The Pan Mind Pipes Games of Electronic Coherence

by Doghead Cola

"A final glossary cannot be made of words whose intentions are fugitive..."

William Lee

Junkie

"The music picks up like a current turned on . . . And he who stammers out an answer is lost. He is lost unless he touches the blade of his knife, or, better still, plucks it out and plunges it into the ground between her goatish legs and forked hooves. Then Aisha Homolka, Aisha Kandisha, alias Asherat, Astarte, Diana in the Leaves Green, Blest Virgin Miriam bar Levy, the White Goddess, in short, will be his. She must be a heavy Stone Age Matriarch whose power he cuts off with his Iron Age knife-magic.

"The music grooves into hysteria, fear and fornication. A ball of laughter and tears in the throat gristle. Tickle of panic between the legs. Gripe of slapstick cuts loose in the bowels. The Three Hadji. Man with Monkey. More characters coming on stage. The Hadji joggle around under their crowns like Three Wise Kings. Monkey Man comes on hugely pregnanat with a live boy in his baggy pants. Monkey Man goes into birth pangs and the Hadji deliver him of a naked boy with an umbilical halter around his neck. Man leads Monkey around, beating him and screwing him for hours to the music. Monkey jumps on Man's back and screws him to the music for hours. Pipers pipe higher into the air and panic screams off like the wind into the woods of silver olive and black oak, on into the Rif mountains swimming up under the moonlight.

Gysin said that once he'd heard the music of the Master Musicians that he knew he wanted to hear it every day for the rest of his life. The American expatriate, a former Broadway set designer, became a Tangier restaurantuer specifically to showcase the talents of the Masters on a nightly basis. The restaurant failed a short time after a strange magickal amulet was left behind at a table with a message inscribed within it: "As smoke leaves a chimney may Brion leave this house and never return."

He did, and the Masters did too, preserved on magnetic media for the first time almost a decade later, via the battery-powered Uher reel recordings of Brian Jones who became so obsessed with the project he stayed behind to finish more recording (which was to be the first release on the Rolling Stones' new independent imprint), while Keith Richards robbed him of his girlfriend, and the band booted him--but left him to discover that through a Morroccan newspaper article. This sacrificial incident was later catalogued by Psychic TV on their early techno-experimental hyperdelic rock album Allegory and Self in the track "Godstar".

"As if there [are] any accidents."

Brion Gysin

Minutes To Go

When Tangier lost its International Zone status in 1958, many of its "seedier" occupants (gays and kif-heads, a category into which both Gysin and Burroughs fit) headed for Europe. During the years in Tangier, Burroughs openly disliked Gysin; but after relocating to Paris, was surprised to discover his new next door neighbor at 6 Rue Git-Le-Couer (the same apartment residencies later dubbed The Beat Hotel, or as Gysin called it, The Last Museum) to be that same old North African expatriate--Gysin. And the friendship ensuing from this chance placement resulted in a powerful collaboration between the two.

Where one was considered the writer, one the painter, each artist dabbled in the other's form even prior to meeting. While Gysin practiced mainly as a visual artist, his sense of discovery remained constantly vibrant. Once working on a collage piece using a Stanley blade, he sliced through a stack of newspapers; upon seeing the unique arrangements of words beneath, he found himself bemused enough to turn the process into a game. And thus resulted the now infamous "cut-up method" so prominent in Burroughs' work from the Parisian years, and which figured heavily into The Naked Lunch, of which Gysin was a primary editor along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

The cut-up method was a seminal discovery. "Writing is 50 years behind painting," Gysin told Burroughs. And whether or not it was true, where Dadaism and the poems of Tristan Tzara left off, the cut-up method transformed narrative prose into collages of images, absurd yet meaningful juxtapositions emerged, and the Third Mind of chaos was hailed as prime creator.

