Better get out of the neighborhood, that hick is likely to call the law.
He walked fifteen blocks, sweat running down his body.
There was a raw ache in his lungs, his lips drew back off his yellow teeth with a snarl
of desperation.
I got his door somehow, for I had some decent clothes.
Daddy saw a suitcase standing in a doorway.
Good mother.
He stopped and pretended to look for a cigarette.
Funny you thought, no one around.
Inside maybe, phoning for a cab.
The corner was only a few miles in the way.
Danny took a deep breath and picked up the suitcase.
He made the corner another block, another corner, the case was heavy.
I got a score alright, he thought maybe enough for a sixteenth in a room.
Danny shivered and twitched, feeling a warm room and heroin amputating into his vein.
Let's have a quick look.
He stepped in the morningside part.
Goin' around.
Jesus, I never saw the town this empty.
He opened the suitcase, two long packages and browns wrapping.
Took one out, it felt like meat.
The door of the package opened at one end, revealing a woman's naked foot.
The toe nails were painted with purple-red polish.
He dropped the leg with a snare of disgust.
Holy Jesus, he claimed.
The routines people put down these days.
Legs!
Well, I got a case anyway.
He dumped the other leg out, no blood stains.
He snapped the case shut and walked away.
Legs, he muttered.
Welcome to our fourth episode about William Boroughs, an influential American writer of
the 20th century who influenced the beat poets, who popularized heroin, among others,
who left a huge impact on American culture and died in the 90s,
which makes him a very exciting figure of the time.
Today Jonas is the main moderator and Mimi and I are limited to throwing in useless comments.
Hello, I'm working on Boroughs today, or we are working on Boroughs today.
I would first introduce the biography, his life, which is very exciting.
He lived in many different countries.
Then I would go into aspects of his work that have been less considered so far,
but are probably not unimportant for interpretation.
Probably even essential.
His spirituality, his belief in magic.
Let's start with his biography.
He was born in St. Louis in 1914.
His father had a gift and antique shop and his mother was a housewife.
He didn't have any money problems because his grandfather invented the calculator.
He founded a company and it went quite well, obviously.
His grandfather simply invented the calculator. How crazy is that?
A real calculator with a lot of keys, like a huge typewriter.
Many of the other computers at the time made a lot of mistakes.
Boroughs grandfather spent seven years in the bank checking the calculator.
He hated the job and after moving to St. Louis he took over a small factory
and invented a huge calculator, a kind of pre-protocomputer,
with which relatively reliable calculations could be carried out.
They used all banks in America relatively quickly, up to 1890 as small pages.
He came from a wealthy family.
They had a house with several servants, a gardener, two cooks,
a little girl and a butler. Of course, he was not to be missed.
He grew up quite well, you could say.
Most of the time he was like that.
However, he had a life in his early years.
When he was four years old, he had an incident that probably shaped his entire life.
He can only remember some of it. He was four years old.
He had a little girl, with whom he had a great understanding.
When he was a little boy, she took him to a friend of hers
and her husband, who was a veterinarian.
Anyway, the four-year-old boy encouraged the veterinarian to blow him up.
What?
Yes, that was his punishment. He had to blow up an animal doctor.
I don't think it was a punishment. It's a bit unclear.
His memory of it is...
It was certainly not a reward, right?
It was certainly not a reward. I don't think so either.
He told his brother about it, about what happened.
And they thought, should we tell our parents about it?
They never did.
It just happened and they didn't talk about it anymore.
Interestingly, about a year later, he also had his first visions, I would say,
and also panic attacks, probably triggered by the event.
For example, when he played in the forest with his brother,
he saw a green reindeer with very thin legs that jumped through the trees.
His brother also said it, but he didn't see it, he ignored it,
because he knew, oh, William, he always talks a lot and sees things that others don't see.
And he just ignored it.
So he had access to these, I would say, intermediate worlds and beings that he had seen as a child.
His early childhood definitely shaped this experience and also his writing,
as we will see in the future.
He went to school, very normal, and during that time he discovered that he was gay.
swarms for boys in his diary books, with eleven or so,
which he then, when that was not repeated, he burned them all.
At that time, that was the 20s, 1920s,
discovering that you are gay is not that easy either.
