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The Third Mind
Burroughs and Gysin explore, document, and illustrate their "cut-up" method in a series of dazzling and often dizzying collaborations.
194 pages
First published January 1, 1978
23 people are currently reading
1507 people want to read
About the author
William S. Burroughs
449 books7,009 followersWilliam Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 16, 2025
Lately, I have been rereading a lot of industrial music culture literature that I was too dopey to understand when I was a young rivethead. I've come to realize that either I am still dopey or some of these beliefs and philosophies that dominanted the intellectual lives of so many industrial artists are a mythology born from schizotypal magical thinking and drug abuse. But even if the latter is the case, it is a mythology that actually merits some further consideration and respect.
"The Third Mind" is a crucial text in understanding the kind of thinking that made industrial music what it was in the Seventies and Eighties, and what it still is today. The title has several meanings, one of which I will get to later. For now, it refers to the idea that when two people work together harmoniously, a third mind manifests. In this case, the two collaborators are William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Most Americans probably have at least heard of Burroughs as one of the Beat poets and the author of "Naked Lunch". Gysin was an artist, originally of the Surrealist school, who hung out with the likes of Dalí, Picasso, and Duchamp as a teenager in the Thirties. By the Fifties, he had been running a restaurant in Tangiers, and one of his frequent customers was Burroughs, and they became good friends. Gysin had to move back to Paris after he lost his restaurant (which he believed was due to the influence of malicious black magic), and stayed in a notorious flophouse that became later known as the Beat hotel.
There, he had been using newspapers to pad his tabletop so he could cut out pictures for collages without damaging his desk. Obviously, the newspapers ended up getting sliced to shreds. But he started playing with the cut-up text, probably after enough hashish to kill Cheech AND Chong, and realized you could make fairly comprehensible poetry using new juxtapositions of previously printed phrases. He shared his findings with his buddy Burroughs, and he loved the idea. For the rest of his life, Burroughs advocated for the "cut-up" technique in art and writing, developing more sophisticated and sometimes incomprehensible justifications for the practice, including magical divination.
With the advent of affordable magnetic tape technology, households often had tape recorders as well as televisions, and so Burroughs applied the idea to sound as well. This inspired a new generation of artists like Genesis P-Orridge, who studied under Burroughs, to use samples of recordings in the construction of musical soundscapes. Though this was not entirely new, having been done in experimental forms like musique concrète, the additional availability of cheap synths, effects pedals, electronic noise makers, and multi-track recording technology led to a unique worldwide phenomena of DIY electroacoustic music that we now know as the Industrial genre of music.
"The Third Mind" is a collection of material from Burroughs and Gysin that attempts to demonstrate the cut-up technique. It includes Gysin's first cut-ups and his 1960 poem "Minutes to Go", entirely constructed from word collage. Burroughs has several articles explaining the technique and provides several examples of his own cut-ups.
The book also opens with an interview with Burroughs, which is quite interesting, because the interviewer doesn't throw softballs. He challenges Burroughs as to why any writer worth their salt would take the time to cut and paste the words of others rather than just writing something themselves. Burroughs, however, is in top form, and explains rather compellingly that all forms of writing are essentially cut-ups. In fact, the human mind operates in terms of cut-ups.
As a psychiatrist, I do believe Burroughs is correct. We have come to understand recall memory as largely a confabulation of cut-up snippets of images that the brain strings together into narrative form, with the gaps filled in, which makes eye-witness testimony not very reliable. Writing and even speaking works much the same way. We string together snippets of phrases we heard someone else say or that we read previously, which is why idioms and slang take on a life of their own.
Even our attention to tasks is cut up, and for those of us with ADHD, even more so. While writing this review, I am remembering snippets of the book, not the entire book. I occasionally look out the window and watch the squirrels gathering acorns for the winter. I note that the weather is sunny today and that it might be a good time to go hiking, but then remember other things I really should do today, so I'd better finish this review. That's cut-up.
Where things get kind of wacky is that Burroughs came to believe using cut-ups could tap into something else. This is where the title "The Third Mind" takes on a deeper meaning.
