Eric C. Shoaf Richard Aaron and William Burroughs arriving in Geneva for the Colloque de Tanger, 1975. Photo by Lilia Aaron What can you tell us about your early years? Born in 1946 in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1957 lived a year in a semi palace on the Bosphorus in Istinye. Here I was first…
Tag: Brion Gysin
CUT-UPS@60
London / Paris, September 2020 Registration now open for Paris and London 2020 will be the 60th anniversary of the first publications using the cut-up methods developed by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin at the Beat Hotel in Paris. To mark this landmark in cultural history, we are organising CUT-UPS@60, an international Cut-Up Conference in…
Eating the Goat
Excerpt from Dance with the Devil: The Rolling Stones and Their Times, 1984 by Stanley Booth In the early evening of the first day of spring 1970, I was at a flat in Duke Street St. James’s talking with Brion Gysin, who was in London visiting friends. Gysin had been telling me about taking Brian…
Index to the Contents of C: A Journal of Poetry
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting C: A Journal of Poetry No. 1 (May 1963) Cover Page: A title page and table of contents [i] Endless Resoundings Fill the RCMM — Dick Gallup [1] Ember Grease — Dick Gallup [2] It’s Everywhere, Like So Much Glue — Dick Gallup…
Terry Wilson: Cutting Up for Real
The Writing of Perilous Passage Terry Wilson in Conversation with Ian MacFadyen As his book Perilous Passage is published by Synergetic Press, Terry Wilson talks with Ian MacFadyen about the 15 years he spent creating this unique work which embodies and develops the radical Third Mind techniques of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Wilson was…
Burroughs-Gysin Excursus
Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the Institut D’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne / Rhone-Alpes. 16 October — 28 November 2010. by Ian MacFadyen Gysin Homage One | Burroughs-Gysin Excursus | Gysin Homage Two Burroughs-Gysin Excursus: Magic Amulet / Silence to Say Goodbye, Brion Gysin / Hassan I Sabbah / Skywriting, I Give You — You Give Me…
A Trip from Here to There
Brion Gysin: Dream Machine at the Institut D’Art Contemporain Villeurbanne / Rhone-Alpes. 16 October — 28 November 2010. by Ian MacFadyen “Everybody here comes from somewhere.” — Michael Stipe “Everything was alive like me on this earth, everything was breathing.” — Brion Gysin Gysin Homage One | Burroughs-Gysin Excursus | Gysin Homage Two Gysin Homage…
William S. Burroughs, Charles Gatewood, and Sidetripping
by Charles Gatewood Adapted from Dirty Old Man, a Memoir In January 1972, Rolling Stone magazine sent Robert Palmer (writer) and yours truly (photographer) from New York to London to do a feature story on William S. Burroughs. The iconic Beat writer greeted us warmly, and showed us into his modest two-room flat on Duke…
Interview with Graham Masterton on William S. Burroughs
By Dave Teeuwen Graham Masterton is the amazingly prolific author of over a hundred horror and thriller novels, as well as self-help / how-to guides about sex. He has been publishing steadily since the mid-1970s. Earlier in his career, however, he was the editor for Mayfair magazine and later the editor of Penthouse and Penthouse…
Timothy Leary on William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Bou Saada
Timothy Leary interview, Pataphysics, October 17, 1989 From INTO-GAL, 2006, Editors: Leo Edelstein, Judith Elliston We heard this tape of you with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Robert Anton Wilson. Oh yeah, that was a recording from the Nova Convention. I’m a great admirer of William Burroughs, who’s one of my real heroes. When did…
Playing with Fire: The Last Painting of Brion Gysin
Brion Gysin: Calligraffiti of Fire by Ian MacFadyen The exhibition of Brion Gysin’s Calligraffiti of Fire at the October Gallery in London is a major event. This is the first time the artist’s legendary final work, executed in 1985, has been shown in Britain and the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to experience the painting…
FLiCKeR DVD Review
Review by Graham Rae FLicKeR, Written and Directed by Nik Sheehan (2008, 75 Minutes, Not Rated), Alive Mind Media “We must storm the citadels of enlightenment. The means are at hand.” — William S. Burroughs in a letter to Brion Gysin. Dreams. Let’s face it, nobody truly fully knows what they really are. We spend…
The Exterminator
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Published by Auerhahn Press in 1960, The Exterminator is one of the forgotten texts of Burroughs’ bibliography. Roughly 1000 copies were printed in the first edition, and I would gather that few of even the most dedicated Burroughs fans have ever read it….
The Third Mind Exhibit
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting RealityStudio bills itself as a digital community, a gathering place for fans, friends, collectors, and scholars of William Burroughs. In recent weeks, we have received some emails that testify to the international nature of that community as well as to the potential of…
The Third Mind
New York: Viking 1978, first U.S. printing, hardbound in dust jacket. First published as Oeuvre Croisée in French (Paris: Flammarion 1976). A collaboration between Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Burroughs, known to have worked more productively in collaboration with others, wrote that the title stemmed from Think and Grow Rich, a twentieth-century guide to salesmanship by…
Brion Gysin Let the Mice In
[M&M A22] West Glover, VT: Something Else Press 1973. A curious collaboration in which the authorship is attributed to Gysin with “texts by William Burroughs & Ian Sommerville, edited by Jan Herman” according to jacket copy. One of 500 copies hardbound in dust jacket. Technically this should probably be a B item because of Burroughs’…
Electronic Revolution
[M&M A21] Cambridge: Blackmoor Head Press 1971, Limited signed / numbered edition of 50 copies printed on special paper and issued in a cardboard case. Drawings by Brion Gysin. Bilingual French and English text of a two-part 52-page essay on media and manipulation, about equal parts paranoia and genius, as much of Burroughs’ work tended…
Minutes to Go
[M&M A3] Paris: Two Cities Editions 1960, bound in wraps, one of 1,000 copies. Maynard & Miles A3a. A collaborative effort between Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, and Gregory Corso, and the first of the “cut-up” publications. There was also a limited edition of 10 copies (only five of which were for sale) each signed…
Roundup at the O.P. Corral
Thoughts on Brion Gysin and Wyndham Lewis By Jan Herman I wrote the following article in the summer of 1971. I’m tempted to rewrite it, mainly to improve the prose and eliminate the foolishness. Despite its deficiencies, I offer it here with minor corrections for two reasons though it may be no more than a…
Interview with John Geiger
Author of Books on Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine John Geiger is the author of four books. His first two concerned Arctic exploration. His next two, Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and The Dream Machine and Nothing Is True – Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, concerned…