This weeks lecture began with the follow quotes from Oscar Wilde and Aldous Huxely respectively.  These were the quotes which I found very interesting as it made me think a bit more deeply into ‘memory’:

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us – (Oscar Wilde)

I agree with the above quote from Oscar Wilde because our memories (to a certain extent) are like a diary which we can go back to whenever we need it, and it is definitely like turning the pages of an actual diary in your hand.  In more modern times though, we have become slightly lazy and one of the most popular ways of having a memory now is by creating a blog (just like this) and going back to it for future reference.

Every man’s memory is his private literature – Aldous Huxely

OK, so everyone has things in their ‘memory’ with which they want to keep private, but in this day and age ’secrets’ are becoming practically impossible to keep from everyone.  This is even more true if you are famous and in the public eye.

We were then shown a selection of videos, which could be useful for our memory piece of work.  The one video that stood out for me was one that was produced by William Burroughs:

The reason why I like this video is because its ‘different’ from anything that I have seen before.  I love the fact that you can create a couple of different stories in one production and give them a whole new meaning and kind of reminds of the film Pulp Fiction.  This is because this film also makes you think about whats going on and it also comes up with three different storylines.

Another thing that I liked about William Burroughs’ video was the sharp cuts to another scene, even though was narration was going along at the same pace throughout.

Il Giorno del Ringraziamento (Thanksgiving Day) è una festa osservata negli Stati uniti e in Canada: si celebra il quarto giovedì di Novembre, in segno di gratitudine per la fine della stagione del raccolto.

Risalente al 1623, e istituita dai Padri Pellegrini (quelli sbarcati in America a bordo della Mayflower, per intenderci), la festa si estese, anche grazie a George Washington, in tutti gli Stati e a metà del XIX° secolo era già unanimemente riconosciuta. Con il tempo la festa acquistò anche una certa sfumatura di patriottismo.

In occasione dell’annuale ricorrenza, che scade giovedì prossimo, qui su Bizzarro Bazar pubblichiamo un testo di  William S. Burroughs dedicato al Ringraziamento, cogliendo l’occasione per introdurre i suoi lettori alla forza dissacrante di un genio letterario senza pari.

Inizialmente associato alla beat generation di Kerouac, Ginsberg & soci, Burroughs ha in seguito intrapreso una ricerca artistica che ha influenzato tutta la seconda metà del ‘900, e che continua ad ispirare le avanguardie moderne. E’ difficile illustrare quanto importante sia stato il suo peso nei diversi campi artistici: le sue tecniche e i suoi temi si ritrovano nella letteratura, nella musica, nell’arte figurativa, nella body art, nel cinema.

Esploratore della coscienza e del perturbante, psiconauta per antonomasia, cultore di visioni macabre ed estreme ed artefice di un umorismo al vetriolo, il vecchio zio Bill ha praticamente scardinato ogni classico assunto culturale.

Angoscia del Controllo, distruzione dell’identità, algebra del bisogno, scarafaggi e Disinfestatori, “scimmie” sulla schiena, millepiedi allucinogeni, morbide macchine del sogno, esseri mutanti dalle forme imprecise, tossicomani e omosessuali, il cut-up come metodo non-logico per sottrarsi alla dipendenza del pensiero.

Questi, a grandi linee, i temi ossessivamente ripetuti da William S. Burroughs lungo tutta la sua carriera di romanziere e saggista, a partire da quando nel 1959 venne pubblicato Il Pasto Nudo, a tutt’oggi considerato il suo capolavoro, e grossi intellettuali e letterati americani si mossero per difendere il romanzo dalle accuse di oscenità e immoralità.

La sua vita stessa assomiglia ad un’opera d’arte. In tempi non sospetti (anni ‘40-’50) ha provato tutte le droghe esistenti, è stato eroinomane per sedici anni, ha ucciso sua moglie (sposata con l’unico scopo di darle cittadinanza americana) con un colpo di pistola mentre strafatti giocavano a inscenare la sfida di Guglielmo Tell. E’ stato omosessuale e tossicodipendente, ha elaborato la teoria secondo cui il linguaggio sarebbe un virus letale, ha cercato di sbriciolare i limiti del dicibile mediante diverse tecniche quali il cut-up, ha confuso il confine fra narrativa e pornografia, ha intrapreso avventurosi viaggi per provare droghe sconosciute come lo yage (la liana magica degli sciamani dell’Amazzonia), ha rivoluzionato ed esploso la forma del romanzo, ha creato dipinti sparando a dei barattoli di colore… ha lottato per tutta la vita contro il concetto di “controllo”, cercando di liberare la letteratura e la mente dagli insidiosi vincoli del condizionamento. In breve, un autore irrinunciabile.

Per ritornare al Giorno del Ringraziamento, vi proponiamo qui il testo e la traduzione di una preghiera (tutt’altro che patriottica, come vedrete) scritta da Burroughs nel 1986.  Più in sotto, troverete il video in cui William Burroughs recita il testo, per la regia di Gus Van Sant.

