URANIAN WILLY the Heavy Metal Kid, also known as Willy the Rat – He wised up the marks.....

 “This is war to extermination – Fight cell by cell through bodies and mind screens of the earth – Souls rotten from the Orgasm Drug – Flesh shuddering from the Ovens – Prisoners of the earth, come out – Storm the studio.”....

  His plan called for total exposure – Wise up all the marks everywhere Show them the rigged wheel – Storm the Reality Studio and retake the universe – The plan shifted and reformed as reports came in from his electric patrols sniffing quivering down streets of the earth – the reality film giving and buckling like a bulk-head under pressure – burned metal smell of inter-planetary war in the raw noon streets swept by screaming glass blizzards of enemy flak.....

  “Photo falling – Word falling – Use partisans of all nations – Target Orgasm Ray Installations – Gothenburg Sweden – Coordinates 8 2 7 6 – Take Studio – Take Board Books – Take Death Dwarfs – Towers, open fire.”....

  Pilot K9 caught the syndicate killer image on a penny arcade screen and held it in his sight – Now he was behind it in it was it – The image disintegrated in photo flash of total recognition – Other image on screen – Hold in sight – Smell of burning metal in his head – “Pilot K9, you are cut off – Back – Back – Back before the whole fucking shithouse goes up – Return to base immediately – Ride music beam back to base – Stay out of that time flak – All pilots ride Pan Pipes back to base.”....

  It was impossible to estimate the damage – Board Books destroyed – Enemy Personnel decimated – The message of total resistance on short wave of the world.....

   “Calling partisans of all nations – Shift linguals – Cut word lines – Vibrate tourists – Free doorways – Photo falling – Word falling – Break through in Grey Room – Towers Open Fire.”....

by Dave Walsh

The '23 Enigma', as discovered by William S. Burroughs, presents itself as a good omen for some - disaster for others. Trying to convey the phenomenon to the uninitiated is as easy as describing the night sky to someone who has been blind from birth.

When Burroughs was in Tangiers, he knew a Captain Clark who ran a ferry over to Spain. One day, Clark told Burroughs that he had been doing the route for 23 years without an accident. That day, the ferry sank . . .that evening, while Burroughs was thinking about the incident, a radio bulletin announced the crash of Flight 23 on the New York-Miami route. The pilot was another Captain Clark!

Burroughs began to keep a scrapbook of 23s. When writing about Dutch Shultz, he realized that when the New York City gangster had put a contract out on 23-year-old Vincent 'Mad Dog' Coll, who met his end on 23rd St. Shultz himself died on October 23rd, 1935. As Robert Anton Wilson writes in 'Cosmic Trigger', the same night, Marty Crompier, another gangster was shot, but not fatally. "It's got to be one of them coincidences," he told police.

Speaking of October 23rd, Seventeenth century scholar Archbishop Ussher reckoned that the earth was created on October 23rd, 4004 BC, while the Mayans believed the world will end on December 23rd, 2012.

Hexagram 23 in the 'I Ching' oracle means "break apart." 23 in telegrapher's code means "break the line." Aleister Crowley defined number 23 as "parting, removal, separation, joy, a thread, and life . . ."

Parents each donate 23 chromosomes to the fertilized egg . . .the human biorhythm cycle is generally 23 days, and it takes 23 seconds for blood to circulate through the human body.

And so on . . .

This inexplicable fascination with 23 has become a mind-virus, seeping into the music of 'Psychic TV', the art of H.R. Giger, the comics of Jamie Hewlett and Grant Morrison, the literature of Robert Anton Wilson, Arthur Koestler, Umberto Eco, and countless others. The pages of the 'Principia Discordia' supply another feast of 23s. It now reached a point where one has to be sharp to differentiate between the 23s meant as signposts for those in the know, and those which appear for no obvious reason, in the damndest of places. The Internet is these days littered with lists of historical and scientific '23s', some of which are not so .. - i.e. mere coincidence, some mind-boggling - beautiful synchronicity.