Remember those little toys that looked like an Eight-ball that you can still get at Spencer's and novelty shops today? You ask a question, shake it, and a floating die with stamped phrases presses one of its facets to the clear portal and gives you an answer. Well, that's a form of scrying. It's also a cut-up. Sometimes the little phrase could seem remarkably relevant to the question or intention of the user.
"Will Billy marry me?"
"Not a chance."
Burroughs thought that, through his cutting and pasting of words, the new text was speaking directly to him, even referencing something that he just so happened to be thinking about at the time. It was as if a "third mind" had manifested between the collaboration of Burroughs' intentional manipulation of someone else's words.
Now, to me, this seems like a classic example of ideas of reference, a symptom of psychosis. But has this kind of thing happened to you before? Little happy accidents that could be coincidence or part of some esoteric magic?
Something like this happened to me just this week. I collect rare industrial music cassettes, and was listening to one I had never heard before, an untitled split album on C-40 by Unit 6 and SMtv. However, I also have an LP by Z'EV entitled "My Favorite Things", which I happened to glimpse on my record shelf as I was putting in the cassette on my stereo. I was reminded that I hadn't heard the John Coltrane album of the same name in decades, and as I hit play on the cassette, I was thinking I really should revisit Coltrane's "My Favorite Things". When I got to the second track by Unit 6, "Storms over Europe", I thought my brain had finally snapped, that I was having vivid hallucinations of something that had crossed my mind, because here was Coltrane blowing "My Favorite Things". But my sanity was still more or less intact, as it was just a "cut-up" sample used in the noise composition.
Whether you believe in the magical power of cut-ups or just appreciate the ingenuity of Burroughs' application of the technique in his novels like the Nova Trilogy, this will give you some interesting insight into his thought. And as I already stated, fans of industrial music will also enjoy reading about the very earliest ideas that inspired one of their favorite musical forms.
SCORE: 4 cut-ups out of 5
"The Third Mind" is a crucial text in understanding the kind of thinking that made industrial music what it was in the Seventies and Eighties, and what it still is today. The title has several meanings, one of which I will get to later. For now, it refers to the idea that when two people work together harmoniously, a third mind manifests. In this case, the two collaborators are William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Most Americans probably have at least heard of Burroughs as one of the Beat poets and the author of "Naked Lunch". Gysin was an artist, originally of the Surrealist school, who hung out with the likes of Dalí, Picasso, and Duchamp as a teenager in the Thirties. By the Fifties, he had been running a restaurant in Tangiers, and one of his frequent customers was Burroughs, and they became good friends. Gysin had to move back to Paris after he lost his restaurant (which he believed was due to the influence of malicious black magic), and stayed in a notorious flophouse that became later known as the Beat hotel.
There, he had been using newspapers to pad his tabletop so he could cut out pictures for collages without damaging his desk. Obviously, the newspapers ended up getting sliced to shreds. But he started playing with the cut-up text, probably after enough hashish to kill Cheech AND Chong, and realized you could make fairly comprehensible poetry using new juxtapositions of previously printed phrases. He shared his findings with his buddy Burroughs, and he loved the idea. For the rest of his life, Burroughs advocated for the "cut-up" technique in art and writing, developing more sophisticated and sometimes incomprehensible justifications for the practice, including magical divination.
With the advent of affordable magnetic tape technology, households often had tape recorders as well as televisions, and so Burroughs applied the idea to sound as well. This inspired a new generation of artists like Genesis P-Orridge, who studied under Burroughs, to use samples of recordings in the construction of musical soundscapes. Though this was not entirely new, having been done in experimental forms like musique concrète, the additional availability of cheap synths, effects pedals, electronic noise makers, and multi-track recording technology led to a unique worldwide phenomena of DIY electroacoustic music that we now know as the Industrial genre of music.
"The Third Mind" is a collection of material from Burroughs and Gysin that attempts to demonstrate the cut-up technique. It includes Gysin's first cut-ups and his 1960 poem "Minutes to Go", entirely constructed from word collage. Burroughs has several articles explaining the technique and provides several examples of his own cut-ups.