And I think he never really said it publicly,
he never really said that he was gay.
It was known, but he never really said it.
But he definitely felt attracted to men.
I have to go back to his childhood girls,
because they probably also gave him the first contact with drugs, with substances.
So he brought him into contact with them.
Did his parents vote for him?
Yes, he was then sent to his first school,
because he probably tried sleeping pills with a few classmates during the break,
how that works.
And that then flew up, he had to change school,
but then he also finished school in St. Louis.
And after he was done with school, he went to Harvard
and studied English literature.
He also completed that, did a bachelor's degree.
And when he was done with his studies,
he then went on trips, as is common today.
He looked at the world a little bit.
Money has never been a problem in his whole life,
because he, I can already mention that,
because he always got pocket money from his parents,
about 200 euros a month,
and you could live off of that at some point.
It comes down to the 200 dollars in the 20s.
So 200 dollars in the 1920s are,
I'll take a quick look at it scientifically.
A great amount.
200 dollars in the 1920s are worth 3,000 dollars today.
Yes, so he could live off of that,
just from his pocket money,
that he was granted, because,
his mother really honored him.
She once told him when he was already an adult,
that she kisses the floor on which his feet go,
so she was really fond of him,
and they also had a connection
between the occult and the magical,
because his mother also believed in it,
and that he was so close to them.
His father was a little more distant,
but he didn't really hold back his wife
from worshipping her son,
and in fact he always had him
out of difficult situations.
I have no idea, if he was in conflict with the police,
he got him out of there,
so he always had support, in any case.
And also with his homosexuality,
they came to be,
because through their antiquities,
they were apparently in contact with gay people.
From the art scene, theater scene,
I have no idea who needs props for performances,
but they went there,
so they were familiar with it,
and that's why they didn't find it that bad.
They were probably also more well-read,
average personalities of the time,
they heard the story,
where there was a completely different reference to it,
and if you sell naked Greek statues all day long,
I mean...
yeah, you can't have a problem with that.
He first traveled to Europe,
after he had finished studying English literature.
He then enrolled in Vienna
for a medical studies,
but he never finished that,
but he enrolled because he was interested in human bodies,
and he traveled all over Europe,
including Croatia,
where he met Ilse Klapper,
a Jew who fled from the Nazis,
and they decided to marry
so that she could go to the US.
So they entered a marriage
so that she could live in safety.
And I think she's...
Against the will of Boros' parents.
Against the will of Boros' parents, yes.
That's right.
Gay, okay, but Jewish?
Yeah.
You have to draw the line in this time.
It would be crazy if it was open.
You can't be too liberal in the 1920s.
You have to think about it.
Yes.
Not yet, it will be dangerous.
She lived in the US for six years,
until 1945, and then she came back.
And the marriage was then separated.
While she was in the US,
they met regularly,
they were always in contact.
When he was back in the US,
maybe I can say that in Europe
he had explored the gay scene a bit,
in Europe.
In Vienna, too.
And he gained some experience there,
probably more than in the US.
And when he was back,
he enrolled for a study
in archeology and ethnology.
What was important for his writing,
especially the Maya,
and their mythology,
fascinated him a lot.
He studied a lot with it,
read all the Maya codices.
They are very nice,
and you can look at them online as a scan.
The Vienna Library has them online, I think.
In different European libraries,
there are very nice Maya codices
available on the website.
That's a good tip.
Thanks for the introduction.
He was supposed to be,
because the Second World War was still in full swing,
enrolled,
but he was then
demoted due to his unstable psyche.
No wonder what happened to him until then.
Or since childhood.
He was not accepted,
then he was deported to New York.
A little conspiracy theory.
He was actually demoted,
and then he wrote letters to his mother.
And then his mother asked him
to meet with a friend in a psychiatric hospital
and set him free.
You could also interpret it
as a privilege of the upper class,
the late Vietnam War.
You have contacts,
and you can get your son out
if he's sitting in a barrack
and doesn't want to go.
He sat there for a few weeks
and then his mother, as a boy, came out
and didn't have to go to the Pacific War.
Yes.
That's not unlikely, I would say.
He was often kicked out
and could fully play out his privileges.