A THANKSGIVING PRAYER

by William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen, feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody’s allowed to mind the own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories– all right let’s see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

UNA PREGHIERA PER IL GIORNO DEL RINGRAZIAMENTO

di William S. Burroughs

Grazie per il tacchino selvatico e i piccioni di passaggio, destinati ad essere cagati fuori attraverso budella del tutto Americane.

Grazie per un continente da rovinare e avvelenare.

Grazie per gli Indiani per fornire un minimo di sfida e pericolo.

Grazie per le vaste mandrie di bisonti da uccidere e spellare lasciando le carcasse a imputridire.

Grazie delle taglie sui lupi e sui coyote.

Grazie per il sogno Americano, Volgarizzare e Falsificare finché le nude menzogne non risplendano.

Grazie per il Ku Klux Klan.

Per gli uomini della legge ammazzanegri, che contano le tacche.

Per le decenti donne di chiesa, con le loro malvagie, contrite, amare, cattive facce.

Grazie per gli adesivi “Uccidi una Checca per Cristo”.

Grazie per l’AIDS da laboratorio.

Grazie per il Proibizionismo e la guerra contro le droghe.

Grazie per un paese dove a nessuno è permesso farsi gli affari suoi.

Grazie per una nazione di senzapalle.

Sì, grazie per tutti i ricordi ― va bene, ora vediamo le tue braccia!

Sei sempre stato un mal di testa e sei sempre stato una noia.

Grazie per l’ultimo e massimo tradimento dell’ultimo e massimo tra i sogni umani.

The piece of Pamela Z’s that I know best—Geekspeak—is something that may be loosely called a radio documentary, but actually turns into something more like musique concrete and then back to documentary again, with a moment of crazy glitch in the middle that I still wonder about.  It’s a work that documents tech “geeks” during the 90s, but there are moments that challenge an easy picture;  part William Burroughs, part Glenn Gould, her techniques get at the deeper issues and paradoxes of telling a story of technology with technology.  I’ve also seen her do live performance once in some warehouse in NYC’s Chinatown, using her own voice to instigate a variety of complex effects, gauging minute changes and responding in kind.  Her work tends to defy categories . . . in fact one Seattle blog has her Film Forum appearance tagged as an “opera” event, perhaps because she has some classically trained pipes, or maybe because opera itself is just an older word for “intermedia.”  Much of her work emerges from an extended exploration of the voice and language—which is why she also fits into the curation of Writing for Their Lives, the series where you’ll more likely find contemporary poets.  Because she integrates midi controlled devices that help her extend voice into image, gesture into effect, her media work has close affiliations to that of Seattlite Gary Hill, whose work has explored the way in which language becomes concretized in the image by way of new devices.

Pamela Z will give a FREE talk and demo at the Seattle Campus of the University of Washington for the Writing for their Lives Series on Monday, November 23 at 6:30 in Communications 120.  (Other upcoming Writing for their Lives events of interest include language poet Charles Bernstein in January, and performance-writer and media artist Cris Cheek in February.)

Pamela Z’s performance at the Film Forum will be on Tues., November 24 at 8 PM.  This program will combine short, stand-alone pieces with excerpts from many of Ms. Z’s full-evening intermedia performance works – including segments from her latest work-in-progress “Baggage Allowance” –providing a representative survey of an extensive body of work.

Se você curte a geração beat, ou tem um mínimo interesse pela turba de poetas e escritores viajantes e marginais, deve ter percebido que faltava um livro no mercado que sistematizasse a jogada toda, contextualizando e indicando outras leituras. Faltava. Agora, felizmente é fácil encontrar nas livrarias o título Geração Beat, de Claudio Willer, pequena pedrada-pocket da coleção encyclopaedia da editora L&PM.

Willer é um grande estudioso do assunto, e já verteu para o português vários  poemas de Allen Ginsberg, sempre com riqueza de notas explicativas e textos adicionais. Em “Geração Beat”, ele revela um texto impecavelmente conciso e organizado, e muito agradável de ler – as linhas simplesmente se desmancham frente aos nossos olhos e lá estamos nós ao lado de Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac e William Burroughs.

Longe de ser um tratado sobre o assunto, este é um livro introdutório para quem começa  a se aventurar nesta imensa praia de girassóis, assim como presta uma louvável função de discutir e organizar um pouco dessa  loucura toda para aqueles que já a apreciam. Mais dois outros méritos do título são: a preocupação de Willer em trazer nomes que se ligam de alguma forma ao movimento aqui no Brasil e na América Latina – há inclusive um capítulo que trata apenas de como se difundiu a beat no Brasil, e a discussão de como estes tortos caminhos percorridos por esta geração iriam desmbocar na contracultura.

Texto: Alexandre Lucchese

]]> http://comeunorgasmotragico.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/per-ogni-furia-a-prova-di-estintori/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:33:59 +0000 williamdollace http://comeunorgasmotragico.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/per-ogni-furia-a-prova-di-estintori/ http://davidwills.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/mod-meets-freak-barney-imbibes-britain-will-never-be-the-same/ Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:28:35 +0000 davidwills http://davidwills.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/mod-meets-freak-barney-imbibes-britain-will-never-be-the-same/

1967. Mod meets freak. Here we see the late 20th century at that moment in time when Barney Bubbles first ingested LSD. This touching family scene shows the gang preparing in front of the mirror in my room at Leigh Court, West Kensington, London for the Alexandra Palace all-weekend bash. Barney’s hair is being combed back down, mod style, by Lorry One-day-to-be-Sartorio, to give it that fluff-it-up bouffant, Rod Stewart look. Barney’s dopamine receptor induced glassy eyes stare from a mask painted on his face, on which another mask is to be affixed. He looks to be drying his nail polish. John Muggeridge to the left. I photographed the occasion thinking it to be historic, I was right.

