The debut of the "animated" text: Lesson 4

Lesson 4. The Cut-up and the Free Word


A. Brion Gysin: Cut Up artist MK 2

1.  Some key notions:

#a. "A consumate innovator, Gysin altered the cut-up technique to produce what he called permutation poems in which a single phrase was repeated several times, with the words rearranged in a different order with each reiteration. Together with Burroughs they thought the spell of language could be broken by slicing, dicing and splicing" (ttps://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/01/brion-gysin-1911916-13786-poets-are.html).

From http://quoteaddicts.com

The American writer and artist William S. Burroughs, in an article called "The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin," says that

   "All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? Use of scissors renders the process explicit and subject to extension and variation. Clear classical prose can be composed entirely of rearranged cut-ups. Cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation. Images shift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound sound to kinesthetic" (From http://www.ubu.com/papers/burroughs_gysin.html. My emphasis).

You can read more about Brion Gysin at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brion_Gysin

2. Questions to think about:

a. Why do we need to "liberate the words"? What's "imprisoning" them anyway? Do you feel that the words you yourself use everyday are not "free"?

b. How is it that doing Cut-ups seems to bring in the correlative ideas of the "aleatory" and "permutation"? Did you ''experience'' these elements when you were making your "own" Cut-up?

B. No Poets Don't Own Words

From https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/01/brion-gysin-1911916-13786-poets-are.html

“No Poets Don’t Own Words” (1960), performed by Gysin on his record Orgy Boys (1982), was one of several permutated phrases that reinforced the idea of freeing language from individual control, one of the dominant concerns he shared with Burroughs" (From https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1612393. My italics.)

Below is a longer "version" of the same piece:

From http://imgur.com/gallery/zkxnP

C. Guide questions:

1. What does it mean that poets (and writers and speakers) don't own the words that they use?

2. Does this mean that copyrights are wrong? What happens when words become the property of people?

3. Is there a chance that we can ever be original when we use language or whenever we speak?

4. What is the function of permuting the word combinations through aleatory mechanisms? How does this relate to the claim above of William S. Burroughs that "All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard"?

D. Project Output: Permutation Cut-up Notebook

With the advance in algorithms, it has become easy--and mainstream!--to do what Gysin did during his time. Although we still subsume the "word processing" he introduced as a kind of amusement to pass the time. It doesn't sound so radical anymore: until you pass them as your final papers or exam answers, of course! (Imagine the permuted grade you will get!)

This just shows you how radical the idea still is, that it is either treated as pure amusement or kept within the realm of "literature." However, it would be simplistic to reverse the situation because if we all talked like Gysin's permutations, the new radical may become--guess what--the same old Traditional-Grammatically-Correct Sentences-We-All-Love, sincerely.

Wait, is that right? Didn't Burroughs already say that All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard ? It seems we haven't really maximized the full impact of what he said. It means we are all Cut-up artists already since the time we were born!

So where is the radicality, where is the difference?

While thinking of an answer, head to Text Mechanic™ – Text Manipulation Tools at http://textmechanic.com/ and compose your own version of Gysin's permutational Cut-up. It's up to you to supply the elements. It can be a refrain from a song, a sonnet by Shakespeare, a news paragraph, a weight loss mantra, or a magic spell you heard ''works'' on crushes.

So yes, is there really any difference between grammatical and non-grammatical Cut-ups? Write your opinion at the back of your one-page chef-d'œuvre.