From the Disappearance Gysin is NOT Dead
A Review of Who Runs May Read by Brion Gysin
by Robert Lort
Who runs may read but few run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!-- Brion Gysin
The publication of Who Runs May Read goes a long way in bringing to light the oft neglected legacy and influence of Brion Gysin to somewhat overdue attention. Gysin's pivotal role as the secret alchemist of the beat underground, the inventor of the cut-up and the dreamachine, as a sound poet and intuitive visual genius can finally be given due recognition.
Published by Inkblot/Xochi (Xochi is a publisher based in Brisbane, Australia), Who Runs May Read features an introduction by German writer, Jürgen Ploog, renowned for his comprehensive interview with William Burroughs in Klaus Maeck's Commissioner of Sewers. Two interviews with Brion Gysin are also included, a mail interview from July 1985 and another in Paris 1984, along with several texts by Brion Gysin. The interviews cover a diverse range of topics: musical collaborations, his expulsion from the Surrealists in 1935, dreamachines, Jajouka music, modern art, sexuality, Gysin's film script for Naked Lunch and endeavours to resolve some questions left unanswered from Terry Wilson's Here To Go. This second edition also sees the addition of Gysin's "Hashish Fudge Recipe," first published in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (1954).
If Burroughs was the El Hombre Invisible what does that make Brion Gysin? Gysin is a figure that is becoming imperceptible, hence his oft repeated proclamations, "I am HERE", "Here to go!" Forever hidden in the looming shadow of William Burroughs, Gysin was the nomad, mystic and bohemian that taught all the rest. Gysin always had an elusive, unresolved character, that fled across the borders, that always escaped the complete explanation. The silent script of Brion Gysin, the words dryly stammered are left furtively indeterminate and shrouded in obscurity. Sadly Brion Gysin was to depart from this world in 1986, suffering from emphysema and lung cancer.
The edition includes "No Name Hotel", the original outline for The Last Museum sent to the publisher Doubleday, but which was subsequently reworked over a period of 18 years. In the final version of The Last Museum the infamous Beat Hotel in Paris at 9, rue Git-le-Coeur, is transformed into the Bardo stages of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (also known as the Bardo Thodol) as the central character progresses from room to room, whilst the rooms are relocated to a Museum in California. One negotiates the various stages of the Bardo through hearing, reflecting and seeing in the beyond death plane. The Beat Hotel itself was located in the Quartier latin of Paris, a melange of narrow streets filled with tiny cafés, galleries, bookshops and emporiums of bric-a-brac, frequented by an equal melange of bohemians, students, artists and bums (clochards). Figuratively "Git-le-Coeur" means, "here lies the heart" which it certainly did for the Beat writers, Burroughs, Gysin, Ginsberg and Corso that stayed there, on and off, from 1957 to 1963. It was a squalid and dirty, class 13 hotel where Madame Rachou was the exceedingly tolerant proprietor. The hotel was outfitted with the barest of plumbing, electrical and toilet facilities and the thinnest of walls. "No Name Hotel" is an account of Lisa Dabbit de Rancune's plans to bug all 45 rooms of the Beat Hotel with 45 tape recorders, running 24 hours, in an effort to uncover the creative principals of ferment. Outside the riots of May '68 rumble and ring-out over the police barricades, over-turned cars and flying tear gas canisters.
This second edition has been expanded to include Gysin's "Moroccan Mishaps with The Strolling Ruins," which originally appeared in The Rolling Stones: The First Twenty Years edited by David Dalton. This is a description of the Rolling Stones escapade, visiting Brion Gysin in Tangier in 1968, where the band was introduced to The Master Musicians of Jajouka. Brion, along with Paul Bowles, had been familiar with the trance inspiring tribal music of Jajouka since 1950. The ancient sounds of Jajouka music arose from a village in the foothills of the Rif Mountains near Morocco. The music's frenzied, primal and rhythmic energy points to the roots of modern acid house music and performances can last for days without cessation. Rolling Stones Records went on to release Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka in 1971. The Jajouka Musicians became the resident musicians at Gysin's 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier, which Burroughs frequented and where the Jajouka musicians played every night. As described in the book, the action starts when, "Brian and I drop acid."
