Back in No Time

by Gysin, Brion

• ISBN13: 9780819565297
• ISBN10: 0819565296
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-15
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Brion Gysin (1916 - 1986) was a visual artist, historian, novelist, and an experimental poet credited with the discovery of the 'cut-up' technique -- a collage of texts, not pictures -- which his longtime collaborator William S. Burroughs put to more extensive use. He is also considered one of the early innovators of sound poetry, which he defines as 'getting poetry back off the page and into performance.' Back in No Time gathers materials from the entire Gysin oeuvre: scholarly historical study, baroque fiction, permutated and cut-up poetry, unsettling memoir, selections from The Process and The Last Museum, and his unproduced screenplay of Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch. In addition, the Reader contains complete texts of several Gysin pieces that are difficult to find, including "Poem of Poems," "The Pipes of Pan," and "A Quick Trip to Alamut."

Author Biography

One of the first Fulbright Fellows, Brion Gysin was recognized for his book, To Master -- a Long Goodnight, with its substantial appendix A History of Slavery in Canada. His career as a visual artist began before the age of 20; he was part of the famous 1935 Surrealist Drawings show in Paris, though at the orders of André Breton his work was taken down. His paintings are owned by MOMA, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Paris's Pompidou Center. Jason Weiss is a New York-based writer and author of Writing at Risk: Interviews in Paris with Uncommon Writers (1991).

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	ix
That Secret Look	1	(2)
From a Lost Novel	3	(13)
Recollections of a Lost Seascape	3	(7)
Time and Brother Griphen	10	(6)
To Master-A Long Goodnight (excerpts)	16	(44)
Potiphar's Wife	60	(9)
Early Cut-Up Experiments	69	(10)
First Cut-Ups	70	(3)
Minutes to Go	73	(2)
Cut Me Up Brion Gysin	75	(4)
Permutation Poems	79	(16)
I Am That I Am	80	(8)
Junk Is No Good Baby	88	(1)
Kick That Habit Man	89	(1)
No Poets Don't Own Words	89	(4)
I Don't Work You Dig	93	(1)
This Is Sam Francis	94	(1)
Brion Gysin Let the Mice In	95	(7)
The Poem of Poems	102	(11)
Dreamachine	113	(4)
Unpublished Notes on Painting	117	(5)
The Pipes of Pan	122	(3)
About the Cut-Ups	125	(11)
Cut-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success	125	(7)
Cut-Ups Self-Explained	132	(4)
Am I the One?	136	(5)
Janicot	141	(3)
The Process (excerpts)	144	(46)
The Naked Lunch Screenplay (excerpts)	190	(28)
A Quick Trip to Alamut	218	(22)
Fire: Words by Day-Images by Night	240	(17)
Psacre Psilocybin and Magic Mushrooms	257	(4)
Not by Me	261	(5)
Songs	266	(13)
Nowhere Street (score by Steve Lacy)	267	(5)
Somebody Special (score by Steve Lacy)	272	(2)
Clementeena Soopastar	274	(1)
Dreams (score by Steve Lacy)	275	(1)
Gay Paree Bop	276	(1)
Sham Pain	277	(1)
Stop Smoking	278	(1)
Hamri's Hands	279	(3)
Snapshots from the Family Album (excerpts)	282	(5)
An Encomium for Allen Ginsberg	287	(2)
Calligraffiti of Fire	289	(2)
The Sculpted Line	291	(1)
The Last Museum	292	(57)
The Door	293	(4)
Hotel Bardo	297	(1)
Back Jacket Copy	297	(1)
The Last Museum (excerpts)	298	(41)
Drawings for The Last Museum by Keith Haring	339	(10)
Bibliography	349	(2)
Discography	351	(2)
Permissions	353

Excerpts

Chapter One

* That Secret Look

"That Secret Look" (1941) first appeared in the journal View, edited by Charles Henri Ford. Like Gysin's early work as a visual artist, his writing here shows the general influence of surrealism. More important, as a skeptical portrayal of New York, city of technological advances and endless gimmicks, this piece reflects his perspective as an outsider--one whose experience was formed both by the "wilds" of western Canada, in childhood, and the "civilized" refinements of his English public school education, in adolescence, as well as by the vanguard aesthetics of 1930s Paris.

