Board . . .
\n~ HERE TO GO: PLANET R-101 ~
\nAn Excerpt from Here to Go: Planet R-101, Brion Gysin interviewed
\nby Terry Wilson (with original writing and an introduction by W.S.
\nBurroughs), available July 1982 from Re\/Search Publications . . .
\n– Who Runs May Read
\n“May Massa Brahim leave this house as the smoke leaves this fire,
\nnever to return . . .”
\n. . . Never went back to live, and I’ve only been back there even to
\nvisit only very briefly . . .
\nAnd then it was back to Paris for a year or so, 1949-50, and then in
\n1950 I went to Morocco with Paul Bowles, who had taken, bought a
\nlittle house there, and I stayed there really, or felt that I was
\ndomiciled there, uh, although I was really only a sort of terminal
\ntourist, from 1950 till 1973 . . .
\n“Magic, practiced more assiduously than hygiene in Morocco, through
\necstatic dancing to the music of the secret brotherhoods, is, there, a
\nform of psychic hygiene. You know your music when you hear it, one
\nday. You fall into line and dance until you pay the piper.”
\nBG “CUT-UPS:
\nA Project for Disastrous Success”
\nin Brion Gysin Let The Mice In
\nB: Yeah . . . what a tale . . . what a tale . . . yeah, I met John Cooke in
\nMorocco uuummm but, uh . . . I don’t know what to say about all
\nthat, really . . .
\nT: He designed tarot cards . . . ?
\nB: Yeah . . .
\nT: A new set of tarot card . . .
\nB: Yeah, so he did. How did you even know that?
\nT: I saw them the other day.
\nB: Oh really? . . . No kidding? They’re still around eh? Well well . . .
\nT: Is he still alive?
\nB: Yes, I imagine he’s still alive, I think living in Mexico [John Cooke
\ndied sometime after this was recorded.] . . . and he comes from one of
\nthose very rich and powerful families who were the Five Founding
\nFamilies of Hawaii . . . who own the island, did own the island of
\nMolokai . . . and, uh, many people in his family have been interested
\nin mystic things, and he was particularly interested in magic all his
\nlife . . . early connection with . . . what do they call it, kaluhas or
\nsomething, the Hawaiian shamanistic magic men? . . . Kahunas, yeah .
\n. .
\nT: Yeah. So tell me about Morocco . . . you got more and more
\nimmersed into Islam, or, uh-
\nB: Not really, no, I never was much immersed truly into Islam, or I
\nwould’ve become a Moslem, and probably still be there . . . uh, it was
\nmost particularly the music that interested me. I went with Paul
\nBowles, who was a composer long before he was a writer, and, uh, he
\nhad perfect pitch, an unusual thing even among composers, and he
\ntaught me how to use my ears a great deal during the years we’d
\nknown each other in New York, but when he’d taken this house,
\nbought this house in Tangier, he suggested that I go and spend a
\nsummer there living in the house and he was on his way to America,
\nhe was just going to leave me in the house . . . but it turned out
\nrather differently . . . he was goin to New York to write the music for
\nhis wife’s play, Jane Bowles’ In The Summerhouse, and he had
\nwritten a great deal of theatrical music for Broadway, all the
\nTennessee Williams plays, all of the plays by Saroyan, and many
\nother productions of that time . . . and was a great expert on that . . .
\nbut he also had very, very extraordinary ears, and, uh, he taught me
\na lot of things, I owe him a tremendous amount, I owe him my years
\nin Morocco really because I wouldn’t’ve gone there if he hadn’t
\nsuggested it at that particular time . . . I might have gone back to
\nAlgeria, which isn’t nearly as interesting a country, never was . . .
\nBut, uh, in 1950 we went to a festival outside of Tangier on the
\nbeach, on the Atlantic shore, at a spot which was previously a small
\nharbour, 2000 years ago in Phoenician times, and must’ve marked
\none of the first landfalls that any boat coming out of the
\nMediterranean via the Straits of Gibraltar would make as soon as the
\nboat entered the Atlantic, the first landfall would be at this little
\nplace not very far from Cape Spartel . . . and, uh, the Phoenician habit
\nwas always to establish a center of religion, I mean a thanks offering
\nfor getting them safely over the dangerous sea, one supposes, and a
\nmarking of the spot which eventually became a center of their
\nreligious cult, presumably a college of priestesses . . . two or three
\nmore landfalls further down the Atlantic coast is what used to be the
\ngreat harbour of Larache . . .