The book also opens with an interview with Burroughs, which is quite interesting, because the interviewer doesn't throw softballs. He challenges Burroughs as to why any writer worth their salt would take the time to cut and paste the words of others rather than just writing something themselves. Burroughs, however, is in top form, and explains rather compellingly that all forms of writing are essentially cut-ups. In fact, the human mind operates in terms of cut-ups.
As a psychiatrist, I do believe Burroughs is correct. We have come to understand recall memory as largely a confabulation of cut-up snippets of images that the brain strings together into narrative form, with the gaps filled in, which makes eye-witness testimony not very reliable. Writing and even speaking works much the same way. We string together snippets of phrases we heard someone else say or that we read previously, which is why idioms and slang take on a life of their own.
Even our attention to tasks is cut up, and for those of us with ADHD, even more so. While writing this review, I am remembering snippets of the book, not the entire book. I occasionally look out the window and watch the squirrels gathering acorns for the winter. I note that the weather is sunny today and that it might be a good time to go hiking, but then remember other things I really should do today, so I'd better finish this review. That's cut-up.
Where things get kind of wacky is that Burroughs came to believe using cut-ups could tap into something else. This is where the title "The Third Mind" takes on a deeper meaning.
Remember those little toys that looked like an Eight-ball that you can still get at Spencer's and novelty shops today? You ask a question, shake it, and a floating die with stamped phrases presses one of its facets to the clear portal and gives you an answer. Well, that's a form of scrying. It's also a cut-up. Sometimes the little phrase could seem remarkably relevant to the question or intention of the user.
"Will Billy marry me?"
"Not a chance."
Burroughs thought that, through his cutting and pasting of words, the new text was speaking directly to him, even referencing something that he just so happened to be thinking about at the time. It was as if a "third mind" had manifested between the collaboration of Burroughs' intentional manipulation of someone else's words.
Now, to me, this seems like a classic example of ideas of reference, a symptom of psychosis. But has this kind of thing happened to you before? Little happy accidents that could be coincidence or part of some esoteric magic?
Something like this happened to me just this week. I collect rare industrial music cassettes, and was listening to one I had never heard before, an untitled split album on C-40 by Unit 6 and SMtv. However, I also have an LP by Z'EV entitled "My Favorite Things", which I happened to glimpse on my record shelf as I was putting in the cassette on my stereo. I was reminded that I hadn't heard the John Coltrane album of the same name in decades, and as I hit play on the cassette, I was thinking I really should revisit Coltrane's "My Favorite Things". When I got to the second track by Unit 6, "Storms over Europe", I thought my brain had finally snapped, that I was having vivid hallucinations of something that had crossed my mind, because here was Coltrane blowing "My Favorite Things". But my sanity was still more or less intact, as it was just a "cut-up" sample used in the noise composition.
Whether you believe in the magical power of cut-ups or just appreciate the ingenuity of Burroughs' application of the technique in his novels like the Nova Trilogy, this will give you some interesting insight into his thought. And as I already stated, fans of industrial music will also enjoy reading about the very earliest ideas that inspired one of their favorite musical forms.
SCORE: 4 cut-ups out of 5
June 26, 2008
Tristan Tzara really invented the cut-up or perhaps the general media did, but nevertheless William S. Burroughs and his partner in crime, Brion Gysin, really took it to another level. "What are you really telling me?" That I think is the question that Burroughs and Gysin tries to answer. It is also a book about language and its power and sort of beauty as well. The duality of communication can be used as poetry as well as a deadly weapon.
January 12, 2014
Well, I wanted to read something a little kooky and I certainly got what I wanted. I've known about this book for years and I could never find it, or remember to look for it, in a used book store.
I agree with WSB and BG on all points about the value of cut-up as a literary technique. Though, I think they breathed the fumes in a little too deeply. Often the examples in The Third Mind of cut-up in practice are rather dull and sound like the scatological murmurings of an addled schizophrenic receiving messages from CIA headquarters. That's actually very Okay with me but what's missing is a thread of narrative, it's all just so unconnected and arbitrary. Doubly so when you are aware it's cut-up. I think the technique is awesome but as something an author can pepper their writing with. Unexpected turns of phrase and absurdo poetic humour that cuts to the heart of pure meaning in ways that are probably impossible to think up in a human brain.
