View Full Version : burroughs and buddha
jacky
12-15-2006, 11:06 AM
heres a favorite quote from naked lunch:
"Buddha? A notorious metabolic junky...Makes his own you dig. In India, where they got no sense of time, the man is often a month late....'Now let me see, is that the second or the third monsoon? I got like a meet in Ketchupore about more or less.'
"And all them junkies sitting around in the lotus posture spitting on the ground and waiting on the man.
"so Buddha says: ' I don't hafta take this sound. I'll by go metabolize my own junk.
burroughs wrote this far in advance of the scientific knowledge of endogenous opioid peptides, or of the knowledge of endogenous opiates like morphine and codeine being present in the mammilian body.
nikita70
12-15-2006, 12:21 PM
Hi, Jacky,
...hmmm, dear old "Uncle Bill" Burroughs, r.i.p....
He was really a fucking opiate(and not only opiate) visioner(?)!!! He at least wasn't a scientist, just a genious observer, has been reading a lot, still learning and learning more and more, still experimented with his own body and mind: his conclusions are rather the result of genially intuition, than the scientic explorations. (Hope it's clear...:confused: )
Have you been reading all His things? In Poland, my close-minded country, they edited only "Queer", "Naked lunch", "Junky", "The Ghost of Chance" and the short tale "Just say:no, to drug-hystery".
slugbone
12-15-2006, 12:25 PM
i just ordered Cronenbergs Naked Lunch from Netflix. after reading On the Road and a few things i read on this site i'm going to order some of his shit off amazon.
Duckfeet
12-15-2006, 12:41 PM
i just ordered Cronenbergs Naked Lunch from Netflix. after reading On the Road and a few things i read on this site i'm going to order some of his shit off amazon.
I think I wrote before, how there was a time, when heroin was a "plauge" in military, so the army, in it's wisdom, handed out "anti-drug" lit. And Junky by Burroughs was one of'em. And I hate to admit this, and I've worked *plenty* (so don't you hard working aces slam me down for this)...but the *real* reason I liked Burroughs, and Kerouac, and Ginsberg, and Corso and all the minor poets among'em... is because they didn't *work.* they were all such slackers. I mean, it seemed like the only one of all of'em, who ever had a real job, was Neal Cassidy...and whenever they'd show up, they always seemed kind of pissed he was working. Seems like a lot of the time, Kerouac and the guys would go down and just *watch* Neal work, slinging tires around and such, just because it was so *exotic* to them (maybe it's an NYC thing?). Of course, Cassidy is the only one who never wrote anything worth talking about IMO...interesting connection....
Anyway, latest book I'm reading is:"Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America" by Tom Lutz so I'm all fired up about...about not being all fired up....
Never mind, time for nap.
nikita70
12-15-2006, 03:12 PM
...they didn't "work", you said?
Yes, I agree that Kerouac and Ginsberg didn't, but Burroughs...???
Duckfeet
12-15-2006, 04:04 PM
...they didn't "work", you said?
Yes, I agree that Kerouac and Ginsberg didn't, but Burroughs...???
Yeah, I was exagerating to make a point...it's a fatal curse. I know Burroughs worked a lot until he got published, and of course, writers--including me--always rant about how hard they work when they're just staring at a typewriter...or screen.
It was like, they didn't seem to see labor as a *plus* thing. Like I think of Burroughs, I don't think of him as an exterminator or a farmer...I think of him in New Orleans torturing cats, or down it Mexico gettting so bored he drinks and shoots his old lady...Cassidy the only one I ever thought of as being a regular nine to five kind of guy...even though he, too, at the drop of a hat, would do something else. Even Bukowski, who *did* work, usually wrote that it wasn't enobling or anything like that....anyway...was a slacker exageration in defense of doing nothing...
duckfeet
...nobody understand me :-( ....
Yeah, I was exagerating to make a point...it's a fatal curse. I know Burroughs worked a lot until he got published, and of course, writers--including me--always rant about how hard they work when they're just staring at a typewriter...or screen.