Above the cosy scene is a lamp shade I bought at Conran’s store, Habitat. Barney, at this time, was working at Conran’s design studio and was friendly with a manager there, whom he advised on some purchases for the store. One of his recommendations was this lampshade, because it reminded him of the Perkinje Pattern based Dreammachine we had once considered making. This spinning optical illusion device, the Dreamachine, was invented by Brion Gysin, a writer and performance artist (and associate of William Burroughs), with scientist Ian Sommerville. The Dreammachine was a  stroboscopic flicker device designed to be viewed with the eyes closed and produce visual stimuli.

I had bought the lampshade forgetting about the Dreammachine association, although it seemed familiar, so when Barney asked me, “Y’ going to use the Lampshade then?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I figured it out and explained that it didn’t spin and the geometry was wrong so it wouldn’t work.

Reproduced here below for new readers who have not investigated the back story, is the post I previously posted explaining the workings of the Dreammachine and the Perkinje Pattern effects.

Perkinje Patterns: Great Flickering Fingers – it’s the Dreammachine

Here’s something for the Hawkwind crowd – how Barney amused himself. Gysin was the guy who taught Burroughs to do cut-ups. Here Gysin describes the lowdown heads-up on one Barney the Entertainer’s (p)arty tricks. You probably all know that Barney got his cut-up text ideas for that Hawkwind booklet off Bill Burroughs, who in turn worked with and was influenced by poet Brion Gysin. But did you know that one of Barney entertainments used Gysin’s discovery of the Dreamachine? Read all about it here.

Strange News: Key to Hallucinations Found

By Jen Palmares Meadows, Scientific Blogging

Almost fifty years ago, the beat poet Brion Gysin (1916 – 1986), described a visual hallucination that he experienced while riding a bus:

…Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseille. We ran through a long avenue of trees and I closed my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright patterns in supernatural colours exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time. I was in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me? (Brion Gysin, 21 December 1958)

Gysin, a writer and performance artist, though known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, which inspired writers like William S. Burroughs, was also the co-inventor (along with scientist Ian Sommerville) of the Dreamachine, a stroboscopic flicker device designed to be viewed with the eyes closed and produces visual stimuli.

At the end of his documentation, Gysin asks, “Was that a vision? What happened to me?”

PURKINJE PATTERNS

According to Dominic ffytche of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and author of ‘The Hodology of Hallucinations,’ a study recently published in an issue of Cortex, “Fifty years on we are able to answer Gysin’s question.” Gysin’s hallucinations were quite similar to what Jan Purkinje (1787-1869), the father of contemporary neuroscience, experienced as a child.

“I stand in the bright sunlight with closed eyes and face the sun. Then I move my outstretched, somewhat separated, fingers up and down in front of the eyes, so that they are alternately illuminated and shaded. In addition to the uniform yellow-red that one expects with closed eyes, there appear beautiful regular figures that are initially difficult to define but slowly become clearer. When we continue to move the fingers, the figure becomes more complex and fills the whole visual field. (Purkinje, 1819)

When Purkinje moved his fingers, he simulated an effect similar to that of Gysin’s Dreamachine.

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081123-hallucinations.html

And check this, out.

http://pendu.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/william-s-burroughs-brion-gysin-the-cut-ups/#comment-13

• Rebeca and Mike say: The Dreamachine eh? Looking at stuff with your eyes closed eh?

  Okay then, there was a poster Barney did for the fictitious band ‘The Image’ (members of the band were Roger, Pete, Colin, Roy and Wöll). The poster featured a silhouette of a guitar-weilding guy, and was printed in two strong colours (there are different colour variations of this poster). You have to stare for a while at a star-shaped badge the guitar guy is wearing and then shut your eyes. Low and behold, due to the magic of after-imagery, ‘The Image’ of a pop star you’ve just been looking at appears, as if on the back of your eyelids!

  Before we’d come across this poster, we’d used a slightly similar after-image technique for a fashion shoot we did for Tank magazine in London. You stared at green tights (for example) and when you’d charged your eyeballs up enough you looked over to the photograph of the girl, and all of a sudden she was wearing pink tights!

• The Wöll, in RandM’s comment above is my pseudonym of the time. This ‘Image’ poster is another in the co-operative pieces Fulcher and I worked on together and which are only half credited in gorman’s ‘Reasons.’ In the absence of any obliging personnel to fulfill our grand ideas of impresariodom, we were inventing the band, The Image, in reverse, graphics first then the band.