When the city grew beyond Washington Square it seems to have stopped, drawn breath and then stretched out ahead a scaffolding of streets and avenues, a blueprint laid over the face of the island to the Harlem River. These streets today are the erosions on the hard-baked shell of the Aristotelian turtle that bore the world. Anchored deep in his crusty back-armor are the towers and honeycombed brick and mortar cliffs from whose ledges the city at night glitters like a mirror drowned in a deep well. And lo! the poor refugee, the Marco Polo in reverse, preferring his little Venice to Xanadu, wouldn't buy the island with his trinkets and bright beads even if someone loaned him the $24 to conclude the deal. Traveling backward with the speed of an angry queen bee expelled from the hive, he cannot master the trick of putting on his clothes back to front as the natives do in order to give the impression of a more logical type of locomotion.

    "The Natives are Friendly," his compatriots wig-wagged back to Europe several years ago, but added when they came home, "But you never know what they are thinking--they all look alike to me." A mysterious people that stands up to sleep clinging to straps in underground subways; a people that does not shake hands all around a room full of thirty; a people that walks around as it eats out of machines; a people that smiles and smiles and continues to extend its hospitality as you kick them around and that continues to copy your way of dressing its women, painting its pictures and furnishing its homes when these things represent a way of living and thinking that they have spilt blood to abolish.

    "A town that greets you standing up," says a writer, and sure enough between the skyscrapers hang festoons of popcorn and ropes of candy beads. Chased by the searchlights of a World Première, or is it a "Spectacle in the Sky"--a mock air raid, are the rainbows that breathe up from the miasmic Times Square; the exhalation of a million desires that carpets the sky from the seventeenth floor on up.

    The Rainbow Level--an attitude as much as an altitude--a game of parchesi with ladders or chutes depending on the number you throw.

    The streets below are like the stream of "The Old Mill" or "The Tunnel of Love" at Luna Park or Coney Island, through whose fog of carbon monoxide you are swept clutching your neighbor, past bright tableaux; the desert island, the cemetery by moonlight, the axe murderer in the kitchen or famous scenes from fiction. But here the tableaux are the windows and three balls for a dime do not give you the privilege of throwing anything less than a bathtub through them --and that from the inside. If the bleached cornflake snow of a fan-propelled winter blizzard blows through the windows of I. J. Fox--a man who can sign his name with a cloud, his moneyed finger tracing it in the sky as ephemerally as it would on the sand before an incoming tide, the further you travel north the more subtle the approach.

    Past this window and that, past the architectural pride of a family that fears God as they once feared Congressional investigation on earth; past the windows of a beauty Princess who looks like the grandmother of the glamour girls, those strange, cross-pollinated flowers a generation removed from an old stalk. And step up, Ladies and Gentlemen, too! Here is the window where you can win a coconut. Let the little lady hold your hand; give you the aim; her little phantom hand guiding yours, and--Wham!

    But what is it today? Not the bathroom but the corridor of that same hotel de passe . And you call it?--That Secret Look. Pass on we say, this man is telling you like the America Firster across the street, that a fifth column will uphold your house when the other four are torn away. You don't understand--then look again. This is to be the pattern for your women: this is the way they must dress; the way they must smell; but what are they doing? They are backing out of hotel rooms; this pretty doll has a blueprint clutched in her black-gloved hand; that one has dropped a dagger to the floor, neatly pinning a paper acknowledging whose black dress this is, whose black hat, whose black stockings, shoes and gloves give her That Secret Look.--That baby's got a gat! Look, she's stuffing the plans of the washing-machine wringer into her corsage. Last winter I knitted sea-boot socks until I was blind and let the maid finish them. I wore pins and insignia until it hurt. I was worn to a skeleton reading papers and I never wore a pin five minutes longer than it took to read the Extra that told me it wasn't fashionable. This winter I won't wrap another fumble. This winter I am going to be destructive .

    God, it smells like Paris! The air is like champagne today.