It was like, they didn't seem to see labor as a *plus* thing. Like I think of Burroughs, I don't think of him as an exterminator or a farmer...I think of him in New Orleans torturing cats, or down it Mexico gettting so bored he drinks and shoots his old lady...Cassidy the only one I ever thought of as being a regular nine to five kind of guy...even though he, too, at the drop of a hat, would do something else. Even Bukowski, who *did* work, usually wrote that it wasn't enobling or anything like that....anyway...was a slacker exageration in defense of doing nothing...
duckfeet
...nobody understand me :-( ....
bro,I understand.I really do.
Paregoric Kid
12-16-2006, 03:10 AM
Followers of obsolete unthinkable trades, doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, black marketeers of World War III,...
I wonder what Burroughs thought of the synthetics, he said he thought methadone was equally as pleasing as morphine. I always remember reading about how when Tim Leary was dying he sent Burroughs a fentanyl patch in the mail to try.
William Burroughs calls later that afternoon. Timothy extols the virtues of his pain-relieving fentanyl patch, and then takes down Bill’s mailing address. The old beat wants to try one on. Tim is honored to be turning on “the Bill Burroughs” to a new opiate. We send it to Kansas by Federal Express.
uncle Bill was an equal oppertunities junky.Opiates/opioids,all good buzzs.He said the best buzz he ever had was eucodyl(sp) a synthetic with the side effect of euphoria.Sadly and not suprisingly they took it off the market.
I think the quote is uncle Bill mocking eastern religion and its western devotees.
Duckfeet
12-16-2006, 05:00 AM
I wonder what Burroughs thought of the synthetics, he said he thought methadone was equally as pleasing as morphine. I always remember reading about how when Tim Leary was dying he sent Burroughs a fentanyl patch in the mail to try.
I always wondered, about his later years, what his real take on the different opiates was. I never read too much that was credible, always thirdhand info that he was on methadone maint...end of story. I have nothing other than hunch, but I always felt like that was bullshit. I always wondered if, what with some fame and fortune and shit, whether he didn't maybe have some doc on the side, giving him something better. And that he was just protecting his source or something.
I can't believe that any serious old heroin addict would just get on methadone and be quiet. I mean he moved back to the bronx and all. and man I used to *deliver* in Lawrence KS and *and* the bronx...shit, to be on methadone in Lawrence?. No offence to anybody from Lawrence, but I've been there. And all of a sudden he loves *cats*? and *methadone?* and *Kansas?* Fuck. Bill was hard on cats *and* wives. But by then, like Leary, he was famous for just being famous...to me his output wasn't that interesting. He'd just hook up with Patti Smith or whoever was hot in NY and get paid for standing around being cool and all that. Hell, I do that for less money ;-)
Of course, like any young hype in those days I was just wanting an "instruction manual" and after Junky, I had to try to decipher his cutup method bullshit. Man I about killed myself trying to cook down paragoric from some shredded crap or another he'd written...I know, I know--Nova Express was art, but hell...What the fuck...must be past my bedtime...
I believe uncle Bill stopped taking H when he moved to Kansas.Todays trivia is uncle Bills Doc was called Karkas.Great name for a doc.
P.S.Uncle Bill stockpilled his done in the garage in case of nuclear war or other disaster.
Dorje meet Burroughs at Naropa.Burroughs pointed to a US flag and said."what do you think of the flag young man?"to which Dorje replied."soak it in heroin and I'll suck it."Nice answer.
Paregoric Kid
12-16-2006, 08:02 AM
eukodol was an old brand name for oxycodone
he was on the methadone program for a long time, I'm sure he probably did things on top of it, at the least saved a few doses up. it's been said he stockpiled methadone in his garage in case of an emergency.
I remember reading where Bill went to the hospital in his later years for some reason and the doctor told the nurse to give him as much morphine as he requests lol
actually here's the actual quote from an interview with him and David Cronenberg:
"I hate general anesthesia," says Burroughs. "Scares the hell out me. I had to have it when they did the bypass, but I knew where I was. I knew I was in the hospital having an operation, and there was this gas coming into my face like a gray fog. When I cracked my hip, they put a pin in with a local. A spinal. Of course, it ran out and I started screaming."