But once in a while an amazing piece like this comes through:
When a Trak Agent walks out of the Board Room, the Board Members look after him and say: "Errand boy." We are all "Coolies" and we need the cool that flows out when we all freeze into each other's eyes and say: "Errand boy." Then the cool flows out on a blue wave, cold and blue as liquid air swirling across dark bank floors, piling up in corners and vaults while a soft rain of bank notes falls through us. We sit there in our blue slate houses, wrapped in orange flesh robes that grow on us... now you understand about Time?
That's just wicked.. but the bit about "now you understand about Time?" really shows the need to edit out some of the randomness and not stick with cut-up like some kind of golden rule or an unquestionable process. But then a little later on this comes up:
The old man from The Arabian Nights coming to work for us... such a find, we thought... and stealing all the shirts and towels while always asking for more money. The naborhood children sneering and hostile, banging on the door to sell flowers or ask for cigarettes... throwing rocks through the skylight.. children.. beggars... someone always at the door, despising you if you gave money: insulting you if you didn't...
Fantastic! But the spelling of neighborhood as naborhood perfectly shows my qualms with cut-up when applied unilaterally.
The idea of a collaboration between two creates a third mind is interesting. Sort of like how information becomes sentient when it gains deep complexity and interconnections in AI theory.
I skipped through large portions of The Third Mind.. there is nothing really essential here that you couldn't pick up in a few articles. I'm mostly happy that such an odd little book exists.
I agree with WSB and BG on all points about the value of cut-up as a literary technique. Though, I think they breathed the fumes in a little too deeply. Often the examples in The Third Mind of cut-up in practice are rather dull and sound like the scatological murmurings of an addled schizophrenic receiving messages from CIA headquarters. That's actually very Okay with me but what's missing is a thread of narrative, it's all just so unconnected and arbitrary. Doubly so when you are aware it's cut-up. I think the technique is awesome but as something an author can pepper their writing with. Unexpected turns of phrase and absurdo poetic humour that cuts to the heart of pure meaning in ways that are probably impossible to think up in a human brain.
But once in a while an amazing piece like this comes through:
When a Trak Agent walks out of the Board Room, the Board Members look after him and say: "Errand boy." We are all "Coolies" and we need the cool that flows out when we all freeze into each other's eyes and say: "Errand boy." Then the cool flows out on a blue wave, cold and blue as liquid air swirling across dark bank floors, piling up in corners and vaults while a soft rain of bank notes falls through us. We sit there in our blue slate houses, wrapped in orange flesh robes that grow on us... now you understand about Time?
That's just wicked.. but the bit about "now you understand about Time?" really shows the need to edit out some of the randomness and not stick with cut-up like some kind of golden rule or an unquestionable process. But then a little later on this comes up:
The old man from The Arabian Nights coming to work for us... such a find, we thought... and stealing all the shirts and towels while always asking for more money. The naborhood children sneering and hostile, banging on the door to sell flowers or ask for cigarettes... throwing rocks through the skylight.. children.. beggars... someone always at the door, despising you if you gave money: insulting you if you didn't...
Fantastic! But the spelling of neighborhood as naborhood perfectly shows my qualms with cut-up when applied unilaterally.
The idea of a collaboration between two creates a third mind is interesting. Sort of like how information becomes sentient when it gains deep complexity and interconnections in AI theory.
I skipped through large portions of The Third Mind.. there is nothing really essential here that you couldn't pick up in a few articles. I'm mostly happy that such an odd little book exists.
August 16, 2021
Odd little book. (Well it is Burroughs, what did I expect?)