The "Third Mind", the subject of a collaborative book by Burroughs and Gysin, works essentially like this: the first mind is that of the creator; the second, that of the artist's materials; the third, an element of chance or chaos imposed upon both artist and materials, thereby resulting in a final product which cannot be predicted by artist or materials. This is true of the cut-ups, and true to some extent of say, deejay mixing, or better: sampling.

"Invasion plans are practically impossible to conceal if they involve the mass use of troops and ships. So [Intelligence and Security] is most concerned with monitoring scientific and technical advances which could obviate the need for conspicuous preparations."

William S. Burroughs

Cities Of The Red Night

Upon meeting mathematician Ian Sommerville, the 3 played cut-up games with tape recorders, Burroughs penned The Soft Machine, and Gysin incorporated both Qabalistic magickal squares into his painting as well as grafitti-style overlays of both Arabic and Japanese calligraphy. Anthony Balch chummed up to the group and directed a number of underground short features, including Burroughs' post-modernist dreamy police state tapestry, Towers Open Fire, and the mind-entrancing repeating loops experiment, The Cut-Ups. (The latter represents via audio and visual what Eno's later tape-loop experiments contributed to his Ambient projects of the '70s and '80s.) Most importantly, though, Gysin and Sommerville developed the Dreamachine, an illuminated flickering cylinder intended to stimulate non-drugged psychedelic perceptual highs. Gysin received funding to build 12 working models, believing it would revolutionize the drug culture taking hold in America. Although no such predictions came to fruition, Gysin's invention predicted any number of modern "drug-free perceptual high" gadgets as well as foreseeing the potential pitfalls involving any subculture's attachments to a drug-perpetuated worldview.

A watershed time for Gysin and Burroughs in Paris, the decade of the '60s was the only time Gysin ever earnestly garnered recognition for his creative efforts. While Gysin might be considered a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, his eminent energy paved the way through numerous monumental projects and seminal discoveries. In the decades prior to his relationship with Burroughs, he'd exhibited his works alongside the likes of Duchamp and Picasso; invited to be a Surrealist participant by Dalí--later booted from the group by Breton. But it was his association with Burroughs, always his biggest cultural advocate, which helped usher his artistic ventures into popular culture.

So what's this have to do with contemporary dance subculture? If the interconnectedness isn't already obvious, move along to Act II...

Enter Genesis P-Orridge.

"The idea is to apply the cut-up principle to behavior.

"The method is a contemporary, non-mystical interpretation of 'magick'.

"The aim, then, is reclamation of self-determination, conscious and unconscious, to the individual.

"The result is to neutralise and challenge the essence of social control."

Genesis P-Orridge

"Behavioral Cut-Ups"

During the Paris years, P-Orridge had become a correspondent with Burroughs, and eventually a friend. And, of course, friends with Brion. P-Orridge was a performance artist who'd exchange art mail with other interesting correspondance acquaintances like Burroughs and Monte Cazzazza. He also became pals with draggish filmmaker Derek Jarman, for whom he scored a few short film projects himself, and later with his band, the "original" Industrial outfit, Throbbing Gristle. (Their inter-relationships are best documented in REsearch publication #4/5, William S. Burroughs, Throbbing Gristle, Brion Gysin. )

P-Orridge had ideas of his own, even if they were enmeshed with those of Gysin and Burroughs. His ideas included the dynamics inherent within ritual magick (not unlike the practices of Aleister Crowley), the necessity of trance-induced creative expression (such as in the art of Austin Osman Spare), and the immediatism of organized performance and media as weapons against social control.

Shocking the hell out of crowds with the self-mutilation, enema-farting, lighted-candle-vaginal-masturbation performances of art troupe Coum Transmissions only paved the way for the all-out sensory onslaught of Throbbing Gristle's live sets. And when that act diminished in 1981, P-Orridge and ex-TG cohort Peter Christopherson (founder of Coil) not only joined forces with Alternative TV members to form musick group Psychick Television, but they also established a "non-dogmatic" ritualistic religious order: The Temple Ov Psychick Youth (TOPY). And to finalize the concrete front of anti-establishment propaganda, they created their own television network--Psychic TV, which is the working title of all of P-Orridge's collaborative projects up through the present.