"I was in a motorcycle accident where I separated my shoulder," says Cronenberg. "They took me into the operating room and gave me a shot of Demerol."
"Demerol," says Burroughs, brightening a bit. "Did it help?"
"I loved it. It was wonderful."
"It helps. I had a shot of morphine up here somewhere," he says, pointing to the top of his shoulder near his neck, "from my bypass operation. She said, 'This is morphine.' And I said, 'Fine!' " Burroughs drags out the word in a sigh of bliss. He closes his eyes in an expression of rapt anticipation. "Shoot it in, my dear, shoot it in." I ask Burroughs if the doctors and nurses at the hospital knew who he was. "Certainly," he drawls. "The doctor wrote on my chart 'Give Mr. Burroughs as much morphine as he wants.' "
According to legend uncle Bill's last words were something to the effect that love is the strongest painkiller known to man.Wise words from a wise man.
jacky
12-16-2006, 02:55 PM
burroughs had a family allowance set up...it wasnt alot, but it paid the bills.
I dont know how long he needed that, probably a few years past naked lunch getting approved in the USA as decent wholesome art, I would imagine...but I am sure by the 1970's he was getting along nicely with $$
.....
then the naked lunch movie was made in the 80's, and by the 90's the guy was a cult figure.
I dont think he lived an extraordinarily lavish life, so he probably had little use for "work".
I offer my ass to his ghost all the time....ha ha.
Ragdoll
12-16-2006, 03:17 PM
I think I wrote before, how there was a time, when heroin was a "plauge" in military, so the army, in it's wisdom, handed out "anti-drug" lit. And Junky by Burroughs was one of'em. And I hate to admit this, and I've worked *plenty* (so don't you hard working aces slam me down for this)...but the *real* reason I liked Burroughs, and Kerouac, and Ginsberg, and Corso and all the minor poets among'em... is because they didn't *work.* they were all such slackers. I mean, it seemed like the only one of all of'em, who ever had a real job, was Neal Cassidy...and whenever they'd show up, they always seemed kind of pissed he was working. Seems like a lot of the time, Kerouac and the guys would go down and just *watch* Neal work, slinging tires around and such, just because it was so *exotic* to them (maybe it's an NYC thing?). Of course, Cassidy is the only one who never wrote anything worth talking about IMO...interesting connection....
Anyway, latest book I'm reading is:"Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America" by Tom Lutz so I'm all fired up about...about not being all fired up....
Never mind, time for nap.
Oh, I understand you very well, Dee - absolutely. I was attracted to the Beats for the same reason, exactly. Okay; I was raising my children for 20 years and that IS hard work, but.....my husband's family was well-off and their "allowance" was more than nice & what allowed me to stay at home with the kids.
I saw something about that book (Doing Nothing) and very much want to read it. These days, I love my job because it's the next best thing to being a slacker and getting paid for it. I work hard, but...it doesn't seem like work, where I work. It's more like hosting a party every shift & getting paid for doing so.
Anyway, as I understand it, Burroughs was born into a wealthy family from both maternal and paternal sides, and lived quite a priviledged life. I don't think he ever had to worry about money - at all. Besides the Burroughs adding machine trip, his family had other successful business ventures going on.
SobrietyBinge
12-16-2006, 04:02 PM
Well if we're talking about Burroughs...
Burroughs was friends with, and influenced by, a guy named Brion Gysin. Brion Gysin, among other things, co-invented a device called the Dreamachine:
In its original form, the Dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph) and rotated at 78 RPM or 45 RPM. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency, situated between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography), electrical oscillations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillation) normally present in the human brain while relaxing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxing).
The Dreamachine is "viewed" with the eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_nerve) and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. The "viewer" experiences increasingly bright, complex patterns of color behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the "viewer" feels surrounded by colors. It is claimed that viewing a Dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogic). [citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources)] This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs only to open one's eyes.
