Pop stars with Burroughs

dangerousminds.net/everybody_loves_william_burroughs

Terry Wilson and Brion Gysin

Terry Wilson: The cut-up techniques made very explicit a preoccupation with exorcism—William's texts became spells, for instance. How effective are methods such as street playback of tapes for dispersing parasites?

Brion Gysin: We-e-ell, you'd have to ask William about that, but I do seem to remember at least two occasions on whyich he claimed success...

Uh, the first was in the Beat Hotel still, therefore about 1961 or '2, and William decided (laughing) to "take care" of an old lady who sold newspapers in a kiosk, and this kiosk was rather dramatically and strategically placed at the end of the street leading out of the rue Git le Coeur toward the Place Saint Michel, and, uh, you whent up a flight of steps and then under an archway and as you came out you were spang! in front of this little old French lady who looked as if she'd been there since-at least since the French Revolution-when she had been knitting at the foot of the guillotine, and she lived in a layer of thickly matted, padded newspapers hanging around her piled very sloppily, and, uh, she was of absolutely incredible malevolence, and the only kiosk around there at that time that sold the Herald-Tribune, so that William (chuckling) found that he was having to deal with her every day, and every day she would find some new way to aggravate him, some slight new improvement on her malevolent insolence and her disagreeable lack of...uh (chuckling) collaboration with William in the buying of his newspaper (laughter)...

So...one day the little old lady burnt up inside her kiosk. And we came out to find that there was just the pile of ashes on the ground. William was... slightly conscience-stricken, but nevertheless rather satisfied with the result (laughter) as it proved the efficacy of his methods, but a little taken aback, he didn't necessarily mean the old lady to burn up inside there...And we often talked about this as we sat in a cafe looking at the spot where the ashes still were, for many months later...and to our great surprise and chagrin one day we saw a very delighted Oriental boy-I think probably Vietnamese-digging in these ashes with his hands and pulling out a whole hatful of money, of slightly blackened coins but a considerable sum, and (laughing) we would have been very glad to have it too—just hadn't thought of digging in the thing, so I said: "William, I don't think your operation was a complete success." And he said: "I am very glad that that beautiful young Oriental boy made this happy find at the end of the rainbow..."

Towers Open Fire

my name is russel harwick
i began this diary
as a record of my experiences
while suffering from alcoholism
i began drinking
when i was 14 moderately
at first on vacation
from school among friends.
by 15 i was suffering
from delerium tremens.
at 19 I found marijuana, hashish,
cocaine or heroin kept me off alcohol
for a limited time.
my pattern became a night marish
maze of shifting
addiction alcohol then drugs,
finally i was
introduced to hallucinogenics peyote,
psilocybin and l.s.d. 25
under the influence of peyote
i had a vision
i tried to forget it returning to drink.
but the memory haunted me

chappaqua (1966) conrad rooks

I will endeavor to summarize the highly complex and sophisticated system of spiritual training outlined by Don Juan in Tales of Power. The aim of this training is to produce an impeccable warrior - that is, a being who is at all times completely in possession of himself. The warrior is concerned only with expressing the totality of himself, not with praise or support from others. He neither seeks nor admits a master. The warrior's state is achieved with the aid of a teacher and a benefactor. To understand the respective roles of teacher and benefactor, one must consider the concepts of the tonal and the nagual, which are basic to the warrior's path. The tonal is the sum of any individual's perceptions and knowledge, everything he can talk about and explain, including his own physical being.

The nagual is everything outside the tonal: the inexplicable, the unpredictable, the unknown. The nagual is everything that cannot be talked about or explained, but only witnessed. The sudden irruption of the nagual into the tonal can be lethal unless the student is carefully prepared. The teacher's role is to clean up and strengthen the tonal, so that the student is able to deal with the nagual which the benefactor will then demonstrate. The teacher and the benefactor show the student how to reach the unknown, but they cannot predict what will happen when he does reach the nagual. The nagual is by its nature unpredictable, and the whole training is extremely dangerous. While the tonal, the totality of conscious existence, shapes the individual being, the tonal is in turn shaped by the nagual, by everything it is not, which surrounds it like a mold. The tonal tends to shut out and deny the nagual, which takes over completely in the moment of death.

If we see the nagual as the unknown, the unpredictable and unexplainable, the role of the artist is to make contact with the nagual and bring a part of it back into the tonal in paint or words, sculpture, film, or music. The nagual is also the area of so-called psychic phenomena which the Buddhists consider as distractions from the way of enlightenment. Buddhism and the teachings of Don Juan are simply not directed towards the same goals. Don Juan does not offer any final solution or enlightenment. Neither does the artist.

–William S. Burroughs, from CoEvolution Quarterly Spring 77

Interzone

Junky Relations

"Addicts are," he said with finality, "as boring a bunch of people as I ever encountered. They've got this one track mind." I recall being told that they sat and stared at T.V. for hours. Burroughs sighed, "That they do. Billie Holiday said that she knew she was cured when she stopped looking at T.V."

Richard Evans Schultes' name came up. Burroughs said, "Know him well. We took a trip to South America together. He has a definite disagreement with the attempt to eradicate cocaine there. He says that it doesn't hurt them at all. That's what Dick Schultes says. I think it must cut off the circulation in the gums. That's what does it. Teeth fall out. It's a disgusting habit, I think. Just physically. I tried it. All it did is freeze up my mouth. No systemic effect. It seems like a waste of time to me." (William S. Burroughs, 1978)