"TG don't get involved with the causes and cliches of The Great White Liberal consciousness, the dogmas and demonstrations of emotional hang-ups and guilt complexes (sexism, racism, no nukism, thisism, thatism) thinking them red herrings introduced to divert people from The Horrible Truth--into useless, fruitless 'activism'."

Genesis P-Orridge

REsearch #4/5

"I have suggested that virus can be created to order in the laboratory from very small units of sound and image. Such a preparation is not in itself biologically active, but it could activate or even create virus in susceptible subjects."

William S. Burroughs

Electronic Revolution

Psychic TV didn't conform to predictable conventions any more than TG had. Musically, the group explored the continuing usage of drum machines, tape loops, and electronics in combination with live instrumentation--a tactic which had become a standard in the music of TG. However, stylistically, PTV delved into numerous genres--Hyperdelic Rock, Muzack, Noise, and yes, Acid House and Techno--remixing and reinventing themselves sonically on stage and off.

P-Orridge began to dabble in more contemporary video production for the day, creating sprawling, wild psychedelic imagery which moved in time to the music and while adopting some very MTV-ish trends, consistently moving beyond them. On a U.S. tour during 1986, P-Orridge & Co. visited a Chicago record shop, asking shop clerk (the now world famous deejay) Derrick Carter what the weirdness most underground sounds were in the shop. "Oh, that'd be the Acid," Carter told them. Thinking the moniker referred to the drug and expecting psychedelic rock music, P-Orridge bought the entire stock. Upon returning to England and listening to the records, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that the music was instead tweaky, heavily-filtered electronic washes of sound with repetitive beats. As a result, Psychic TV began to dabble with the style and by 1987 released a now-legendary Acid House classic: "Tune In, Turn On Thee Acid House".

The single gained immediate popularity both in Europe and abroad, and foreshadowed the approach of the most important elements still lacking from the ecstatic dance culture in which Brion Gysin had once immersed himself.

"Clever people . . . may no longer believe these stories but they are the eternal patterns into which life is poured. The mind is a palace of many chambers where only a few of the smaller rooms are kept bright."

Thamyra in "Ariadne on Naxos"

Brion Gysin

Following the success of "Tune In," between 1988 and 1991 PTV recorded numerous singles under a variety of names (DJ Doktor Megatrip, Mistress Mix, King Tubby, Vernon Castle, The Loaded Angels), collaborating heavily with ex-Soft Cell electronic composer, Dave Ball (presently of The Grid), production-wiz Richard Schiessl, and Fred Gianelli (now renowned for his Telepathic label and collaborations with Richie Hawtin, Daniel Bell, and Plus 8). They sampled heavily; they did not copyright their music or their videos; they didn't list their real names on most song credits; they pressed white labels and circulated their recordings through the underground; they propogated the image of a smiley-faced skull...

The new music had edge, soul, energy, and like the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, the sound invoked the need for coming together in unity: community. And for this reason Psychic TV began hosting free outdoor parties, usually held illegally on some poor sod's expanse of fields. Drugs were dolled out liberally and consumed eagerly. Acid tabs began to give way to the new "psychology drug", Ecstasy, still pharmaceutically manufactured and tilt-o-whirl clean. In America, singer for Jane's Addiction, Perry Farrell, caught wind of P-Orridge's infamous parties and visited him at his home in Brighton, specifically to experience the madness first-hand. What he experienced transformed him so dramatically that he envisioned a brilliant way to capitalize on this sort of event, and upon returning Stateside, began laying the foundation of Lollapalooza.

"This is revolution for the hell of it. A politics of ecstasy that burns out your brains in the ultimate freakbeats. Part of the Human Be-In, the pulsing Acid Test. Expanding the frontiers of Space Technology. Your Space. Preserve your space. Be cool. SMILE. S.M.I.I.L.E. Space-Migration/Intelligence Increase/Life-Extension. Play loud and play non-game ecstasy. Designed to produce the psychedelic experience through the use of light and sound. Tune in, turn on the Acid House. Unity for the HELL of it."