About a month ago I made one of these out of a big piece of cardboard I bought from the U bookstore. It most certainly works. When sober, it definitely causes swirling colors and changing patterns and a change in mindset. when opiated the effects are considerably more interesting, to swim at least. swim has seen all manner of bizarre images with eyes closed... images pop out of one's imagination at a startling, even an almost alarming rate in swim's experience. ymmv. swim once jumped back after his whole closed eye vision was affronted with the--swim can't say image, it's more like an understanding of the shape without awareness of color--of what was very clearly the head of an infant or a very convincing doll head. And it isn't like seeing a shape and saying what is that, what could that look like? Swim understands the vision as being a thing, knowing what the thing is, even before or without a clarity of the details. Many of the images are hard to remember afterwards. One other one swim remembers while on kratom was this image of a bottle of fabric softener, but as it rotated swim realized that it was just a 2d image of a bottle of fabric softener, and as soon as the image turned flat against swim's vision, it was something else and when it kept rotation so the 2d shape was visible again, it was now a bottle of mustard. This 2d shape kept rotating like this for some time, turning from one mundane grocery store item to the next...
Sadly dream machines don't seem to work if your using opiates.Hell,I tried hard though.
SobrietyBinge
12-17-2006, 05:19 AM
Did you have a chance to try them when you were not opiated?
Not yet.I'll keep you posted because one of my old friends(a none opiate user!) has a ready made dream machine and with a bit of luck I'll see him over christmas.
jacky
12-17-2006, 03:34 PM
I doubt that lower doses of exogenous opiates would inhibit this experience in everyone....we are all on opiates all the time anyway!! it is part of our focusing and learning and motivation drive experience.
I think the dream machine experience has been researched and later they created the light machines that use flickering timed lights to help create the effect as well.
hook up some binaural beats, a persingers helmet(electromagnetic stimulator), neurophone, and such and you could have a really excellent form of escape.
True Jacky.What I meant to say was if you have a heavy IV dope habit the dream machine in unlikely to work.
kyuss
12-17-2006, 07:03 PM
Anyone here
ever read
"I've been down
so long it looks
like up to me"
by Richard Farina?
There's a Buddha
in that book too-
I highly recommend it.
Paregoric Kid
12-17-2006, 09:09 PM
www.bwgen.com (http://www.bwgen.com) <-dreammachine program
http://www.bwgen.com/action/dl.php?f=Reduce_Medical_Morphine_to_Zero.bwg
Paregoric Kid
12-18-2006, 01:49 AM
also wanted to add about the persinger helmet. I've always thought they were pretty interesting. I've heard that it may be possible to get some type of opiate-like experience by using it in the right area with the right frequency. you could build your own helmet or buy one for a few hundred dollars but I wouldn't waste my time. you have to have especially sensitive temporal lobes for this helmet to work. for example Richard Dawkins tried it on and Persinger tried different areas and frequencies. Dawkins said he didn't feel much of anything at all. and it is because it is only effective on people with sensitive temporal lobes.
ever hear of cranial electrotherapy stimulation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial_Electrotherapy_Stimulation it increases endorphins and increases the level of 5-ht, DA, NE. some users report feeling euphoria
Slug bro,Naked lunch is a nice film,but not like the novel at all.Which given the nature of the book is no great suprise.Still the movie is worth watching,but you HAVE to read the book.
Paregoric Kid
12-18-2006, 09:57 AM
I agree, David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is not the book converted to screenplay, but it is a great film! even if you haven't read the book you should check it out, but it is no substitute for the book in any means. it has elements and small parts and characters and themes from the book and mixes it with parts of Bill's life. it is a very surreal, hyperbolic, and allegoric adaption of Bill's relationship with his wife, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and his travels from New York City to abroad in Mexico, South America, and Morocco. they mix Bill's real life with his fiction. when he gets arrested, which happened to him a few times in real life, he goes back to the station where the pigs leave him alone in a room with a giant talking bug. his wife, who was a benzedrine addict in life, is addicted to the bug powder that Bill uses to kill bugs for his job as an exterminator (a job which he had in real life as well). he shoots his wife in the film too and then decides to get away, like in real life to overseas in Tangiers, South America, and Paris, he travels to Interzone and Annexia. there Jack and Allen visit Bill and find him addicted to "the black flesh of the giant aquatic centipede, the black meat;" in real life he was addicted to eukodol, an old brand name of oxycodone, which he could buy ampoules of over the counter in Tangiers at the time. "some real evil shit the Germans came up with," that, "was like a combination of C and junk," as Burroughs would say.
you missed London.Uncle Bill is still warmly remembered by many older junkies here.As is Trocchi.