\nAll these harbours are now silted up completely . . . Larache was the
\nsite of the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, where Hercules went to
\nget away from the demonic . . . the orgiastic priestesses, who were
\nguardians in a sacred grove surrounded by a serpent if you
\nremember, a dragon – well the dragon is the river, in each case there
\nare these winding rivers that go back up into the country; only one of
\nthem still exists, the Lixos. Well the Lixos was presumably the
\ndragon in the mythological tale and there was an island in the
\nharbour, and this spot that we went to had been on the same
\ngeographic and even religious plan, as it were, and the festival was
\ngiven there, which doesn’t correspond to the Lunar Calendar but to
\nthe Solar Calendar, and has to do with the harvest and actual cycle of
\nagricultural life of the people there . . . And I heard some music at
\nthat festival about which I said: “I just want to hear that music for
\nthe rest of my life. I wanna here it everyday all day.” And, uh, there
\nwere a great many other kinds of extraordinary music offered to one,
\nmostly of the Ecstatic Brotherhood who enter into trance, so that in
\nitself-it was the first time I’d seen large groups of people going into
\ntrance-was enough to have kept my attention, but beyond and above
\nall of that somewhere I heard this funny little music, and I said “Ah!
\nThat’s my music! And I must find out where it comes from.” So I
\nstayed and withing a year I found that it came from Jajouka . . .
\n(LOUD CRASHES, TAPE STOPS)
\nB: Your question . . . ?!
\nT: You found that your music was at Jajouka . . . The purpose of the
\nRites of Jajouka is to preserve the balance of Male-Female forces, is
\nthat correct?
\nB: Yes, in a very strange way I think it’s a very pertinent question
\nthat you ask. Uh, when I met them finally, it took about a year to
\nfind them, and went up to the mountain village, I recognized very
\nquickly that what they were performing was the Roman Lupercal,
\nand the Roman Lupercalia was a race run from one part of Rome, a
\ncave under the Capitoline Hill, which Mussolini claimed to have
\ndiscovered, but is now generally conceded to be some 10 or 15
\nmeters further down . . . and in this cave goats were killed and
\nskinned and a young man of a certain tribe was sown up in them,
\nand one of these young men was Mark Antony, and when in the
\nbeginning of Julius Caesar, when they meet, he was actually running
\nthis race of Lupercalia through Rome on the 15.March, the Ides of
\nMarch . . . and the point was to go out to the gates of Rome and
\ncontact Pan, the God of the Forests, the little Goat God, who was
\nSexuality itself, and to run back through the streets with the news
\nthat Pan was still out there fucking as he flailed the women in the
\ncrowds, which is why Julius Caesar asked him to be sure to hit
\nCalpurnia, because his wife Calpurnia was barren . . . Forget not in
\nthy haste, Antonius, to touch Calpurnia, for the Ancients say that in
\nthis holy course the barren are rendered fruitful, or something like
\nthat, are the lines from Shakespeare on the subject . . . Shakespeare
\ndug right away that’s what it was, the point of the sexual balance of
\nnature which was in question . . . And up there on the mountain
\nanother element is added, inasmuch as the women, who live apart
\nfrom the men, whose private lives are apart from the men’s lives to a
\npoint where even women’s language isn’t immediately understood by
\nmen-women can say things to each other in front of men that men
\ndon’ts understand, or care to be bothered with, it’s just women’s
\nnonsense, y’see . . . and they sing sort of secret little songs enticing
\nBou Jeloud the Father of Skins, who is Pan, to come to the hills,
\nsaying that . . . We will give you the prettiest girls in the village, we
\nwill give you Crosseyed Aisha, we will give you Humpbacked- . . .