The '23 Enigma' has its skeptics - those who say that it's a focusing of attention on just one number. This may be true, but as mentioned above, some folks have fun with 23s - the day-to-day synchronicity that raises a private smile - while for others it can be sheer hell, and we're not just talking about Burroughs' two Captain Clarks. Genesis P. Orridge (his band, 'Psychic TV', released 23 albums on the 23rd of each month for 23 months) told the members of another British band, 'Cabaret Voltaire', about the enigma. They showed interest, but skepticism. Two days later, Genesis received a phone call from them:

"You bastard! . . . We've come to Holland to do three gigs, and in every hotel we've had room 23, and the gig on the 23rd was a complete disaster. And everywhere we turn, there are 23s. What have you done?"

"Well, I did say you'd start noticing it," answered Genesis.

"Salt Chunk Mary" had all the "nos" and none of them ever meant "yes". She named a price heavy and cold as a cop's blackjack on a winter night and that was it. She didn't name another. Mary didn't like talk and she didn't like talkers. She received and did business in the kitchen. And she kept it in a sugar bowl. Nobody thought about that. Her cold grey eyes would have seen the thought and maybe something goes wrong on the next lay John Citizen come up with a load of 00 into your soft and tenders or Johnny Law just happens by. She sat there and heard. When you spread the gear out on her kitchen table she already knows where you sloped it. She looks at the gear and a price falls out heavy and cold and her mouth closes and stays shut. If she doesn't want to do business she just wraps the gear up and shoves it back across the table and that is that. Mary keeps a blue coffee pot and a pot of salt pork and beans always on the wood stove. When you fall in she gets up without a word and puts a mug of coffee and plate of salt chunk in front of you. You eat and then you talk business. Or maybe you take a room for a week to cool off. room 18 on the top floor I was sitting in the top room rose wall paper smoky sunset across the river. I was new in the game and like all young thieves thought I had a license to steal. It didn't last. Sitting there waiting on the Japanese girl works in the Chink laundry a soft knock and I open the door naked with a hard-on it was the top floor all the way up you understand nobody on that landing. "Ooooh" she says feeling it up to my oysters a drop of lubricant squeezed out and took the smoky sunset on rose wall paper I'd been sitting there naked thinking about what we were going to do in the rocking chair rocks off down the line she could get out of her dry goods faster than a junky can fix when his blood is right so we rocked away into the sunset across the river just before blast off that old knock on the door and I shoot this fear load like I never feel it wind up is her young brother at the door in his cop suit been watching through the key hole and learn about the birds and the bees some bee I was in those days good looking kid had all my teeth and she knew all the sex currents goose for pimple always made her entrance when your nuts are tight and aching a red haired smoky sunset one bare knee rubbing greasy pink wall paper he was naked with a hard-on waiting on the Mexican girl from Marty's a pearl of lubricant squeezed slowly out and glittered on the tip of his cock.

Well the Buyer comes to look more and more like a junky. He can't drink. He can't get it up. His teeth fall out. (Like pregnant women lose their teeth feeding the stranger, junkies lose their yellow fangs feeding the monkey.) He is all the time sucking on a candy bar. Baby Ruths he digs special. 'It really disgust you to see the Buyer sucking on them candy bars so nasty,' a cop says.

The Buyer takes on an ominous grey-green color. Fact is his body is making its own junk or equivalent. The Buyer has a steady connection. A Man Within you might say. Or so he thinks. 'I'll just set in my room,' he says. 'Fuck 'em all. Squares on both sides. I am the only complete man in the industry.'

But a yen comes on him like a great black wind through the bones. So the Buyer hunts up a young junky and gives him a paper to make it.

'Oh all right,' the boy says. 'So what you want to make?'

'I just want to rub against you and get fixed.'

'Ugh ... Well all right ... But why cancha just get physical like a human?'