Libri di scrittori come lo spagnolo Arturo Pérez-Reverte, lo statunitense Tom Wolfe, autore del celebre Radical chic e ancora William Burroughs sono stati inseriti in una “lista nera” del Servizio Antidroga russo per incitazione al consumo dei narcotici. Lo scandalo è scoppiato dopo che una bibliotecaria della piccola città di Orsk, negli Urali, ha denunciato nel suo blog in internet che le autorità avevano inviato alla biblioteca una lista di trentasette volumi libri che si raccomandava di non proporre ai lettori.

 La «lista delle opere che contengono elementi di propaganda e pubblicità di narcotici e sostanze stupefacenti» è stata diffusa dal dipartimento della Cultura del municipio su richiesta dell’ufficio locale del Servizio Federale della Lotta Antidroga russo (SFLA).

 Tra gli autori “proscritti” figurano appunto Pérez-Reverte con La regina del sud, una storia di narcotrafficanti ambientata in Messico e nello Stretto di Gibilterra, Tom Wolfe con uno dei suoi classici The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Insieme a loro l’ispiratore dei Beat William Burroughs con Queer, Hunter Thompson con il famosissimo Paura e disgusto a Las Vegas, il britannico Alex Garland con La spiaggia e lo scozzese Irvine Welsh (autore di Trainspotting) con Porno, Scoria e The Acid House.

 La lista include anche opere fantascientifiche come A Scanner Darkly di Philip K. Dick e Jim Morrison’s Adventures in the Afterlife del britannico Mick Farren. Oltre ad altri autori contemporanei e del secolo passato, curiosamente la lista include monografie su sostante psicotropiche e allucinogene di scienziati di livello mondiale, come lo psichiatra statunitense di origine ceca Stanislav Grof, e un manuale per la coltivazione dei funghi. La rivista “Novie Izvestia” spiaga che «la lista mescola opere marginali con classici della letteratura molti dei quali portati sugli schermi», e che tutti i libri inclusi sono comunque in vendita e possono essere scaricati da internet liberamente.

 La rivelazione di questa “lista nera” ha indignato la stampa russa che non ha dimenticato altre campagne simili del Servizio Antidroga, come la persecuzione nei confronti dei veterinari che usavano anestetici per operare gli animali domestici.

 Le polemiche sulla stampa hanno obbligato il Servizio Antidroga di Orsk a una mezza marcia indietro.

 La portavoce dell’organismo ha spiegato che «si tratta solo di una raccomandazione a prestare attenzione ai libri menzionati per vedere se contengono materiale dannoso». E ha dato inizio a uno scaricabarile. Ha spiegato infatti di aver ricevuto la lista dal Dipartimento SFLA della regione di Oremburgo. I cui funzionari però negano e attribuiscono l’iniziativa agli agenti di Orsk. Un impiegato del dipartimento regionale del SFLA ha assicurato che «è stata un’idea locale».

 «Non c’è stato, non c’è e non ci sarà nessuna lista di libri prescritti. La letteratura può essere ritirata solo per ordine dei tribunali», ha assicurato a Novie Izvestia il portavoce ufficiale di SFLA, Nicolai Kartashov, il quale ha spiegato che solo un tribunale può proibire la circolazione di un libro o di un film se qualcuno presenta una denuncia formale e questa risulta appoggiata da una commissione speciale di esperti che include linguisti e psicologi.

Alberto Remedio

Libero

Acordei com o mesmo peito apertado com o qual fui dormir, pensando nas várias coisas que li sobre minha recém descoberta condição nos blogs que agora constam ai do lado, li quase tudo de todos e foi de certa forma reconfortante saber que não estou só.
Tenho suspirado mais do que o normal, talvez uma tentativa de desapertar o peito.
Por volta do meio dia tomarei o remédio pela segunda vez.
Segundo o médico, essas duas primeiras semanas serão as piores da minha vida, e não sei se o fato de ter visitas nos dois fins de semana me ajudará a me sentir melhor – ou pelo menos me forçará a fazer algo diferente – ou se com elas virão mais angústias. Medo de que percebam.
Mas depois disso, devo melhorar. Então é só ter em mente que qualquer piora é culpa do comprimido verde-amarelo e tentar resistir a qualquer pensamento negativo que tente se instalar.

–
12h20

Minha visita se foi, meu marido foi à feira.
Aproveitei que estou sozinha em casa para tomar o remédio e chorar.
Prometi a ele que não ficaria o dia inteiro na frente do computador.
Vou tentar ler algo, quem sabe aprendo a meditar.

–

13h40

Ele está de volta e me convida para ajudar a ajeitar o quintal, que só de olhar me dá depressão. Tá um dia feio lá fora. Disse que não.

–

16h14

Não sei se é paranóia minha, mas acho que meu marido anda me vigiando como que com medo de que eu venha a fazer besteira. Acho que ele está mais assustado que eu com o diagnóstico – ele confessou que achou que o médico fosse receitar uma lampada de tratamento para SAD [seasonal affective desorder] em vez de comprimidos. Eu pelo menos pressentia que algo definitivamente não ia bem.

O peito continua apertado depois do demorado banho de banheira. Nunca acerto a temperatura certa.