Mostly I read this because of the 'cut-up' method they describe, which didn't actually seem to influence the literary world very much, did have an influence on late musique concrète and early industrial music, and later, almost all music... Music these days is heavily sampled from other sources, cut-up, messed with, beat-shifted, tempo shifted, reversed, sliced, etc. , and reused in track after track. It is so prevalent that there is even an entire website, 'whosampled.com', that tracks the many musical cut-up sources and uses. It was interesting to read the oft-cited source, as the ideas are interesting even if the execution and examples provided are not that great.
Mostly I read this because of the 'cut-up' method they describe, which didn't actually seem to influence the literary world very much, did have an influence on late musique concrète and early industrial music, and later, almost all music... Music these days is heavily sampled from other sources, cut-up, messed with, beat-shifted, tempo shifted, reversed, sliced, etc. , and reused in track after track. It is so prevalent that there is even an entire website, 'whosampled.com', that tracks the many musical cut-up sources and uses. It was interesting to read the oft-cited source, as the ideas are interesting even if the execution and examples provided are not that great.
April 16, 2021
A work of collaboration about the nature of collaboration. The phenomenon of “the third mind” has been observed by others, such as mountain climbers, who note the presence of another when two people are brought together on a common task or path of adventure, especially under stressful or inspiring conditions.
Gysin and Burroughs collaborated on cut up projects and exploration of inner space through the dream machine— technology still not fully understood. The flicker effect is known to science, but as a technique of expansion of consciousness is yet to be completely advanced ... unless perhaps it is why we are glued to our flickering screens.
Gysin and Burroughs collaborated on cut up projects and exploration of inner space through the dream machine— technology still not fully understood. The flicker effect is known to science, but as a technique of expansion of consciousness is yet to be completely advanced ... unless perhaps it is why we are glued to our flickering screens.
March 6, 2008
Almost as good as "The Job" for putting forth THE IDEAS. Burroughs had the highest respect for Gysin & this bk shows how intensely & fervently they clicked. An impetus for collaboration for those who haven't been there yet.
September 3, 2008
I read this book after meeting Burroughs and Gysin in New York. The cut-up method, invented by Gysin, a painter, and most famously utilized by Burroughs in his many books is discussed in detail here. A proliferation of facsimile pages, photographs, and examples of cut-up writing, including a fragment of a scenario from the movie they wanted to make of
Naked Lunch
, make this a most interesting read.
March 12, 2012
This is a surprisingly good read. If you want a really good anthology of the cut-up method of writing this is the place to go.
The title refers to a statement in Napoleon Hill's book "How to Think and Grow Rich" in which the author claims that if two people are working in harmony on a project that a third mind will spontaneously be generated in which the participants are able to draw from the knowledge and inspiration of each other through the third mind.
In this case the two participants are William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin who co-author the book. I don't know about a third mind existing between them as described by Hill, but they definitely worked well together and produced a book that is worth reading again and again.
Uhm...I really like this book.
The title refers to a statement in Napoleon Hill's book "How to Think and Grow Rich" in which the author claims that if two people are working in harmony on a project that a third mind will spontaneously be generated in which the participants are able to draw from the knowledge and inspiration of each other through the third mind.
In this case the two participants are William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin who co-author the book. I don't know about a third mind existing between them as described by Hill, but they definitely worked well together and produced a book that is worth reading again and again.
Uhm...I really like this book.
May 5, 2008
The cut-up is just a technique, useful for shifting the mind's habits and jump-starting the creative process. But the interviews and articles relating it to a variety of authors and artistic movements, and Burrough's and Gysin's own experiments, make this a very stimulating read.
August 11, 2015
Interesting for students of Burroughs. Particularly of the Nova Trilogy. In patches the cut up material is tedious and incomprehensible... or perhaps the feeling of unease that reading it creates is the result of freeing yourself from the Control virus and its Word/Language vector.
December 13, 2013
Really want to give this a 3.5 stars. Great book. But to be honest, the cut-up is to be enjoyed in smaller doses. Any 1 or 2 pieces are great individually but after 5 I begin to wander. Great and ground breaking at the time. Small doses.
November 25, 2008
A good day to pick this one up again, quite and grey out, one of my favorite WSB books and it was a pleasure to read again.