DJ Doktor Megatrip

1988-1968

sleeve notes to Tekno Acid Beat

"The Ouab days were the five days left over at the year's end in [the] Mayan calender. All bad luck of the year was concentrated in the Ouab Days . . . The Ouab days are upon us."

William S. Burroughs

letters to Irving Rosenthal and Allen Ginsberg

**insert text re: P-O's involvement with dolphin doctrine, UK exile, SF rave scene**

"These dreams can be immediately interrupted and brought to an end simply by opening your eyes."

Brion Gysin

Dreamachine Plans

Why all this yammering on? What's this have to do with Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim or Ron D. Core?

Recall the Third Mind; the artist must at least recognize hirself and hir materials before inviting chaos in--otherwise it's all frivolous nonsense.

Today's "scene" is filthy with money and getting more stale and predictable by the record pressing. Vision has dissipated into a stagnant repetition of a formula and the edge has been dulled. It's not because the elements aren't right, but because the momentum is being lost. Nietzsche made it clear in The Dawn : "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." And the similarities are clear when looking out over the laser-corona'd heads of a thousand baggy Adidas-clad glowstick-toting back-packin' ravers crammed into a steamy warehouse. As my housemate Matter laments, "The unique commonality of the individual."

One tortuous aspect of electronic music culture right now is that it's populated by a lot of frequency noise--scattered energies, frequency interference. The most recognizable structure comes from the Top down, from the commercializing of a sound with the attempt to capitalize upon a subculture. And the root essence of the "underground" was once to deliberately ignore all the tactics of the record industry and commercial pop culture. Now Armand van Helden makes $50K a remix--even on the shitty ones.

In San Francisco, one major hotbed of raver trends, an ember of coherence has emerged through the "Techno Cosmic Mass" work of excommunicated, defrocked Catholic priest, Matthew Fox and his allies. Part religious mass, part rave, the experience at least strives to unify scattered energy of the bombastic sensory-exhilirated typically drug-laden aspects of ritual ecstatic dance culture (read: "raves"). By incorporating a structured ritual, Fox is attempting to do what modern electromagnetic physics is doing: when frequency-interference creates too much scattered energy, a separate, guiding frequency must be introduced to help neutralize frayed energies and thereby cause a type of harmonic resonance. Coherence.

Certainly it's not to say that Fox's concept is "the way," nor that pagan Joujoukan culture is "the way," nor that renegade illegal raves are "the way". All of these structures merely act as signposts along the path of new creations which may give rise once a Third Mind is introduced. And reintroduced...

Mektoub, fate is written; rub out thee word.

"Gray ash writing of Hassan i Sabbah sifts through the ovens. Dust and smoke. Gray ash writing of Hassan i Sabbah switch tower orders reverse fire back creatures of the oven stored in pain breaks from the torture chambers of time."

William S. Burroughs

High Priest

"Any similarity to persons living or dead is inevitable."

A Partial Reference Catalogue

>William S. Burroughs<

Publications

The Adding Machine: Selected Essays

Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology

Blade Runner, A Movie

The Book of Breething: A Creative Essay

The Burroughs File

Cities of the Red Night

Cobble Stone Gardens

Dead Fingers Talk

Electronic Revolution

Exterminator!

Ghost Of Chance

Interzone

Junky

The Last Words of Dutch Schultz

My Education: A Book Of Dreams

Naked Lunch

Painting and Guns

The Place of Dead Roads

Port Of Saints

Queer

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Soft Machine

The Ticket That Exploded

Tornado Alley

The Western Lands

The Wild Boys

Collaborative Writings

Unfinished novel by Burroughs & Jack Kerouac whose working title I can't recall or locate...