22h42

como prometido, passei pouco tempo no computador, algo que tem sido raro em minha vida.
depois do cochilo e do jantar caprichado que me foi servido, aproveitei para terminar o livro que havia começado ao acaso há umas duas ou três semanas: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, por Jack Kerouac e William Burroughs.
possivelemente, não se trata de uma leitura indicada para uma pessoa com depressão, mas fiquei contente de ter terminado um livro depois de tempos começando um e trocando por outro. Dos livros que ganhei no natal, não passei dos primeiros capítulos.

“Cherry pickers, with satin brushes big as a door, inch through Wall Street leaving a vast souvenir postcard of the Grand Canyon. Water-trucks slosh out paint. Outlaw painters, armed with paint pistols, paint everything and everyone in reach. Survival artists, paint cans strapped to their backs, grenades at their belts, paint anybody and anything within range. Skywriters dogfight and collide and explode.”

William S. Burroughs (“Apocalypse” from an illustrated catalogue in collaboration with Keith Haring, 1989) Amongst his many crimes and peccadillos, William Burroughs was caught doing graffiti on a NYC subway. He had written: “Ah Pook was here”, Ah Pook is the Mayan god of destruction.

Unknown artist - St. Kilda Rd.

I have seen some street art using trees, is very uncommon, this one on St. Kilda road had charcoal marks applied to it. Trees are a common feature of the urban environment; they are rarely touched by street artists but I have seen some good site-specific art on trees by street artists. And after much talk about the possibilities of street art with moss I finally saw some near East Richmond station however it had not been grown but glued to the wall.

unknown artist - details of moss antlers

After lots of comic book characters the aerosol street artists are now doing lots of large realist faces, mostly images from cinema history. Some of the best of these faces can be seen along Hoddle St. in Collingwood.

I went back to look at Croft Alley in Chinatown about two months after the Don’t Ban the Can event. There was one graffiti writer at work in the alley when I visited on a warm Saturday afternoon on my way to yum cha. It was hard to see all the walls because of all the garbage bins, but they are, along with other services why these alleyways have been constructed. It looked good and fresh, in contrast to the smell of garbage. There are a great variety of styles from the old school, wild-style, characters and beyond. I say “beyond” because there were also work there that really pushed the techniques and ideas of what aerosol art could be. I could see more of it and there was more to see then when I was there for the painting.

“Style in ornament is analogous to hand in writing, and this is it literal signification.”

Ralph Nicholson Wornum (The Principles of Ornamentation, 1858)

Some brief thoughts about nasty books.

For reasons that, frankly, are no-one else’s business, I decided recently to read a potted history of nasty books. These were novels that have traditionally been considered taboo- that is, extremist novels, considered a bad influence on people. Nowadays, authors like Michel Houellebecq, with his sex, and that German bird who writes about crapping everywhere, are following this seam.

For me this little history (very French, on the whole) started with De Sade, including ‘The 120 Days of Sodom’, and took in things like ‘The Torture Garden’ by Octave Mirbeau, ‘Maldoror’, Georges Batailles’ ‘Story Of The Eye’, ‘The Maimed’ by Hermann Ungar (one of my favourite novels), J K Huysmans, ‘Irene’s Cunt’ by Louis Aragon, ‘The Naked Lunch’ and so on. ‘The Naked Lunch’ is one of the most recent examples in America of an obscenity trial for a book.

After consuming all this, what was interesting was that authors, on the whole, came across as a liberal and highly moralistic bunch who use ’shocking’ books to make liberal and highly moralistic points. Despite its depravity, ‘The 120 Days’ is also/mainly a deeply moralistic attack on the French aristocracy, for example. It was interesting that these ‘bad’ books (with the possible exception of ‘Maldoror’) had such discernibly sensitive and idealistic motives behind them- it was disappointing, in a way.

The disappointment was compounded by the fact that most of the shocking human acts depicted in these books are less shocking than the real acts detailed every day in our news, and media- a ‘power-lessening’ problem that some of these books faced on their original publication (e.g. popular newspapers in France in the early twentieth century were salacious and extremely bloodthirsty).

It struck me that the only ‘taboo’ books I’d read in this time that hadn’t seemed liberally moralistic- books that were nastier and more ambiguous than that – were by Mickey Spillane and Richard Allen; in the latter’s case, ‘Trouble For Skinhead’ in particular. And so for me, the most powerful and disturbing of the supposedly taboo books were pulp novels, and not the classic European novels.

So I became interested in why Mickey Spillane and Richard Allen’s books had this particular disturbing power. It seemed to spring in part from the unconcerned writing style- the fact that both authors, however good some of their lines, were not concerned principally with the writing of good lines. This gives their books the personal, informal air of genuine conversation and confession.

Both also wrote, long-term, from inside the head of a person whose behavior is widely deemed morally unacceptable. This is a very, very difficult thing to achieve if, as a person and a writer, your opinions are not morally unacceptable. For many reasons, most writers seem to want to throw in moments where their morally ugly characters are at least observant, or poetic, or whatever- more sympathetic traits. Most writers can’t help making their nasty people nicer, or potentially excusable (cf. the admiration Pat Highsmith clearly had for serial murderer Tom Ripley). A random example of an author bottling out of inhabiting a ‘purely evil’ persona is that of Brett Easton Ellis in ‘American Psycho’. In it, there is some writing (apparently from the mind of the protagonist) that is sympathetically sensitive, and that makes both Ellis and his protagonist appear sympathetic and sensitive. And the narrator of ‘The 120 Days’ appears sympathetically sensitive when he, via shocking depictions, criticises the depravity of Catholic bishops and their immoral relationship with the poor.