In any case, he came to New York,
and that's the first important
station in his life
where he also met people
who accompanied him to the end of his life.
For one, Allen Ginsberg,
with whom you became friends until death,
he was also a little in love with him.
Again and again.
It wasn't completely repeated,
but it actually had an impact on their friendship.
We definitely have to make an episode
about Allen Ginsberg.
That would be very exciting.
It's later on to the light-shape hippie movement.
And then to the light-shape of the pedo movement.
The pedo movement.
That's a bit more in another episode,
but imagine him as an old, white,
bearded, long-haired hippie man
in the 70s, at least.
And he wrote wonderful poems.
The Howl is.
That's probably why you know him.
But I don't want to go into the Pete Generation
in that case, but they met for the first time.
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, of course,
and William Burroughs.
Those were the three writers.
And there was also Lucien Carr.
So, Neil Cassidy, people who didn't write,
but who provided the food for the stories.
Who took a lot of drugs.
Who took a lot of drugs, had a lot of women.
Many soldiers who returned from the Second World War
and didn't fit into society anymore.
Many traumatized soldiers who decided
against civic life and the American Dream
and were looking for an alternative.
And thus laid the foundation for counterculture
in America in the coming years.
Exactly.
Maybe you can summarize the generation.
Maybe Burroughs was much older than Ginsberg and Kerouac.
I think they were almost 10 years apart.
He was older than almost everyone.
He was the pioneer.
Exactly.
And he was in New York.
He didn't really like the university.
For him it was all an English thing.
Everything was made up in England.
Everything was fake.
He didn't like the fake people.
Anyway, in New York he met Jack Kerouac's wife,
Edie Parker, his second wife.
That was Joanne Vollmer.
She lived with Kerouac's girlfriend.
And she was brought together with Burroughs
by this mutual friendship.
They got along well.
They were two people who thought alike.
I think Burroughs appreciated her intelligence.
And she had influence on his books.
She gave him ideas.
She was a muse.
And her role in the Beat Generation
is probably too short.
You don't find so much about her.
Exactly.
He met Joanne Vollmer.
And they got together.
Joanne Vollmers was married.
And she had a daughter.
They weren't together anymore.
They were more or less in love.
If we're in New York,
I should mention that a friend of Burroughs,
Kerouac and Ginsburg,
committed a murder.
I think it was Lucien K.
He had a lover who...
Oh, that was Burroughs' lover
who moved to St. Louis with him.
He was a friend of Burroughs.
He was as old as Burroughs.
They were friends.
His name was David Cameron.
He looked at Lucien K.
He stalked him.
You could say that.
He stalked him.
And that was very stressful for Lucien K.
He stabbed him.
They didn't show the murder.
Burroughs noticed it.
But he didn't show the murder.
So they got into a conflict with the law.
Burroughs' parents bought him out.
So it wasn't a problem for them.
There's also a film,
Kill Your Darling,
where you can read about it.
And there's also a book
written by Burroughs and Kerouac.
And the hippos were boiled in their tanks.
It describes this murder.
It's a story.
If you're interested,
you can check it out.
In New York,
he became heroin addicted.
Yay!
I was just waiting for that.
Finally!
We're finally in the heroin addiction.
A little bit.
When he got a little addicted
to what happened,
and then he got dizzy
and didn't think much,
the problem with heroin is
that you only have it for a few months.
You're still trying to satisfy your addiction
without feeling any effect.
Yes, he describes that
very well in his books.
He became addicted to heroin
and also dealt with it
to finance his addiction.
He took on various shit jobs
as a camp hunter,
as a private detective.
Detective elements
are also present in many of his books.
You can imagine that
he felt like a detective.
Absolutely.
He wrote down
his first heroin experience
in New York
in his first novel,
Junkie.
That was probably
the most accessible novel
because it was
fairly linear.
He read very well
and had
an extremely
deep insight
into the drug scene,
the even smaller drug scene
that developed for heroin
and also for weed
and other things in New York.
He describes very well
how he tried to deal with weed
and how people got annoyed
because they wanted to sit at his place for hours
and always smoked joints.
When he changed his heroin,
people came and wanted their stuff
and disappeared.
It's great to sell heroin
and be a drug dealer.