February 11, 2022
A fascinating look into the minds of those who ravaged the literary world and the processes they found that allowed them to do so. A little arduous at times but overall, very worth reading if you can find a copy.
June 27, 2019
Not Burrough's best. The cut up technique described is interesting but makes this more of a non-fiction manual than a work of great literature.
January 6, 2023
Both absolutely fascinating and utterly full of shit.
August 19, 2014
Oh, I'm a baboon
I'm a blue baboon
I'm a true baboon
I'm a helluva
Hullabaloo baboon!
And I love a baboon
Who bays at the moon
In the mad month of June
The looniest month
Of them all!
He asked me to spoon
By a moonlit lagoon
and there, very soon,
I fall into a swoon
And from midnight to noon
I fall, I fall, I fall!
'Cause I'm a baboon
A baby baboon
The weakest baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I fall into a swoon
In the arms of this goon
And there, on a dune,
I turn and I give him
My all, my all, my all!
'Cause I'm a baboon
You can feed with a spoon
The weakest baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm a skinny baboon
I'm a mini baboon
Just so tall!
I'm the sleekest baboon
The meekest baboon
But the chic-est baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm the cheapest baboon
The deepest baboon
The obliquest baboon
But the sweetest baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm not uptight
I don't wanna fight
I got no reason to fight
None at all!
Oh, I'm a baboon
Won't join your platoon
One and all!
I'll take your attack
Lying flat on my back
Or bracing myself
On a wall, any wall,
Any old wall
At all, at all, at all!
'Cause I'm the fleetest baboon
The Beatest baboon
But the neat-est baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm a blue baboon
I'm a true baboon
I'm a helluva
Hullabaloo baboon!
And I love a baboon
Who bays at the moon
In the mad month of June
The looniest month
Of them all!
He asked me to spoon
By a moonlit lagoon
and there, very soon,
I fall into a swoon
And from midnight to noon
I fall, I fall, I fall!
'Cause I'm a baboon
A baby baboon
The weakest baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I fall into a swoon
In the arms of this goon
And there, on a dune,
I turn and I give him
My all, my all, my all!
'Cause I'm a baboon
You can feed with a spoon
The weakest baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm a skinny baboon
I'm a mini baboon
Just so tall!
I'm the sleekest baboon
The meekest baboon
But the chic-est baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm the cheapest baboon
The deepest baboon
The obliquest baboon
But the sweetest baboon
Of them all, all, all!
I'm not uptight
I don't wanna fight
I got no reason to fight
None at all!
Oh, I'm a baboon
Won't join your platoon
One and all!
I'll take your attack
Lying flat on my back
Or bracing myself
On a wall, any wall,
Any old wall
At all, at all, at all!
'Cause I'm the fleetest baboon
The Beatest baboon
But the neat-est baboon
Of them all, all, all!
August 20, 2018
Muffled drum week and my silence
the pianos
And the Sunday rest pour away
My working, my midnight, my mourners
come
Talk my song bring out wanted now
Put up the coffin let up the wood
my noon
My overhead would last forever
scribbling on
Pack up I was wrong round
the white necks
The sky, the message, let aeroplanes
dismantle the sun
He is dead the ocean and sweep
I thought
That love of the public doves
Put crepe bows circle moaning
The moon and the stars are not out
every one
the pianos
And the Sunday rest pour away
My working, my midnight, my mourners
come
Talk my song bring out wanted now
Put up the coffin let up the wood
my noon
My overhead would last forever
scribbling on
Pack up I was wrong round
the white necks
The sky, the message, let aeroplanes
dismantle the sun
He is dead the ocean and sweep
I thought
That love of the public doves
Put crepe bows circle moaning
The moon and the stars are not out
every one
November 6, 2014
Functioning as a workbook and manual, this is a collection of thoughts -- ideas -- interviews -- sketches -- droppings by WSB-Gysin, exploring and outlining their discovery, as titled. A dark cloud hangs over it, purple skies. Computer experimentation useful. Illustrated.
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November 12, 2010I'm really diggin' this book!
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