Richard Allen and Mickey Spillane don’t let the mask slip like that. They write novels that are powerful because the writer’s relationship with both the fiction and the readership is questionable. They have no intention of making their characters excusable. They write novels that make them, as authors and people, look like bad men. For instance, both writers, via their characters, appear to be advocating racist and sexual violence. So what’s at issue- just as in a salacious popular newspaper- is the authors’ relationship with their writing, and the reader.

I like their work, but one of the reasons Spillane’s and Allen’s work was so powerful was because they were racists and sexists, in real life, as men. It made their job a lot easier. It’s one of the reasons why as authors their racist and sexist protagonists are so convincing, and powerful.

E se Hélio Oiticica tivesse um Ipod?

Dois sábados atrás, acordei com a notícia de que a obra de Hélio Oiticica tinha sido incendiada na casa de sua família.  Também chocado, Dodô resolveu preparar nesta Pick Up  uma homenagem nada fúnebre para HO. Se ele tivesse um Ipod, o que haveria dentro dele? Em vez de tentar imaginar, Dodô foi pesquisar nas cartas de Hélio, sempre verborrágico e metódico (guardava qualquer papelzinho), o que elas revelavam sobre a música.

Então fala aí, Hélio:

“Sempre estou com Caê, Gil, Dedé, Sandra e Guilherme, quando estou em Londres; tirei fotos de Caetano para o Pasquim (uma reportagem de Odete Lara), você viu? O lugar que Caetano e eu mais gostamos é a Round House; aos domingos eles fazem o “Implosion”, isto é, um espetáculo com grupos de pop-music, desde 3 da tarde até meia noite: todos dançam uma loucura desenfreada, é o único meio de fazer os ingleses dançarem bem, pois em geral são um fracasso; os grupos lá são sempre os maiores: Deep Purple, Who, Soft Machine etc. Marisa, escrevi um artigo sobre Bob Dylan (vi Bob Dylan a 10 metros de mim na Ilha de Wrigth, foi o show mais genial do mundo), creio que vai sair no Pasquim.”

Carta para Marisa Alvarez Lima. University of Sussex, Brighton, 9 nov. 1969

“Esse armário aqui é o Chelsea Hotel, essa geladeira é o Lower East Side. Você esteve no Filmore? Viu o MC-5? Você viu a boneca Dylan, lindíssima depois do acidente? Você entendeu aquele texto reacionário do Borroughs? Aquele boneca Christo enlouqueceu? Quer embrulhar o meu pau!! Boto o Cara de Cavalo atrás!!! Mando eliminar!!! Comigo é assim mando Johnny Karatê do Bronx correr atrás!”

Hélio apresentando sua casa no Jardim Botânico a Gerald Thomas, um adolescente recém-chegado de Nova York, 1970.

Tropicália, Caetano Veloso: uma escolha quase inevitável de nosso DJ. Caetano aparece na foto deste post experimentando um dos parangolés. O penetrável “Tropicália” ajudou-o a batizar a música.

Kick out the jams, MC5: Um pouco de contracultura não faz mal a ninguém. A MC5, banda de Michigan que começou em 1964 e ficou em atividade até 1972. Misturava psicodelia com rock de garagem e até um pouco de blues. “Kick out the jams” não foi escolhida por Dodô ao acaso: é a música-título do álbum de 1969 que fez a banda explodir.

Smoke on the water, Deep Purple: este clássico do rock inglês narra um incêndio que também afetou  na vida do Deep Purple. Em 1971, a banda foi a Montreaux, na Suíça, para fazer um show em um cassino. Na véspera, durante a apresentação de Frank Zappa e The Mothers of Invention, o sintetizador do Mothers pegou fogo durante o solo de “King Kong”. Alguém na plateia disparou um sinalizador, potencializando o fogo com a faísca (daí a letra falar em “some stupid with a flare gun” ). O prédio foi destruído, assim como todo o equipamento do Mothers. A “fumaça na água” do título da música foi a que cobriu o Lago de Genebra no dia seguinte à tragédia.

The Acid Queen, The Who: ao pinçar este dentre tantos clássicos do The Who, Dodô faz um link esperto da relação afetiva de Hélio com o traficante Cara de Cavalo e do envolvimento não menos passional com as drogas.

Hazard profile, Soft Machine: um bastião do rock psicodélico inglês e do movimento Canterbury, a Soft Machine teve o nome inspirado num livro do escritor – e doidão – William S. Burroughs, que Hélio chama de reacionário no texto para Gerald. HO teve um envolvimento afetivo com o então aspirante a diretor de teatro.