Paregoric Kid
12-18-2006, 10:47 AM
yeah there are some other places too in Europe and elsewhere but I don't think they're really covered in the film.
Canis aureus
12-18-2006, 12:27 PM
Yea, the film is sort of interzone. Other aspects of the novel are quite absent...
Duckfeet
12-18-2006, 01:27 PM
you missed London.Uncle Bill is still warmly remembered by many older junkies here.As is Trocchi.
That's why I love these guys, the writers, they are our only link to what is really our culture and our family. We don't have old junkies sitting around telling us stories, on what it was like, passing on traditions. I'll never forget traveling down to Belize, and seeing *paregoric* across the counter. I only knew about it from vague childhood memories, and the writing of Burroughs...and Nelson Algren.
I was sick another time, just crazy, and go into this old bookstore, and there is this *used* paperback, called "Cain's Book" by Trocchi. And then in my travels, first old guy I ran into using an *eyedropper*, with this little needle, I'd never *seen* that before...(a New York guy, who still had stories about detoxing in *Lexington KY, in old Fed detox place.) when all our rigs were crapped out. Just all kinds of shit, shoplifting "Junky" when I was sleeping in my car, just for the comfort it gave me.
And though the rest of the world may think we are lazy and crazy, I've found that junkies *travel* more than anybody I know. Always bumping into guys from England, Scotland, all over this country, just fleeing the crap...and finding it again... in the seventies, I actually went to Tangier, stayed up in the Arab quarter, smoked Kif.
And though many of us--when young--may have thought Cassidy and Kerouac were our heros (GO MAN GO!!!!), and Ginsberg our saint, the truth is, even though I didn't particularly *like* him, mean dry old fuck...it was Burroughs who spoke my language, all the rest of them partying and goofing on everything: he was always alone, grim and unsentimental and looking further down that cold cold line. The only book of all of them I can reread over and over is Junkie, his travels always the same ending, always the same place, and we know that place cuz we've all been there, and many of us are there right now.
---------
"New Orleans was a strange town to me and I had no way of making a junk connection. Walking around the city, I spotted several junk neighbourhoods: St. Charles and Poydras, the area around and above Lee Circle, Canal and Exchange Place. I don't spot junk neighbourhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowser's wand: "Junk here!"
I didn't see anybody around, and besides I wanted to stay off, or at least I thought I wanted to stay off."
--------William Seward Burroughs 1914-1997 Restless old junky, rest in peace
That's why I love these guys, the writers, they are our only link to what is really our culture and our family. We don't have old junkies sitting around telling us stories, on what it was like, passing on traditions. I'll never forget traveling down to Belize, and seeing *paregoric* across the counter. I only knew about it from vague childhood memories, and the writing of Burroughs...and Nelson Algren.
I was sick another time, just crazy, and go into this old bookstore, and there is this *used* paperback, called "Cain's Book" by Trocchi. And then in my travels, first old guy I ran into using an *eyedropper*, with this little needle, I'd never *seen* that before...(a New York guy, who still had stories about detoxing in *Lexington KY, in old Fed detox place.) when all our rigs were crapped out. Just all kinds of shit, shoplifting "Junky" when I was sleeping in my car, just for the comfort it gave me.
And though the rest of the world may think we are lazy and crazy, I've found that junkies *travel* more than anybody I know. Always bumping into guys from England, Scotland, all over this country, just fleeing the crap...and finding it again... in the seventies, I actually went to Tangier, stayed up in the Arab quarter, smoked Kif.
And though many of us--when young--may have thought Cassidy and Kerouac were our heros (GO MAN GO!!!!), and Ginsberg our saint, the truth is, even though I didn't particularly *like* him, mean dry old fuck...it was Burroughs who spoke my language, all the rest of them partying and goofing on everything: he was always alone, grim and unsentimental and looking further down that cold cold line. The only book of all of them I can reread over and over is Junkie, his travels always the same ending, always the same place, and we know that place cuz we've all been there, and many of us are there right now.