Later the boy is sitting in a Waldorf with two colleagues dunking pound cake. 'Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for,' he says. 'Some way he make himself all soft like a blob of jelly and surround me so nasty. Then he gets well all over like with green slime. So I guess he come to some kinda awful climax ... I come near wigging with that green stuff all over me, and he stink like a old rotten cantaloupe.'

'Well it's still an easy score.'

The boy signed resignedly; 'Yes, I guess you can get used to anything. I've got a meet with him again tomorrow.'

The Buyer's habit keeps getting heavier. He needs a recharge every half hour. Sometimes he cruises the precincts and bribes the turnkey to let him in with a cell of junkies. It gets to where no amount of contact will fix him. At this point he receives a summons from the District Supervisor:

'Bradley, your conduct has given rise to rumors -- and I hope for your sake they are no more than that -- so unspeakably distasteful that ... I mean Caesar's wife ... hrump ... that is, the Department must be above suspicion ... certainly above such suspicions as you have seemingly aroused. You are lowering the entire tone of the industry. We are prepared to accept your immediate resignation.'

The Buyer throws himself on the ground and crawls over to the D.S. 'No, Boss Man, no ... The Department is my very lifeline.'

He kisses the D.S.'s hand thrusting his fingers into his mouth (the D.S. must feel his toothless gums) complaining he has lost his teeth 'inna thervith.' 'Please Boss Man, I'll wipe your ass, I'll wash out your dirty condoms, I'll polish your shoes with the oil on my nose ...'

'Really, this is most distasteful! Have you no pride? I must tell you I feel a distinct revulsion. I mean there is something, well, rotten about you, and you smell like a compost heap.' He put a scented handkerchief in front of his face. 'I must ask you to leave this office at once.'

'I'll do anything, Boss, anything.' His ravaged green face splits in a horrible smile. 'I'm still young, Boss, and I'm pretty strong when I get my blood up.'

The D.S. retches into his handkerchief and points to the door with a limp hand. The Buyer stands up looking at the D.S. dreamily. His body begins to dip like a dowser's wand. He flows forward ...

'No! No!' screams the D.S.

'Schlup ... schlup schlup.' An hour later they find the Buyer on the nod in the D.S.'s chair. The D.S. has disappeared without a trace.

The Judge : 'Everything indicates that you have, in some unspeakable manner uh ... assimilated the District Supervisor. Unfortunately there is no proof. I would recommend that you be confined or more accurately contained in some institution, but I know of no place suitable for a man of your caliber. I must reluctantly order your release.'

'That one should stand in an aquarium,' says the arresting officer.

The Buyer spreads terror throughout the industry. Junkies and agents disappear. Like a vampire bat he gives off a narcotic effluvium, a dank green mist that anesthizes his victioms and renders them helpless in his enveloping presence. And once he has scored he holes up for several days like a gorged boa constrictor. Finally he is caught in the act of digesting the Narcotics Commissioner and destroyed with a flame thrower -- the court of inquiry ruling that such means were justified in that the Buyer had lost his human citizenship and was, in consequence, a creature without species and a menace to the narcotics industry on all levels.

The basic nova mechanism is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts--This is done by dumping life forms with incompatible conditions of existence on the same planet--There is of course nothing "wrong" about any given life form since "wrong" only has reference to conflicts with other life forms--The point is these forms should not be on the same planet--Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the Nova Mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet that is to nova--At any given time recording devices fix the nature of absolute need and dictate the use of total weapons--Like this: Take two opposed pressure groups--Record the most violent and threatening statements of group one with regard to group two and play back to group two--Record the answer and take to back to group one--Back and forth between opposed pressure groups--This process is known as "feed back"--You can see it operating in any bar room quarrel--In any quarrel for that matter--Manipulated on a global scale feeds back nuclear war and nova--These conflicts are deliberately created and aggravated by nova criminals--The Nova Mob: "Sammy The Butcher," "Green Tony," "Iron Claws," "The Brown Artist," "Jacky Blue Note," "Limestone John," "Izzy The Push," "Hamburger Mary," "Paddy The Sting," "The Subliminal Kid," "The Blue Dinosaur," and "Mr. & Mrs. D," also known as "Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin" also known as "The Ugly Spirit" thought to be the leader of the mob--The Nova Mob--In all my experience as a police officer I have never seen such total fear and degradation on any planet--We intend to arrest these criminals and turn them over to the biological department for the indicated alterations--