Positively 4th Street, Bob Dylan: Olha a “boneca Dylan” aí, gente! HO era apaixonado por ele. Maior colecionador de sua própria obra, anti-comercial por natureza, Hélio nunca se preocupou em estar, como diz a canção,  ”on the side that’s winning”.

Geleia geral, Gilberto Gil: A mistureba de nosso ex-ministro, que pesca a melodia de Sinatra para fundi-la à batida da Mangueira nesta canção, é HO em estado bruto.

Exaltação a Mangueira, bateria da Estação Primeira de Mangueira e Jamelão: Lygia Pape me disse certa vez que a Mangueira tinha libertado Hélio Oiticica. Metódico e responsável ao extremo, ele teria sido um Apolo que virou Dionísio (as palavras são da própria Lygia, que ia com o amigo à favela) ao subir o morro. A bateria da Mangueira seria parceira de HO na experiência do parangolé em 1968, no Museu de Arte Moderna. Neste samba pinçado por Dodô, o conjunto de instrumentistas aparece valorizado no que tem de mais singular: diferentemente das outras escolas, a Mangueira só tem surdo de primeira. Não há um segundo surdo respondendo ao primeiro. Isso faz com que o compasso – que em outras baterias é um “tum-tum” – seja apenas um único “tum”, marcação aberta que permite o improvisso de tamborins, chocalhos, caixas e agogôs. Mais HO impossível.

=== + ===

Por causa da quantidade de músicas do Dodô, esta semana não teremos a participação de um convidado especial com seu Ipod. Esta sessão volta semana que vem, com a dica do cantor e compositor paulista Rômulo Fróes. Ele já mandou sua seleção, vai valer a pena esperar pela dobradinha que vai fazer com a sempre surpreendente Geleia Moderna de Jorge Lz.

International Poetry Incarnation,
The Original Program,
The Royal Albert Hall, June 11th, 1965,
Smoking Permitted.

Thomas, Gary, Christopher, Camille, Annie, Michael, Don, Cathy, others…

I certainly don’t see a problem, and I second Thomas’s drift in this comment. The thread is about open space, cornfield, Nebraska style space. Thomas has a point. You read what you want to read. Volume can only be stimulating, especially when the discourse is conducted at such a high level. I’m sure this is exactly what Ms. Lilly had in mind, free and open forums which grow organically. Any given post can sustain pointed commentary for only so long before drift, meta-commentary, opinion, personal ideology and the gifts of individual experience begin to take hold. I, for one, feel extremely lucky, as one of the hired perpetrators these last few months that the threads unfold the way they do. Maybe Gary has a point – some people could be scared away by the clobbering breadth of the most enthusiastic threaders. But perhaps not. I suspect a lot of people are reading just for the fun of it, for the spectacle, without necessarily feeling the need to contribute. And I’ve seen enough examples of people, late in the day, breaking in without any trepidation. Thomas has brought up a lot of good points here about the way things are supposed to work. And I would say, having observed this process over the last six months, that, given the lawlessness, there has always been a sense of decorum, even decorum threaded into the syntax of insult (a wonderful thing to see). We are all at a very lucky moment in the progress of letters. A kind of 18th century vibrancy is again the order of the day. We should all thank the circumstances that have led to this moment. We should drink a lot of coffee and get to work.

Martin
POSTED BY: MEARL ON JULY 6, 2009 AT 12:02 AM

Honestly, you all, go and read such passionate and well-informed commentary, and BLUSH! Go and read it right here, and then look at Harriet today!

Christopher

Have a look at this cool Burroughs site with plenty of articles, interviews, photos and videos called the Reality Studio

Heres a little moving thing people like to call videos

share with ya peeps!

Captured under hypnosis
Faster and faster images
Can a meaning be obtained
Or this mystery explained

I’m in orbit
Held by magnet
And the force fields
So much closer than love

Logic offers no defence
Underneath this influence
While this puzzle of intent
Holds emotion in suspense

-Broadcast, “Pendulum”

It can be strange (or comforting) to feel out of step from the prevailing trends of the day. There’s not much current pop music that does it for me – or even registers as existing. Broadcast is an exception.

That was a preview of Broadcast’s new 23 track mini-album, “Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age”. It should be hitting stores any day now. If that video didn’t sound and look incredible to you, we are not cut from the same cloth. Johnny Trunk’s writeup and the audio preview are stranger and suggest that they’re getting more psyched out than ever. This is no surprise given their oft-stated admiration for Joseph Byrd.

The band’s been much on my mind lately, not only because of the new album, but because I’ll be seeing them perform at Neumo’s this Halloween. Not only that, but the Seattle Symphony will be performing the score to Hitchcock’s Psycho. A memorable Halloween, to be sure.

Here’s a couple early Broadcast videos that first captured my attention:

This one prominently features the Dream Machine, popularized by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin:

Exploring glitchier electronic worlds, from more recent releases:

This last one is an odd video, but the tune is outstanding. Streamlined krautrock with a female lead – harder edged than Stereolab:

Pour en savoir plus :

. Lien direct vers le site de la Demeure du Chaos

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.

I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

– William S. Burroughs, Grand Street, no. 37 (1992). The War Universe

2xLP, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc/The Charing Hill Company, 1982

Ah, art. What would we do without it, pop kids? And hey, you know, some of those real-life, full-time artistic types, they can rock out too. Why look, here’s a double album full of their grrrrreatest bits.