---------
"New Orleans was a strange town to me and I had no way of making a junk connection. Walking around the city, I spotted several junk neighbourhoods: St. Charles and Poydras, the area around and above Lee Circle, Canal and Exchange Place. I don't spot junk neighbourhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like the dowser's wand: "Junk here!"
I didn't see anybody around, and besides I wanted to stay off, or at least I thought I wanted to stay off."
--------William Seward Burroughs 1914-1997 Restless old junky, rest in peace
True so very true.I wouldn't change a word.
djnarkotik
01-08-2007, 01:33 AM
Hi, Jacky,
...hmmm, dear old "Uncle Bill" Burroughs, r.i.p....
He was really a fucking opiate(and not only opiate) visioner(?)!!! He at least wasn't a scientist, just a genious observer, has been reading a lot, still learning and learning more and more, still experimented with his own body and mind: his conclusions are rather the result of genially intuition, than the scientic explorations. (Hope it's clear...:confused: )
Have you been reading all His things? In Poland, my close-minded country, they edited only "Queer", "Naked lunch", "Junky", "The Ghost of Chance" and the short tale "Just say:no, to drug-hystery".
Hey!! your from poland?? That is cool. Polish girls are soo beautiful, like Czech ones- which is where my parents are from. your english is rather good actually.
Also Good point alot can come from learning. I think its one of the main purposes for people, to learn.
Dolophine
01-08-2007, 04:57 AM
Why does everyone have such a giant boner for William Burroughs? To me he just seems like some junky loser who was junked out his entire life which is alright but I dunno I dont think writing about dope is that productive. I wouldn't consider myself proud if I was the poster child for opiates and millions looked up to me as a god of all things opiate! Sure it would be cool if it was for something good but come on people this is Drugs! Sure his stuff is entertaining and fun to read if your high but take it for what it is!
Why does everyone have such a giant boner for William Burroughs? To me he just seems like some junky loser who was junked out his entire life which is alright but I dunno I dont think writing about dope is that productive. I wouldn't consider myself proud if I was the poster child for opiates and millions looked up to me as a god of all things opiate! Sure it would be cool if it was for something good but come on people this is Drugs! Sure his stuff is entertaining and fun to read if your high but take it for what it is!
The reason people dig Burroughs is he's the best articulator of the junk experience by far.He examines H and addiction without moral overtones and for a much persecuted group it's nice to know we are not alone.That and the fact he tells the truth.
Paregoric Kid
01-08-2007, 09:13 AM
he was one of the best authors of the 20th century, only an idiot would write him off as "just a junky."
I'm a huge fan of uncle Bills,but I don't think of him as a great author,rather a genius philosopher.The fact that he's often described as one of the best authors of the 20th century says more about modern literature than uncle Bill.
Canis aureus
01-08-2007, 10:43 AM
I bought his book The Cat Inside today, and I will start reading this eve... (indeed I started yet in the bookstore)
It's a nice book and shows a side of uncle Bill that isn't often seen.It's weird junkies and cats seem to go together well.
Canis aureus
01-08-2007, 11:08 AM
Just a remebering, also Bukowski had cats... (he wasn't opiate user though... at least not directly...)
Canis aureus
01-22-2007, 12:26 PM
Hey as I said in anothe thread I'm reading Burroughs right now. I have been reading him yet twenty years ago. I was reading him first twenty years ago, Junkie or Junky. Then Naked Lunch, but I never ever red Queer (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_%28novel%29 ). Well, it is strange to read it... I'm in methadone and so on opioids... you may know that person is not too perverse mood or too sexual on opioids of any sort. Anywasy, reading it is in a way funny. I have somewhat analytical way to read it. And the Lee in book is in post-withdrawal perverse phase, and mostly he's gay... Lol, I have had very good laughs, very indeed. And those crazy parts where Lee is talking and having audience in some restaurance. He talks dirty... And the imagination of Burroughs is fucking awesome!!!