\nnaming the names of the different types of undesirable non-beauties
\nin the village, like that, and, uh, Pan is supposed to be so dumb that
\nhe falls for this, because he will fuck anything, and he comes up to
\nthe village where he meets the Woman-Force of teh village who is
\ncalled Crazy Aisha-Aisha Homolka . . . well Aisha is of course an Arab
\nname, but it’s derived from an earlier original, which would be
\nAsherat, the name of Astarte or any one of these Venus-type lady
\nsex-goddesses like that . . . And, uh, Bou Jeloud, the leader of the
\nfestival, his role is to marry Aisha, but in actual fact women do not
\ndance in front of any but their own husbands, the women in Arab
\nlife, all belly-dancing movies to the contrary, do not dance in public,
\nor never did, and most certainly don’t in villages, ever dance where
\nthey’re seen by men any more than men dance in front of women . . .
\nso that Crazy Aisha is danced by little boys who are dressed as girls,
\nand because her spirit is so powerful-
\n(TAPE STOPS)
\n” . . . a faint breath of panic borne on the wind. Below the rough
\npalisade of giant blue cactus surrounding the village on its hilltop,
\nthe music flows in streams to nourish and fructify the terraced fields
\nbelow.
\n“Inside the village the thatched houses crouch low in their gardens to
\nhide in the deep cactus-lined lanes. You come through their maze to
\nthe broad village green where the pipers are piping; fifty raitas
\nbanked against a crumbling wall blow sheet lightning to shatter the
\nsky. Fifty wild flutes blow up a storm in front of them, while a
\nplatoon of small boys in long belted white robes and brown wool
\nturbans drum like young thunder. All the villagers, dressed in best
\nwhite, swirl in great circles and coils around one wildman in skins.
\n“Bou Jeloud leaps high in the air on the music, races after the women
\nagain and again, lashing at them fiercely with his flails-‘Forget not in
\nyour speed, Antonius, to touch Calpurnia’-He is wild. He is mad.
\nSowing panic. Lashing at anyone; striking real terror into the crowd.
\nWomen scatter like white marabout birds all aflutter and settle on
\none little hillock for safety, all huddled in one quivering lump. They
\nthrow back their heads to the moon and scream with throats open to
\nthe gullet, lolling their tongues around in their heads like the clapper
\nin a bell. Every mouth is wide open, frozen into an O. Head back and
\nhot narrow eyes brimming with dangerous baby.
\n“Bou Jeloud is after you. Running. Over-run. Laughter and someone is
\ncrying. Wild dogs at your heels. Swirling around in one ring-a-rosy,
\naround and around and around. Go! Forever! Stop! Never! More and
\nNo More and No! More! Pipes crack in your head. Ears popped away
\nat barrier sound and you deaf. Or dead! Swirling around in cold
\nmoonlight, surrounded by wildmen or ghosts. Bou Jeloud is on you,
\nbutting you, beating you, taking you, leaving you. Gone! The great
\nwind drops out of your head and you hear the heavenly music again.
\nYou feel sorry and loving and tender to that poor animal
\nwhimpering, grizzling, laughing and sobbing there beside you like<\/p>\n
[part of the text is lost here]<\/p>\n
Maraini demanded an interview with the general and- here’s this
\nJapanese general sitting with regimental sword in front of him like
\nthat, and Maraini . . . took his sword, and cut off his own finger and
\nthrew it into the man’s face. And that had absolutely the desired
\neffect – it was the thing that really impressed the Japanese more
\nthan anything else that he could have done. Everybody got more
\nfood, and lives were saved by this gesture. So maybe it’s partly that
\ntrue story that’s been loaned to William as part of his legend. But
\nthat didn’t happen quite that way.
\nGEN: So you’ve lost a toe, and he’s lost some finger-
\nBRION: Everybody loses a little something here and there on the way
\nthrough this rat race . . .<\/p>\n
This excerpt is from a forthcoming book of interviews with Brion
\nGysin, edited by Genesis P-Orridge, Genesis and Peter (Sleazy)
\nChristopherson asked the questions . . .<\/p>\n
“Real total war has become information war, it is being fought now . .
\n. ”<\/p>\n