The only thing that could unite the planet is a united space program… the earth becomes a space station and war is simply out, irrelevant, flatly insane in a context of research centers, spaceports, and the exhilaration of working with people you like and respect toward an agreed-upon objective, and objective from which all workers will gain. Happiness is a by-product of function. The planetary space station will give all participants an opportunity to function.

For three days Kim had camped on the mesa top, sweeping the valley with his binoculars. A cloud of dust headed south told him they figured him to ride in that direction for Mexico. He had headed north instead, into a land of sandstone formation, carved by wind and sand - a camel, a tortoise, Cambodian temples - and everywhere caves pocked into the red rock like bubbles in boiling oatmeal. Some of the caves had been lived in at one time or another: rusty tin cans, pottery shards, cartridge cases. Kim found an arrowhead six inches ling, chipped from obsidian, and a smaller arrowhead of rose-colored flint.

On top of the mesa were crumbled mounds of earth that had once been houses. Slabs of stone had been crisscrossed to form an altar. Homo sapiens was there…

Somebody made this arrowhead. It had a creator long ago. This arrowhead is the only proof of his existence. Living things can also be seen as artifacts, designed for a purpose. So perhaps the human artifact had a creator. Perhaps a stranded space traveler needed the human vessel to continue his journey, and he made it for that purpose ? he died before he could use it ? He found another escape route ? This artifact , shaped to fill a forgotten need, now has no more meaning or purpose than this arrowhead without the arrow, and the bow, the arm and the eye. Or perhaps, the human artifact was the creator's last card, played in an old game many light-years ago. Chill of empty space…

As soon as an article goes into mass production the company does not want to know about a simpler better article, especially if it is basically different. So a number of very good inventions are scrapped and forgotten. We can extrapolate that the same formula applies to living organism once they have accepted the supposition that living organisms are artifacts created for a definite purpose. There are no cosmic accidents in this universe. I mean of course the universe which we see and experience. No reason to think that this is the only universe. This universe is probably a minute fraction of the overall picture, which we will not have time to see. And if we saw it it would be, to our limited perceptions, completely incomprehensible, which is why we can't see it. (A phenomenon must be to some extent comprehensible to be perceived at all.)

So at the outset is a breakthrough that makes a new technology possible and an efflorescence of inventions good and bad. Then one of these models, and not necessarily the best one, goes into mass production and that's it. No more changes, no more basic innovations … just technical improvements. There is no basic difference between Kitty Hawk and a modern jet liner.

Now apply this concept to living organisms… Look at Homo sapiens… Before they went into mass production there must have been some good models lost in the shuffle and for what ? Look around you on the street and what do you see, a creature that functions at one-fiftieth of its potential and is only saved from well-deserved extinction by an increasingly creaky social structure… So let's go back and take a look. ..

The magical theory of history: the magical universe presupposes that nothing happens unless someone or some power, some living entity will it to happen. There are no coincidences and no accidents. A chaotic situation is always deliberately produced. Ask yourself who or what sort of creature could benefit from such a situation. Even in the crudest economic terms there are those who profit from chaos… speculators, black marketeers, ultimately warlords and bandits…

Now look at the whole of human history and pore-history from this viewpoint. Look at it spread out spatially before you…

Mechanical devices exteriorize the processes of the human nervous system.. A tape recorder externalize the vocal function, a computer externalizes one function of the human brain, the faculty that stores processes data. See human history as a vast film spread out in front of you. Take a segment of film.