* From a Lost Novel

"Recollections of a Lost Seascape" and "Time and Brother Griphen" (1942) were published in Town and Country, in July and November 1947, respectively. These stories became part of a novel that was subsequently lost, "Memoirs of a Mythomaniac," which Gysin later described as a détourné autobiography; another chapter was published as the story "Ariadne of Naxos" in the volume of early fiction, Stories (1984)--based on travels in Greece in the late 1930s, which he recycled long after in a section of his novel The Last Museum (1986), as seen later in this anthology. "Recollections of a Lost Seascape" draws upon his vacation at the elaborate home of an aristocratic friend from school, on the island of Guernsey; "Time and Brother Griphen" reflects the setting of the English public school he attended in the early 1930s, Downside.

Recollections of a Lost Seascape

The island of Herm lies like an enormous, half-submerged whale in the tides and currents of the English Channel. This island was bought by my grandfather toward the beginning of the century, and he lived there in self-imposed exile, a widower with five daughters. Herm does not belong to England but is considered by a curious legal anomaly to be a fief of the Duke of Normandy, who is only incidentally the King of England. The owner of the island is, therefore, a feudatory of the duke and owes him at least nominal allegiance. On Herm itself the owner is the highest legal authority, the dispenser of justice, and a despot who may strike coins or mint stamps if he wishes.

    Grandfather had no subjects other than the members of his own family and the servants. He would have ruled them with a rod of iron even if he had not been granted plenipotentiary powers by feudal right. He rarely had any contact with foreigners except for the few fishermen to whom he granted fishing rights in his waters. Actually, Grandfather was in a sense a foreigner himself: that is, he was not English, though the Duke of Normandy, his liege lord, had no more loyal feudal retainer.

When the first great war of our time surprised people who, like the lord of Herm, were living in the past, there were those who whispered that Grandfather should no longer be allowed to retain his island. The gossip about him was common in Guernsey and in Jersey, but he was the last to hear the malicious tales which were invented. These people said that he was entertaining officers from the U-boats which were known to be in the Channel. In truth, my grandfather had more fear of the submarines than anyone.

    He was continually on the lookout for them and he thought of little else. He was not afraid for his life or for his property, but for something which he considered to be infinitely more precious. He had five daughters who were all nubile to what he considered an awkward degree. He knew the dangers of that frangible state from certain observations of his own--made much earlier in life, of course--and the jealousy with which he guarded them from contact with the world was, indeed, the principal reason for living on Herm.

    The girls were quite content with the life they led, for they knew no other. Their pleasures were simple and healthy. For exercise they took walks to collect flowers, and they were allowed to bathe in the sea. They splashed and shrieked in the water from eleven to twelve on sunny mornings, while Grandfather thought grimly of the submarines which might easily emerge in full view of the beach.

    Each morning he scanned the sea from the top of a nearby cliff, and like a nervous passenger on a ship feeling its way through wartime waters, he imagined every stick and every floating bottle to be a periscope. He saw younger men than he pressing around the sighting apparatus, with wild desire shining in their eyes, as they saw the graceful images of his sea-nymph daughters in their blue serge bathing dresses trimmed with white braid and piping, their pretty flowing yellow hair hidden in caps like immense yellow water lilies and their pretty pink toes encased in black cotton stockings and rubber shoes with little rose pompons on the toes.

    Grandfather accompanied them in an old green rubberized military storm-coat, worn over a bathing suit with short sleeves and pants which half-hid his cavalry legs, and a black bowler hat which he never took off--even when he entered the water. Neither did he remove his yellow wash gloves until he had finished his dip, for he felt that it was not fitting that a man in his position should come in contact with any fish other than a cooked one, with its knowing eye removed and the socket sprouting a green sprig from the herb garden.

    His bowler was a matter of tender and respectful amusement among the young ladies, until finally one day my mother, who was by far the boldest, being the prettiest and therefore her father's favorite, snatched it from his head and from the top of the cliff flung it out to sea. It caught the breeze and sailed many yards before it plunged down and hit the water, soon bobbing out of sight on the ebb tide. The girls pealed with laughter like a disagreeable set of chimes, and were confined to their rooms. The next day my grandfather again went to the seashore in his bowler. He had retrieved it from the rising tide, and he continued to wear it as long as he believed in sea bathing.