Minutes To Go By Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Brion Gysin

The Yagé Letters By Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg

Colloque de Tanger By Burroughs and Gysin

The Exterminator "

The Cat Inside " (Gysin=art only)

The Third Mind "

Films/Magnetic Media (as performer, subject)

Bill and Tony (dir. Anthony Balch)

The Bloodhounds of Broadway (dir. unknown)

Burroughs: The Movie (dir. Hal Brookner)

Commissioner Of Sewars (interview by Klaus Maeck)

The Cut-Ups (dir. Anthony Balch)

The Dark Eye (interactive CD-ROM)

Decoder (dir. Klaus Maeck)

Dream Machine (dir. Derek Jarman)

Drugstore Cowboy (dir. Gus van Sant)

Home of the Brave (dir. Laurie Anderson)

The Junky's Christmas (music video w/ Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy)

Kathy Acker in Conversation with William S. Burroughs (dir. unknown)

Naked Lunch (novel adaptation by dir. David Cronenberg)

Pirate Tape (dir. unknown)

A Thanksgiving Prayer (dir. Gus Van Sant, this short film was shown originally, as I know it, prior to Derek Jarman's same-sex masterpiece, Edward II, and I'm unsure of its video availability)

Towers Open Fire (dir. Anthony Balch)

Twister (dir. Michael Almereyda)

Recordings

The Black Rider

music by Tom Waits

Break Through In Grey Room

Call Me Burroughs

Dead City Radio

music by Hal Wilner, John Cale, Donald Fagen, Lenny Pickett, Sonic Youth, Chris Stein

Decoder soundtrack

music/performance by Psychic TV, Einstuerzende Neubauten, The The, F.M. Einheit, Genesis P-Orridge, William Burroughs,

Christiane F.

The Elvis Of Letters

music by Gus Van Sant

Nothing Here Now but The Recordings

recording by Genesis P-Orridge

The "Priest" They Called Him

music by Kurt Cobain

Songs in the Key of X

music by R.E.M.

Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales

music by The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy

10% File Under Burroughs

music by Islamic Diggers, Divination, Bomb the Bass, Scanner, Material, Your Nemesis, Chuck Prophet, The Master Musicians ofJoujouka, John Cale, Gnoua Brotherhood of Marrakesh; spoken word by Brion Gysin, Herbert Huncke, Marianne Faithfull, William Burroughs, Terry Wilson, Paul Bowles, Joe Ambrose, Stanley Booth

Uncommon Quotes: Live at the Caravan of Dreams

Vaudeville Voices

with The Dial-A-Poem Poets

Better an Old Demon Than a New God

The Dial-A-Poem Poets

Life Is A Killer

Sugar, Alcohol, and Meat

Totally Corrupt

You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With

Biographical Materials

The Job interviews

by Daniel Odier

High Priest

Timothy Leary

With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker

Victor Bockris

William S. Burroughs: A Bibliograp

hy Joe Maynard & Barry Miles

William S. Burroughs: An Annotated Bibliography of His Works and Criticism Michael B. Goodman

William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible, a Portrait

Barry Miles

The Letters Of W.S.B. 1945-1959

edited by Oliver Harris

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

by Ted Morgan

Man From Nowhere

by Joe Ambrose, Terry Wilson, and Frank Rynne

Mondo 2000 User's Guide To The New Edge

edited by Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius & Queen Mu

RE: Search #4/5: William S. Burroughs/Throbbing Gristle/Brion Gysin

edited by V. Vale & Andrea Juno

Also see Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles, Timothy Leary, Alan Ansen, Gregory Corso, Wilhelm Reich, Robert Anton Wilson, Hakim Bey...

