Ahhhhhhh, yeeaahh . . .Dig the *B* with a capital fedoraGrout all around, don't call I can do it myselfHe could write like nobodyIs why LitKicks first came to me in my sleepNorthern Southern + all the restBestTesthis Vest and Fedora hat, I guess.I dig Burroughs with a capital D,See?Don't grout the plummer I can caulk the linesIs why I caught the novalark expressA couple espresso guests,jests,*B* is one of the best.thanks, eli. wsb rules.trove.

analysis of a cut-upThanks, Eli -- it might not hurt to add the context that this is obviously a "cut-up". I believe Burroughs would literally cut out sample texts from newspapers, books and magazines and combine them with snatches of overheard conversation or his own thoughts to produce texts loaded with immense subconscious meaning. Successful? Let's examine a few phrases ..."theres a little boy andy warhol or gerry malanger thats been reproduced in a lot of books hasnt it he has a plate camera are they going to bepublished in vogue part of the citys friday child loving tuesday for that matter oh really st louis encephilitis of birth and nickname because the swiss are finding them so convenient"I guess this represents the anxiety of an insecure St. Louis-born experimental writer (Burroughs himself, apparently feeling encephilitic) hanging out in a big city with stylish friends like Andy Warhol and Gerald Malagna whose artwork routinely gets published in hip magazines like Vogue. Perhaps Burroughs himself is the "friday child loving tuesday", which a later mention suggests refers not to the day of the week but the then-popular actress Tuesday Weld, which is ironic because Burroughs was gay and unlikely to care much about Tuesday Weld. Tuesday Weld shows up in a few different places here, and later we see "fridays child" loving a registered stripper nicknamed Conny, whereas elsewhere the famous fan dancer from the 1930's named Sally Rand echoes this mysterious stripper, perhaps in the spelling of the nickname as "conny" when a mysterious strippers might be nicknamed "connie" but is unlikely to be nicknamed "conny" since that's not actually a nickname. There's a lot about astronauts (Alan Be must be Alan B. Shepherd) and a three-act play that apparently made everybody sick (I've seen a few plays like that). Okay, I admit it, I'm not sure what the hell this all means. I tried.

not, bad, Levi. not bad.

cut-upsto be honest, i think cut-ups are bad. sure, why not take a collection of text and then toss it into a pile, and then, we can claim the accident is a work of art. sure.the last time i played scrabble, my tray of letters was worth a load of money, if i said so. who wants to argue with me? i call it art, so you have nothing.exactly.

throw it all aboutBurroughs, practiced an experimental method. ie, "cut-ups"the odd thing about "experimental"is that it reveals odd connections.what does this tell us about thisthing we call "language"?it's obvious that writers and poetsare on to something, but in consideration, we are also in the path of those whom would use language to inhibit our imaginations, so writers andpoets are in between a rock anda hard place, or perhaps we are between a rose and a rose,at anyrate,it would be benefical, torealize that the visionary writersand poets, are usually seeing stuffthat, if you look closely, appearsto be coming back to us from the future, even if we are certainly reading it in some now.Burroughs did this in spades in my observation. And even if he didnot plan this, if has that sense, that texture,that weird newspaperphantom feeling like reading headlines at the bottom of a crystalball, flashing in some peculier sequence that points us to that rare connection. So doing "cut ups" is not as simple as it seems, perhaps, and few do so even less.or practicing automatic writing, "pure psychic automatism", as Andre'Breton called it. Yet we all are invited to do it.I recall a poet/writer i once knewbriefly say to me on the streets of San Francisco one day that he couldwrite like a "surrealist", as all he needed would be to have a dictionary and pick words at random and string them together. I don't know how serious he really was that day with that remark, but at the same time i thought it was funny.Try it!

But the thing about cut-ups is, maybe one in a hundred will turn out to be something special. That ratio, one out of a hundred, is purely arbitrary. It may be more, it may be less. It's like sampling musical sounds. There is a skill to it. I'll have to dig up some good ones to show you what I mean. Of course, you still may not agree. A lot of people don't like them.

i think the value of cut-ups is subjective and depends on what the individual considers art. i can see your point, bill, and from time to time, i've seen nonsensical collections of words fit together to create an altogether pleasing or interesting idea/image/sound. the reason for my comment is that the thing i value most in art is its effectiveness in reflecting the skill and the humanity of the artist. to me, a cut-up can't do that in any form or fashion. then again, if you like to take the work as an entity in and of itself, cut-ups can yield some enjoyable things.again, i think it's just a matter of viewpoint.and hello, bill. long time no see.

I found cutups to be one way to force or to allow your self a look at some ideas, etc. in a different way. It also allows you to conciously realize connections. The presumption that Burroughs randomly shot paint at boards, left the results and called it art of was not what happened when I was present. I remember, Burroughs having shot a board, he sat there and showed me images in the board and in the destroyed or opened portals that he then "converted" into stories or themes. He then added elements or not. But later I would see some of the ideas redone in another piece of art or writing. Patricia

I like what you both have written here about Burroughs and about the cut-up technique.Here are some random thoughts I would like to add. Most people agree that the more pictures a photographer takes, the more chance they have of getting one really good shot. That isn't to say that all successful photographers are just lucky and waste hundreds of rolls of film. One likes to believe that practice and repetition builds skill. Skill, in turn, helps one realize their intuitive vision . I see cut-up writing the same way. I prefer a cut-up piece that has some thought behind it. Some people would no doubt disagree with me, saying, "First thought, best thought". And sometimes it is. That's why it's a combination of chance and skill.To some extent, all writing is a cut-up. Think about the average western story. Nobody cries "plagiarism" if a western includes a saloon, a shootout, a posse on horseback, and an outlaw taking to the mountains. You can roll those clich

hi, ellipsis! it's good to hear from you, too. when are you coming back to jacksonville? i always enjoy discussing these things with you, agree or disagree.i added some more thoughts to the subject of cut-up writing in my reply to i'mhep, down on this same thread, in case you are interested.

Still more on cut-upsI said in a previous post that the song Modern Love by Bowie sounds to me like cut-up writing. I still think it is, but the two Bowie albums cited most often as Burroughs-influence are Heroes and Low (collaborations with Brian Eno). The thing is, when I perused all the lyrics from those two CD's, none of them seemed overtly cut-up. This has me thinking now that maybe a successful cut-up is one that doesn't sound cut-up.Does anyone have any thoughts on that?