Queer is a better book than junky and I got in touch with uncle Bill via the cat inside,it was published with his phone number in.I rang and got Janes G then Uncle Bill.What a gentleman.
jacky
01-22-2007, 04:27 PM
really nick?
you just rang the old guy up?
that is great.
I remember a hilarious post on the internet, I think it was in dxmfanzine, about a guy who took dxm, and then ended up calling hunter s thompson and confusing the hell out of everyone.
I tried to channel his spirit once(Burrhoughs)...but ended up getting John C Lilly instead. the guy slipped into my body and said the word " equanimity", which resounded as a word in my head, while my body seemed to feel exaclty like John C Lillys eloquent frame for a few while this words meaning escaped me. I had to go look up the defninition in the dictionary, as I had no idea of what that word meant.
I took his advice, and mellowed out after that.
I have no idea why John Lilly would have been sitting in for Bill. other than I got the two confused while mucking in the interzone.
Ragdoll
01-22-2007, 09:17 PM
Burroughs was certainly a genius philosopher, an honest junkie, a gifted and unconventional writer and a genuinely wise man. Which is, perhaps, what "genius philosophy" is all about...exceptional wisdom.
Duckfeet
01-22-2007, 10:04 PM
I didn't like Burroughs when I first read him, when I was a young guy. Then I thought he was kind of a downer, while Kerouac and Ginsberg and Cassidy, man, they were *hoppin!* As I got older tho, I started seeing Burroughs, just as a person, to be a more accurate record keeper of junky life. After Kerouac descended more and more into alcoholism, and all of'em--except maybe Cassidy--learned how to hustle their Beat origins more, and I became a fullblown junky mself, I would go back and read Burroughs--and read *about* Burroughs--and thought he was the most reliable.
I mean, don't get me wrong: I totally bought into the "Beat" thing too, and I was just a few years removed from their crazy years. I had a copy of On The Road in my back pocket, and when I got a leave from Vietnam, I flew to Madrid, then hopped over to Tangier, Morocco, hoping I'd "bump into them...." I was young and romantic...
I wonder if he ever bought into the whole *go-man go!!!* whole NY--Columbia--beat deal. I think Burroughs saw what it was really about, and didn't romanticize it as much. And--to me--his hustle was his later books, and the little performance art kind of self-promotion he would do, w/other commercial hipsters. But Junky became a clearer and clearer book, the older I got. Beat was a con, and Burroughs milked it, the "cut-up method" was more of the con...but he survived most of'em, and never seemed to buy into it as much. I mean, when all the crew showed up down in New Orleans, I don't think Bill was that thrilled to see them. And yeah, later he even came off as a cat lover...hell, old men and don't-give-a-shit cats get along all right, but Burroughs in his hard youth was hell on cats...and I think Journey To The End of the Night by Celine--a book Bukowski also liked--might be a better indicator of Burroughs' views of life love and happiness. To an over-bitter young hype like me, these helped me more than Ginsberg, and Ram Dass, and all the peace love and understanding notions coming into vogue. Hell, Burroughs was hard. Maybe Cassidy was too. The rest were mostly just educated white boys who got lucky; Kerouac had talent, Ginsberg had connections, the rest of the local poets and wannbes just road coattails...
To me he's like Trocchi: a survivor, and man who played the con on his fame. I don't even necesarily believe all he ever did was methadone in the end. He was just too much in the public eye, and had to act like a good methadonian...but I never totally bought it. Burroughs would be the first to say you can never trust a junkie...
oxymoron
01-23-2007, 04:36 AM
sounds like I need to buy a burroughs book and check it out.
freedomclub
01-23-2007, 05:03 AM
They put a little plaque commemorating him in front of a house he used to live in and maybe wrote some of Junky in. I found a hard back version of Queer in Lafayette, LA and always thought it was a better book as well.
Canis aureus
01-23-2007, 01:08 PM
Well, that have to have been quite a call, Nick... Real gentleman that Bill. I remember so well that part of document bwhere Burroughs wasd sitting with his brother and they watched photographs and talked about everything. Bill's brother told that when he was reading Naked Lunch he got, or simply found it only disgusting... Bill watched sky so on, and he must have thought that his brother is quite pain in as... eh starting to talk about Bill's book like that in a film where Bill was in his childhood's place etc etc. It wasn't very smart or knowledgeable or anything from his brother. And Bill is seeminly embarrashed for and because of his brother.