A scarce double disc of the great and the good from the early 1980s NYC art scene, this is a very mixed bag of sound pieces, spoken word and, well, some songs. But there are some gems here too, so this isn’t just notable for its rarity. The Bill Burroughs piece has his voice slowly set out of phase like an early Steve Reich piece. And the Terry Fox excerpt, from recordings made from a show where he wired very lengthy steel springs from the altar to the doors of an Italian church and then twanged them, basking in the glorious reverb, is pretty special.

This was released in a limited run, in a gatefold covered in notes, plus a couple of fold-out posters with further sleevenotes and alternative cover designs. There was also a 500-copy run with prints from may of the contributors as a collector’s item. We ain’t got that one. NB, 320 rip, because we [heart] you.

01. Jud Fine – Polynesian/Polyhedron (3:12)
02. Eleanor Antin – Antinova Remembers (4:12)
03. Terry Fox – Internal Sound (4:21)
04. Margaret Harrison – First Lines (2:46)
05. Les Levine – Would Not Say No to Some Help (4:10)
06. Hannah Wilke – Stand Up (3:21)
07. Douglas Davis – How to Make Love to a Sound (4:21)
08. Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid – Russian Language Lesson (3:21)
09. Helen & Newton Harrison – Extract from The Second Lagoon: A Memoriam to John Isaacs (2:29)
10. Vincenzo Agnetti – Pieces of Sound (4:30)
11. Chris Burden – The Atomic Alphabet (0:31)
12. Piotr Kowalski & William Burroughs – You Only Call the Old Doctor Once (4:45)
13. Ida Applebroog – Really, is That a Fact? (3:09)
14. Edwin Schlossberg – Vibrations/Metaphors (4:52)
15. SITE – Comments on SITE (2:46)
16. R Buckminster Fuller – Critical Path (2:52)
17. Thomas Shannon – Smashing Beauty (4:02)
18. Conrad Atkinson – The Louis XIV Deterrent (5:20)
19. David Smyth – Typewriter in D (3:35)
20. Todd Siler – Think Twice (3:17)
21. Joseph Beuys – Excerpt from Cooper Union Dialogue (4:07)

Link | Discogs | Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc

În cele mai multe website-uri oficiale de muzică, ziariştii specializaţi în domeniul muzical, Lester Bangs şi David Marsh sunt consideraţi a fi pionierii care au folosit termenul prima dată pentru a descrie noul gen muzical, dar asta nu se întâmpla în 1961 !

William Burroughs a publicat cartea The Soft Machine în 1961. Unul din personajele cărţii este Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal kid. Următorul roman, Nova Express, publicată în 1964, conţine următorul citat: “With their diseases and orgasm drugs and their sexless parasite life forms – Heavy Metal People of Uranus wrapped in cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes – And The Insect People of Minraud with metal music - Cold insect brains like white hot buzz saws sharpened in the Ovens.”  … Nimeni nu are habar ce se petrecea de fapt în mintea autorului care se droga în mod constant, dar Soft Machine este primul loc unde cele două cuvinte sunt folosite împreună, iar referinţa la muzica Heavy Metal se repetă în următorul roman scris de acelaşi autor de S.F.uri.

Milioane de persoane au ascultat versul “Heavy Metal Thunder” din piesa Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf, 1968). Piesa se referă la zgomotul făcut de motocicletă, NU la muzica în sine.

–No hace falta más que un hombre rechace toda esta mierda, y puede desaparecer para todos–

(Burroughs, La maquina blanda)

William Burroughs, homosexual, heroinómano, y artista experimental, consagro su vida a escribir, pintar, a la música, al cine, y sobre todo a vivir. Su obra tiene bastante carga autobiográfica.

Nació en Saint Louis, el 15 de Febrero de 1914, y falleció en Kansas, el 2 de Agosto de 1997, fue un gran novelista de los llamados inclasificables. Ensayista y dudoso narrador gracias a su singular prosa y jerga, y a los términos por el inventados, fue también un destacado crítico social norteamericano.

En un accidente y emulando a Guillermo Tell, mato a su esposa de un tiro en la cabeza; en 1943 se introduce en el mundo del hampa y la delincuencia, por su adicción a las drogas.  

En la década de los 50, William Burroughs fue uno de los fundadores de la llamada Generación Beat (Libertad sexual, libertad a las drogas, y estudio de la filosofia oriental), inspirando entre otros, a artistas como; Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Patty Smith, David Bowie, y Frank Zappa.

Nos dejó joyas como: Yonqui, El almuerzo desnudo (considerado por muchos la obra cumbre de Burroughs), La Maquina blanda, Nova exprés (aquí nos habla del chico subliminal, un fantasmal habitante de Nova), El lugar de los caminos muertos. etc

–Despues de echar un vistazo a este planeta, un visitante de otro mundo diría:  quiero ver al jefe!–

–El comerciante no vende su producto al consumidor, vende el consumidor a su producto. No mejora o simplifica su mercancia, sino que degrada y simplifica al cliente–