The only thing not prerecorded in a prerecorded universe is the prerecordings themselves: the master film. The unforgivable sin is to tamper with the prerecordings. Exactly what Kim is doing. Acting through his representatives like Hart or Old Man Bickford, God has prerecorded Kim's death…

So our local war revolves around a basically simple situation: a conflict between those who must fo into space or die and those who will die if we go. They need us for their film. They have no other existence. And as soon as anyone goes into space the film is irreparably damaged. One hole is all it takes. With the right kind of bullet, Kim thought, with that little shiver…

Yes we can lose any number of times. They can only loose once. They say a silver bullet can kill a ghost. Garlic could kill a vampire if it was strong enough and he couldn't escape, trapped for example in an Italian social club. So what bullet, what smell can rupture or damage or immobilize or totally destroy the film ? Quite simply, any action or smell not prerecorded by the prerecorder, who stands outside the film and does not include himself as data.

Castaneda would describe it as a sudden eruption of the Nagual, the unknown and unpredictable, into the Tonal, which is the totality of prerecorded film. This violates the most basic laws of a predictable control-oriented universe. Introduce one unforeseen and therefore unforeseeable factor and the whole structure collapses like a house of cards.

William S. Burroughs

1914 - 1997

As a young man, William S. Burroughs already had a reputation as a brilliant, rather strange, and slightly sinister character. Although he'd been born into a well to do family of some distinction (his grandfather had founded the Burroughs Adding Machine company), and had been exceedingly well educated (including Harvard University), the young Bill Burroughs had tossed it all aside and moved to New York where he involved himself with the criminal underworld -- apparently just for the kicks. While most families might have kicked up a fuss and cut off his generous allowance, Bill's family seemed to accept it and just let him get on with being Bill. At some point he did manage to go to Vienna to study medicine, though only for six months -- scampering home just ahead of the Nazis.

In 1940, he spent a month in a mental hospital, after cutting off the end of his pinky finger to impress his male lover. Two years later, he was drafted to serve in World War II. But apparently the United States Army didn't want former mental patients -- let alone former gay mental patients -- fighting and dying for the Red, White, and Blue. Bill was given a civilian disability discharge and sent on his way.

Dismissed by his country, Burroughs remained in New York, once again hanging out with criminals and taking assorted dead end jobs (exterminator, factory worker, copywriter, and bartender) for kicks and experience. In addition to petty criminals his circle of friends included junkies (like Herbert Huncke), homosexuals, and young intellectuals -- including Columbia University students/dropouts Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes, Hal Chase, and Lucien Carr. Eventually Bill also made the acquaintance of benzedrine, morphine, and heroin. He was also introduced to brilliant and beautiful Joan Vollmer, for whom he made an exception to his usual homosexual preferences. Together they hosted Carr, Kerouac, Huncke, Ginsberg, and some of Bill's gay friends in frequent orgies of drugs, sex, and all night intellectual banter. (Thanks to Huncke, the group's core members were interviewed for the famed Kinsey sex reports.)

When they weren't rolling in the sheets together, the friends would entertain each other with complicated skits. Bill, for example would act out the role of a prissy English Governess. He would call out in a high falsetto, "My dear, your just in time for tea!" Or, rapping the offender on the knuckles shriek, "Don't say those dirty words in front of everybody!" He would also don a skirt and wig and play a "sinister old lesbian" contessa/art dealer with Jack Kerouac as his bumpkin shill. Another of Bill's favorite roles was Old Luke, the Southern sharecropper, rocking on the front porch with his shotgun over his knees (in real life Burroughs was obsessed with guns). It was a seemingly happy time for Bill Burroughs and company. But the fun hit a speed bump when Bill was arrested for forging prescriptions in order to get drugs.