Though there were no other inhabitants on the island, and the menservants were my grandfather's age, the thought of prying, lustful eyes continued to haunt the old man's heart. The more he thought of the desires of young men confined in submarines, the more determined he became to stop the daily excursions to the shore, though he did not wish to deprive the girls of their pleasure. At that time it had become almost impossible to leave Herm, and even the short sea trip to Guernsey was dangerous. They were living off the produce of the garden and such fish as could be caught from a small boat a short distance offshore. He hesitated to deprive his naiads of their dip in the ocean, and yet the possibility that a U-boat might appear, a U-boat such as the one undoubtedly in the neighborhood which had recently sunk a fisherboat, made him tremble with rage. His military experience as a youth had acquainted him with the behavior of licentious soldiers in garrison towns and of libidinous seamen in port, and he was certain that these new undersea sailors would be the worst of the lot. He forbade his daughters the shore.

    For a while they moped, and then the eyes of five young ladies, deprived of all outlet for their animal energy, confined to croquet on the lawn and the few Graustarkian novels around the house, grew dreamy as they trailed around in vaporous silences, and started abruptly when spoken to in a loud voice for the second time. My grandfather guessed that the young ladies in confinement were allowing their thoughts to dwell too closely on their own nubility, and that the swelling buds of late spring were shaping their thoughts in a romantic way.

    He gave orders, and soon there was a great bustling around the house and the home farm, where the wheels of old carts were gathered together and timbers cut and nailed. When the young ladies learned that their father was going to build bathing machines on wheels their joy knew no bounds and they went every day to see how the work progressed. At last the bathing huts were ready. There were six bathing machines in all, one for each girl and one for their governess. Grandfather told them that they might dip in the sea when the huts were drawn down to the beach, but that they must not swim even a few strokes into deeper water. This changed their schedule, for even my grandfather could not order full tide at the appointed time, and his daughters were allowed to swim only when the tide was incoming, for then there was less danger of being swept out to sea.

    One day my mother was retiring into her machine after frolicking in the waves, when she noticed how the sun warmed the boards of her little cabin on wheels, which was almost afloat. The door opened seaward and she had been told, as indeed her sisters had been also, to close it carefully before removing as much as one black stocking, for Grandfather still feared the inquisitive periscopes. What nonsense, she thought, leaving the door open. No one can see me, not even Mademoiselle, and she removed her cap and let her hair fall to her waist. She became excited by the warm touch of the sun as she stepped out of her suit and stood at the open door, looking out at the waves. The black stockings suddenly appeared hateful to her, and she stripped them off too. She stretched luxuriously in the sun, for it seemed hotter on the boards when she lay down close to the tide that slapped the wood within an inch of her, and lapped at the top step of her cabin. Then, perhaps, she fell asleep.

    When her father attached the little donkey which drew the bathing machines up to the beach, he left hers until the last, for she always took the longest time to dress. Her sisters, Mademoiselle the governess, and dear papa, were all waiting on the beach, and they found her naked as Andromeda chained to her rock, lying with her eyes half-closed on the damp floor of the little house on wheels. Mademoiselle shrieked and said that she had undoubtedly fainted from the sun, but she smiled as she lay there and continued to smile as they helped her toward the house.

They took her home to put her to bed, but she never got there that afternoon, for my grandfather ordered them all locked up in the old nursery, and they fluttered up the dark staircase in their white dresses, Mademoiselle chasing close behind, followed by the eyes of five young British officers who had come to take over the island.

    Apparently, treacherous Mademoiselle had written to the authorities in London, saying that Grandfather thought of nothing but submarines. The authorities had drawn their own conclusions, and had decided to send a garrison to the island to dispossess him. Grandfather's worst fears were thus realized. Young men, young officers. Here they were, quartered in the house, in close contact with his daughters. It was unthinkable.

    The young ladies were greatly excited, and spent the rest of the afternoon making spit curls, for they knew that they could not be locked up forever. But my mother sat in the window with that same little smile playing about her lips, and the window looked out to sea.

    Of course they all went down to dinner, and of course they flirted with the young officers, and of course they married them. My mother married the one

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Back in No Time by . Copyright © 2001 by Jason Weiss. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.