I ended Queer today. The story of Yage search in that book is also the... and the book ends strangely in relation to Yage. Where Lee and Allerton didn't find it, or the scientist in jungle was rather disappointment. Well, possibly it was just something like that. I haven't been reading Yage Letters. I'll search that book in my hands some day. The difference between Queer and Junkie is much on that that Burroughs wasn't such a good writer when he wrote Junkie. Junkie is much more like a diary... it probably is much like diary. In Junkie there aren't such creepy situations at all. Nothing like those insane stories which Lee is telling to his audience, and all those sick situations and things. Especially those looks and watchings with which Lee takes towards Allerton and some other persons. And there are many comical things and incidences in Queer which are totally absent in Junkie.
It was something to tell my grandchildren about-if I had any.In all seriousness,we only talked briefly.Uncle bill was polite,but not really interested.
I got some guy first,he put me on to James(uncle Bill's secretery)and eventually Bill.I'd met and got twisted with Ira Cohen at the Chelsea and he told me to introduce myself as a friend,which I did.Just said I was a friend of Ira C and a diamorphine addict from England.What I will say is I was struck by how well mannered bill was-a true gentleman.
HistoryofMadness
01-23-2007, 02:54 PM
Hey as I said in anothe thread I'm reading Burroughs right now. I have been reading him yet twenty years ago. I was reading him first twenty years ago, Junkie or Junky. Then Naked Lunch, but I never ever red Queer (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_%28novel%29 ). Well, it is strange to read it... I'm in methadone and so on opioids... you may know that person is not too perverse mood or too sexual on opioids of any sort. Anywasy, reading it is in a way funny. I have somewhat analytical way to read it. And the Lee in book is in post-withdrawal perverse phase, and mostly he's gay... Lol, I have had very good laughs, very indeed. And those crazy parts where Lee is talking and having audience in some restaurance. He talks dirty... And the imagination of Burroughs is fucking awesome!!!
queer is a fucking fantastic work, so is paintings and guns...
i've got 2 great cd's of unkle bill's ranting poetry gibberish and its fucking fantastic! puts me back to the days of writing up all night 3 days at a time listening to jazz and reading beat and wanting to be beat...
then i realized beat was over and with a group of crazy junkies writers who took our lifestyle guide from the beats and we looked and found what was actually happening then...
then we all lost our minds and now we talk on sundays.
anyway point is burroughs is a fucking must-read, but don't do books without poetry
Ragdoll
01-23-2007, 03:15 PM
I can't recall whether I mentioned this before or not, but The Black Rider is a collaboration between Tom Waits and Wm Burroughs - Burroughs reading and chanting. A most unusual album.
There was a production of Black rider on in the west end last year with Marianne Faithful.I believe it's based on Faust and German folk tales.
Canis aureus
01-27-2007, 05:33 AM
Naked Lunch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Lunch
Well I searched strange words and such, and came to that Naked Lunch entry...
I'm reading now Nake Lunch again. I remember many parts of it, but strangely i don't remember the order and all of those stories (I mean all things in each story). It is funny reading... (I know that many won't think it's funny tho). I like it, but could not relate it to other Burroughs' books. It is different.
read it in any order you want.the order it comes in is just the order it was sent to the printer.
Canis aureus
01-27-2007, 12:56 PM
Yes, it is interesting to read it from where-ever. Opening the book arbitrarily somewhere and starting reading... now I read it from beginning to the end because I just need to read it all. This re-reading Burroughs has been very interesting and good session.
I'm trying to get that Last Words in my hands... I have read some parts of it, and it was intereesting as well.
Ragdoll
02-05-2007, 02:46 AM
There was a production of Black rider on in the west end last year with Marianne Faithful.I believe it's based on Faust and German folk tales.
Geez, see, one more reason why I want to travel to London. Just so much good stuff going around.
Yes, The Black Rider is based on the subjects you mentioned, Nick.
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