Soon after, Joan was carted off to Bellevue as the stress of Bill's arrest and her prolonged, excessive Benzedrine use drove her over the edge into psychosis. But, as soon as Joan got out of the loony bin and Bill's legal problems were cleared up, the two picked right up with their heavy drug habits again and left New York in search of better places to score. They moved to East Texas and went in as partners in an orange farm with a friend of Bill's. Here heavily addicted Joan gave birth to Bill Burroughs Jr. (she already had a 4 year old daughter, Julie, in tow from an earlier marriage). Bill settled down to a life as a gentleman pot farmer, complete with coat and tie. Having a large piece of property meant he was free to shoot off his guns. The frequent target practice worried neighbors. Had mobsters moved in? (Bill had learned to shoot as a youngster while game hunting with family.) Before long, Herbert Huncke joined them again, cooking the steaks and fetching firewood. Together the group emptied the neighboring small towns of booze and Benzedrine inhalers.

Thus far there had been a great deal of colorful living but very little indication that Bill Burroughs would ever amount to anything. Meanwhile friends Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were zinging about the countryside, sometimes with Neal Cassady, searching for a New Vision, and a new way to write the great American poem or novel.

Still, back in '44, there had once been a brief foreshadowing of the influence Bill would some day have on scores of writers, musicians, film makers, and painters. It occurred when Ginsberg and Carr asked Burroughs to settle an argument -- an intellectual argument -- they'd been having for weeks: Did art need an audience in order to be art? Or would it still be art just the same, if it was done only for one's own satisfaction, with no one else ever viewing it. Eagerly they awaited his opinion, wondering which side he would take.

"That's the stupidest question I ever heard of," Burroughs informed them. "It depends on how you want to define the word 'art'. Words don't have a built in definition." The two were stunned. This was a perspective they hadn't considered. But Burroughs, 10 years older and already a Harvard graduate, possessed a background in literature and anthropology. He'd also studied in Chicago with Count Korzybski, the founder of the theory of general semantics. Burroughs' understanding of words, their associated meanings, and their power to influence and control the human psyche would one day become an important obsession. But first would come two critical events that would change his life forever.

First, circa 1948 the Burroughs family had left Texas for New Orleans and from there moved on to Mexico. And it was here in Mexico City in 1950, that Burroughs, at the urging of old Harvard chum Elvin Kells, began writing a book about his drug experiences. He set himself a regular daily schedule (Bill was very into routines), and took daily injections of morphine to help him along in the project. The finished the manuscript, his first major (solo) writing project, was titled Junkie. Pleased with his efforts Burroughs would also write another book based on personal experience called Queer. But although Junkie would find a publisher among the pulp paperbacks by 1953, Queer would not find a publishing company bold enough to stamp their name on it until 1986.

Then, on September 7, 1951 it was time for the next big event. Bill was to recall that he'd felt an inexplicable depression that day, and that as he was walking down the street, tears had begun streaming down his face. He was mystified, sensing only that something awful was going to happen. Later, while he and Joan were visiting friends, he guzzled down 8 or 10 drinks, just to fight back the unrelenting blues overwhelming him. Suddenly he told Joan, "It's time for our William Tell act. Joan placed a glass of water on her head. Bill took out his gun, took aim, and missed the glass, shooting Joan in the head. An hour or so later she was dead.

A devastated Bill was charged with criminal imprudence and imprisoned to await trial. But wait there's more! The lawyer that got Bill out on bail ended up killing someone himself and fled the country. As Bill's hopes of a successful trial began to dwindle, he jumped bail and left Mexico. He eventually traveled through South America bent on finding the legendary hallucinogenic concoction known as yage or ayahuasca. More powerful than LSD, it was used by native shamans for spiritual journeys and healing rituals. Exploring ever deeper into the frontiers of the mind, Burroughs would later write, "There is nothing to fear. Your ayahuasca consciousness is more valid than Normal consciousness."