>Brion Gysin<

Publications

Dreamachine Plans

Let the Mice In

Here To Go: Planet R-101 (interviewed by Terry Wilson)

The Last Museum

Minutes To Go (with Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs, Gregory Corso)

The Process

Stories

Films, Video

The Cut-Ups (dir. Anthony Balch)

Dream Machine (dir. Derek Jarman)

T.O.P.Y. Presents DREAMACHINE (dir. Genesis P-Orridge, Terry Wilson)

Collaborative Writings

Minutes To Go

Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Brion Gysin

The Third Mind

Burroughs and Gysin

Colloque de Tanger

Burroughs and Gysin

The Exterminator

Burroughs and Gysin

Recordings

Self-Portrait Jumping

music by Ramuntcho Matta

10% File Under Burroughs

see previous listing for contributors

The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka

produced & recorded by Brian Jones, Gysin was the inspiration for

this 1968 recording, and he, Paul Bowles, and William Burroughs

wrote the liner notes

"Pistol Poem" and Permutated Poems and Symphonies

BBC audio; I don't know of its availability

>Genesis P-Orridge<

Related Projects

Coum Transmissions

Throbbing Gristle

Psychick Television (Psychic TV)

Psychic TV partial discography

Allegory and Self

Al-Or-Al

Beyond Thee Infinite Beat

Cathedral Engine

Cold Blue Torch

Cold Dark Matter (reissued with "Splinter Test" box set)

Decoder soundtrack (with Einstuerzende Neubauten, The The, William S. Burroughs, F.M. Einheit)

Direction Ov Travel (with Z'ev)

Dreams Less Sweet

Electric Newspaper (released quarterly; issues 1-4 currently available)

God Star: The Singles Pt. 2

Hex Sex: The Singles Pt. 1

A Hollow Cost

"Joy"/"Politics Ov Ecstasy"

Kondole Pts. 1+2 (reissued on Silent with additional part and notes)

Kondole 1, 2 & 3

Listen Today... (with CDV featuring images from Gysin's Dreamachine)

[23 live albums, including:]

Live at Mardis Gras

Live at Thee Berlin Wall Pts. 1+2

Live at Thee Pyramid

Live at Thee Ritz

Live in Bregenz

Live in Glasgow

Live in London

Live in New York

Live in Reykjavik

Live in Tokyo

"Love War Riot"/"Eve Ov Destruction"

"Love War Riot" remixes

"MEIN*GOeTT*IN*GEN"

Mouth of the Night (also reissued as Mouth Ov Thee Knight on Syard)

Peak Hour

Splinter Test

a. Eclipse Ov Flowers

b. Tarot Ov Abomination

c. Stained By Dead Horses

d. Mouth Ov Thee Knight

e. Sugarmorphoses

f. Cold Dark Matter

Psychic TV Presents Ultrahouse "BonE" and "Tempter" remixes

Themes 1-10

Towards Thee Infinite Beat

"Tribal" remixes

"Tribal" Drum Club remix e.p.

Trip Reset

"Tune In, Turn On Thee Acid House" remixes

Compilation Recordings

Better An Old Demon Than A New God

Fifty Years Of Sunshine

From Here To Tranquility

High Jack

Jack the Tab (also reissued as Jack Thee Tab double album on Wax Trax)

Psychic TV Presents Ultrahouse: The L.A. Connection

Space Daze

Tekno Acid Beat (reissued as 2nd disc/record on Jack Thee Tab reissue)

Trance Atlantic

Recording Collaborations

At Stockholm

Psychic TV & White Stains

Furnace

Microscopic e.p.

Download with Genesis P-Orridge

Unhealthy

Lab Report with Genesis P-Orridge and Lydia Lunch

What's History

Genesis P-Orridge & Stan Bingo

Films, Video

Catalan (dir. Derek Jarman, P-Orridge)

8 Transmissions 8 (various directors, including P-Orridge)

Joy (dir. P-Orridge)

Live In Berlin (dir. unknown)

Live In Tokyo (dir. unknown)

Maple Syrup (dir. unknown)

Moonchilde (dir. P-Orridge)

T.O.P.Y. presents Brion Gysin's Dreamachine (dir. P-Orridge, Terry Wilson)

Unclean (dir. Cerith Wyn Evans, P-Orridge)

Publications

The Psychick Bible

Rapid Eye 2 (edited by Simon Dwyer)

See also the works of Coum Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Chris + Cosey, Conspiracy International Project, Current 93, Nurse With Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Lustmord...