William Burroughs and Brion Gysin outside the Beat Hotel
The multi-faceted talents of Brion Gysin also reveal him to be one of the pioneers of sound poetry. Gysin first introduced William Burroughs to the tape recorder and soon Burroughs was bashing it out on cheap Japanese plastic tape recorders. Gysin saw immediate application of his permutation poems to sound. "I Am That I Am" (1972) repetitively permutes, "am I that I am, that I am am I..." reaching a hysterical high pitched Donald Duck squeal towards the end. "Junk Is No Good Baby" (1979) from the Nova Convention, is a similar permutation poem, but softer intonation, "no good is baby junk, is good no baby junk..." developing endless different nuances with each permutation. Both of these poems were originally released by Giorno Poetry Systems. Gysin's poetry performance and sound works, such as "Pistol Poem" (1960) also exerted an influence on the minimalist composers. Recently unearthed is also a musique concréte recording by Gysin, Bruits du Beaubourg, made from sound recordings in 1977 of the builder's yard of the Beaubourg
Brion Gysin's calligraphy paintings are also featured throughout the edition. His calligraphy technique consisted of writing Japanese calligraphy from top to bottom of the page and then turning the page to write Arabic calligraphy from right to left over the top. Gysin became familiar with Japanese calligraphy while in the Canadian army and was immersed in Arabic calligraphy while living in Tangier. Both of Gysin's techniques of permutations and calligraphy grids were derived from his knowledge of Kabbalistic practices. Both forms, like the cut-up technique, become systems of undoing the linear composition of language and allowing the multiple machine-like extensibility of the work, turn the page and repeat the procedure. The Kabbalistic grid and cut-ups comprise a machine-drawing process, which is set against the order-word (Deleuze/Guattari), the replicating language-virus that makes up the pre-recorded universe. The use of calligraphy also adjoins to the most ancient origins of the word, prior to the bifurcation into writing and painting, delving into the fertile space between image and text. For Gysin his calligraphy also has a incantatory function of magic spells and amulets, similar to the "gris-gris" of Antonin Artaud. Gysin's experiments with the calligraphy grid lead right into strips of film side by side and to the obvious extension into film. Gysin later made several films collaborating with Burroughs and Antony Balch, such as the Cut-Ups, Towers Open Fire and Ghosts at No. 9, Paris.
The inclusion of, "A Quick Trip to Alamut, The Celebrated Castle of the Hash-Head Assassins" by Gysin is a sort of "fear and loathing in Alamut," which ends in a breathtaking account of Gysin's own ascent into the Alborz (otherwise known as Elburz) Mountains of Persia, modern day Iran, to the ruins of Hassan-i Sabbah's fortified hide-out. Hassan-i Sabbah (or Hasan bin Sabah) was the infamous leader of a feared and mythical empire of assassins secluded away in an impregnable mountain fortress which prevailed from 1090 AD to 1256 AD. According to legend, the assassins were prepared by giving them mahjoun, a hashish sweet, and when they awoke they found themselves in a secret garden of delights, where they were told they were in heaven, and that they could return if they were killed, leading to their willingness to die in carrying out his orders. The empire operated along the lines of secrecy, infiltrating insidiously into distant political opponents and ambushing them when they least expected. For its time, the empire used highly modern mechanism of control and propaganda tactics, while maintaining a fierce autonomy. Regarded as a heretical Islamic sect, they denied the supremacy of human rationalism and developed theological and philosophical ideas which sought initiates to abandon existing cultural programming. "The heart of the Isma'ili haqa'iq, which consists in their denial of rationalism and forms the basis of their 'heresy', lies in the denial that God is the first cause. For them, the first cause is the Order or Word of God." (Edward Burman, The Assassins - Holy Killers of Islam). Their radical oppositional tactics have been taken up by anarchist writers, such as Hakim Bey, particularly for Alamut's situation as a Temporary Autonomous Zone (just as Tangier during the 1940/50's was a semi-lawless 'International Zone' or 'Interzone' as in the books).
Also recently published by Xochi is William Burroughs' Unforgettable Characters: Lola La Chatat & Bernabe Jurado, which explores the relationship between Burroughs and the notorious drug trafficker Lola la Chata (who appears as "Lupita" in The Junky) and Bernab�Jurado, the Mexican lawyer who got Burroughs out of jail when he shot his wife at a party in Mexico 1951, doing the old William Tell trick.
Who Runs May Read is sure to become a much sort-after item. It is currently distributed in USA and Europe by Aftermath Books and in Australia, Oceania and Africa by Xochi.
Copyright © 2002 Robert Lort. All rights reserved
Published by Azimute
www.azimute.org