Next, Burroughs travelled to North Africa, where he settled in Tangier, still reeling from Joan's death. Drugs were easy to find in Tangier, and so were attractive young men. Bill's landlady assured him, "You understand, you can be free here." He could drink, drug, suck cock, play with his Orgone Box, and shoot his guns without harassment. It was here that he again began to write, tearing through sheet after sheet, and -- finished -- flinging them wildly aside only to begin again. It was like this, in 1957 that Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg found William Buroughs -- writing madly, eating marijuana candy and boozing, and keeping to his fastidious daily routine. They were impressed by the obvious genius within his stray pages and confused piles and helped him assemble them into a manuscript. Published in 1959, it was called The Naked Lunch. It seethed with bizarre scenes, disturbing images (some of which gave Kerouac nightmares) as well as hilarious ironies.

Burroughs described his purpose in writing it as "shitting out my educated Middlewest background once and for all. It's a matter of catharsis, where I say the most horrible things I can think of. Realize that--the most horrible dirty smily awful niggardliest posture possible. . .?" This stream-of-consciousness spewing was apparently an attempt to free himself from the social and familial conditioning that controlled him, that hemmed him in, that ultimately drove him -- in desperation or rebellion -- to self-limiting and self-destructive choices (like playing William Tell with Joan).

Although Burroughs would continue to call upon this spew approach to writing throughout most of his life, he was soon to add a new method into his tool kit. It came in September of 1959, when Burroughs was living in Paris. One day close friend Brion Gysin accidentally sliced through a stack of newspapers and some back issues of Time and Life magazines. (He had been using them to buffer some cutting he was doing with a utility blade.) Gysin noticed that where the cut up strips had rearranged and overlapped, they created new texts. He realized that gluing the resultant texts onto a blank page generated a new kind of text, with strange new ideas, words images, and connections.

Burroughs became obsessed with his friend's new "cut ups" technique. He cut up his own texts and those of poet friends, revelling in the startling new meanings and insights that resulted from these chaos infused texts. The approach even prompted the reader to see words themselves -- their actual meanings -- in a fresh, creative light. He soon began to believe that "the only way to find out what people were really saying was to cut up their words and get at the meanings hidden inside" (Barry Miles).

Burroughs became convinced that everyone was so conditioned by language that even that which they believed to be straight perception (via sight, sound, touch) was in fact an illusion -- a filtered version of reality, with the filters embedded in our language. Because of this awareness, he became obsessed with issues of social control, thought control-- at a level much more subtle, and thus more pernicious, than the outward laws and regulations challenged by Ginsberg and others (as they battled "anti-obscenity" laws and other free speech issues). The kind of social control Burroughs saw wasn't even encoded in the law. It was programmed into your own brain -- through assumptions and associations -- just as it had been for Carr and Ginsberg in '44 when they were unable to see that they could choose to define (and pursue) art in any way they saw fit.

From here Burroughs moved on to applying the "cut up" technique to the spoken word, utilizing tape recorders, and then on to visual representations -- taking endless photographs of the same subject, cutting them up and collaging them together. (He also played with the idea that human speech was the result of a virus, contracted by our ancestors -- "the word virus".)

Along the way Burroughs experimented with yet another technique for going deeper into one's mental filters: Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard, creator of Scientology, was teaching that memories of events, or of words overheard while sleeping, and even of past life events were stored in a person's unconscious mental record. By bringing this information out into the open, the emotional charge on this baggage could be "cleared". What so impressed Burroughs was the effectiveness of the Scientology techniques. He once wrote that one could accomplish more with 10 hours of Scientology techniques than with 10 years of psychotherapy. He felt he accomplished a great deal of self healing through applying their methods, and for a time he was obsessed with "audits" and "E-meters".

But as he penetrated more deeply into the church he discovered that the visionary Hubbard was also an eccentric fascist and that his "church" used appallingly effective mind control techniques to assure a steady supply of loyalty, secrecy, and cash. Burroughs found it sickening and ironic that a tool effective for setting people free was being used to enslave them in other ways. He broke with Scientology and went on to blab all that he knew. (Note that a man with fewer guns might not have been so brave! Scientology had a strong policy of punishing those who broke the silence or pissed them off.)

Although Burroughs continued to look for other ways to explore the mind and set it free from conditioned controls (with drugs, with writing, and with the Dream Machine developed by Brion Gysin), he was also beginning to explore his role as underground celebrity. Meeting new people led to new ways to branch out and express himself. He began giving readings of his work. He also continued to play, obsessively, with tape recordings -- of himself and of others. He even got in on some experimental film projects -- both documentary and short features. One such project was Chappaqua in 1966. Directed by Conrad Rooks, it features Burroughs (as "Opium Jones"), along with poet Allen Ginsberg, and musician Ravi Shankar. Much later there was considerable collaboration with film director Gus van Sant, Jr: Discipline of D.E. , Thanksgiving Prayer, Drugstore Cowboy,and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Burroughs even had a cameo role in the cult film Twister (not to be confused with the movie about tornado chasers).

Musicians were discovering Burroughs too. Even as Beat/Hippie poet Allen Ginsberg was becoming less well known among young people (though still held in high regard by some, such as The Clash, into the '80s) and Jack Kerouac was being relegated to college literature classes, Burroughs was becoming a major new influence on the artistic edge. His words, his face, and his voice were finding their way into albums and music videos. He collaborated with a diversity of edgey groups including Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Laurie Anderson, and the Disposable Heroes.

None of this seemed to slow down his writing. After Junkie and Naked Lunch he went on to publish:

Then,after the death of long time painter friend, Brion Gysin, Burroughs began to venture further into visual art. No longer limiting himself to photo montage, he began to paint as well (something he refused to do while Gysin was alive).

One day, after blasting at some plywood with his shotgun, he noticed how intricate and beautiful the resultant designs were -- it was like looking into clouds or abstract art. All sorts of mentally teasing images suggested themselves. Thus began his shotgun art phase. He blasted cans of paint onto plywood and then detailed the splatters. Burroughs continued to develop and expand upon a host of other interests as well, including:

• Viennese waltzes
• Mayan codices
• Surrealism
• Egyptian burial rituals
• Space Travel
• Cats
• Popular fiction, especially Frederick Forsyth and Robin Cook
• Daily routines
• Doing ordinary everyday things with great care and attention to detail.

Obviously, William Burroughs was not a man to be easily pigeon-holed. As a result, he presents the inspiring image of a man who managed to live life on his own terms -- a revolutionary artist, whose life demonstrates how the expression of a unique inner vision requires integrity, audacity, tenacity, and a complete disregard for the conditioned expectations of self and society. Such was Burroughs' emphasis on overcoming "control" that for some he has become a symbol of anti-authoritarianism, inspiring them to jeer at the establishment and the powers that be, and to find ways to get around them. For some of these he even appears to represent a kind of alternative power and machismo -- the pale, effete misfit powered by technological gizmos (guns, dream machines, tape recorders...computers) and by artistic but violent words and images.

Significantly, Burroughs himself sought freedom, and shunned conflict. His travels always took him in search of places where the police, neighbors, landlords turned a blind eye, left him alone, minded their own business. When his life or his work attracted negative official attention he was invariably polite and cooperative. The prototypical slacker(Burroughs was 40 or 50 old years old before it to become obvious he was doing anything more significant that screwing off), William Burroughs just wanted to be left alone to do his own thing without a lot of hassles.

The final irony is that the man so vividly remembered by the public for a truly disturbing body of work, is invariably recalled by those who knew him as kind, gracious, and impeccably well-mannered. But though the contrast may seem stark, it is worth remembering that Burroughs identified the real struggle in life, the real conflict for control, as being within the self. (Hence his obsession with daily routines and attention to detail.) Rather than supress the darkness in his soul, he vented it, through writing. Rather than repress and deny his unconventional desires, he indulged them within measure (in later life). In short, he did not seek, as people often do, to be someone else. But he sought instead to free himself from beliefs which limit, control, and imprison the invidual in mediocrity and dull repetition.

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