He also popularized
many terms like smack
and junk for heroin
and also the term
junkie itself.
He was the first
to do that in a literary way
and thus
presented the scene
and the terms
in a literary way
for the first time.
Burroughs has a few
terms that are
important, including heavy metal.
The band Steely Dan
has its name
from Burroughs.
Steely Dan is
a huge
steel dildo in Naked Lunch.
His influence
on pop culture
was
and probably still is big.
He was in New York
addicted to heroin
and met his
wife, his second wife,
Joan Folmer.
He noticed
the murder of David Cameron
and didn't report it.
He got into a conflict with the law.
His parents kicked him out.
He spent some time with his parents.
Joan Folmer
became addicted to drugs
with Burroughs.
Both of them didn't give up.
It wasn't just heroin,
but alcohol in particular.
The others were more
into the band.
Ashlandorff,
Burroughs, also liked
speedballs, a mixture of cocaine
and heroin.
Various amphetamines
he could get in the pharmacy
with fake recipes.
When he came back
to New York,
he decided
that he and
Joan
had to leave the city
and moved to a farm in Texas.
Spent by his parents.
Of course.
When they lived in Texas,
their son
William Burroughs Jr. was born.
Creative naming for an author.
Burroughs was also named
as a grandpa.
He probably said that.
I'm telling you all the time
about his second wife, Joan Folmer.
He had a son.
He was gay at the time.
Joan Folmer knew that.
It probably led
to conflicts in the relationship.
Burroughs was gone
with his young son and
got used to it.
He was able to
satisfy his needs.
That was clear.
But it still
led to conflicts.
They had a classic
ancient Greek marriage.
The woman is
the leader of the household
and the man is
happy with the young people
in the high school.
In Texas,
Burroughs
also started
marijuana.
The police
found out about it
because they caught a letter
sent to Ginsburg.
The letters
weren't well coded.
If you read them today,
you think, guys use code.
At least a little.
You know there's censorship.
But no.
Yes.
Of course,
he was sentenced to death.
Burroughs
didn't want to do that.
His family probably
couldn't get him out.
So he fled
with his family
to Mexico City
and wanted to stay there
for five years until the crimes were over.
In Mexico,
he was enrolled in college.
Archeology.
Still.
He was in Mexico
and was close to the Mayas.
He was interested.
I could say more
about the Maya thing.
When I read my text collection,
his influence on
the Maya apocalypse.
In 2012, the world was under
and they made it really known
that Terrence McHale
was the one
who wrote the text.
But they all read Burroughs.
Burroughs knew about the codices
and
in 1960,
he wrote the exterminator
from the end of the insect era
and then
continued in other novels.
He was
definitely a
pathfinder.
He knew that at some point
certain consciousness
had to happen
because of an apocalyptic state.
For him, it was something
psychological.
A change of consciousness.
A shift of consciousness.
The whole Beat Generation
was, as it was later,
looking for higher truths
in search of this change
of consciousness.
A bit like John Dee and Edward Kelly
from our last episodes.
That you can get higher truths,
that you can reach wisdom.
A bit like Joe Rogan and his Ayahuasca.
There is his constant
DMT talk.
And at the same time,
they were also children of the Cold War
and were therefore
apocalyptic like John Dee
and Edward Kelly.
And before that, they were also children of the Second World War.
They are people
who experienced the Second World War
as adult people.
And twenty years later,
the great powers of the world
want to bounce back from the universe.
Bomb.
And yes,
the atomic destruction of the planet
is currently at stake.
So apocalyptic visions
are certainly possible
in this area.
Or are certainly understandable.
And the solution of the Beat Generation
was more of a retreat from society.
To say, we take drugs.
And to do something different.
And something different is everything that is forbidden.
So we do magic drugs
and
wild ebbs.
For the 50s understanding of the Americans.
Where there was a lot of
white magic
and American Dream.
When I'm in Mexico right now,
it fits well with the Mayans.
And his Mayan...
As I said, in The Exterminator
he had already written that.
And he was very successful in writing it in 1960.
It's probably
the least known term.
But he also
took up this whole Mayan theme
in The Soft Machine.
That's the first part
of the Nova Trilogy,
as it's called. All cut-up works.
And there's also a chapter
that's called
The Mayan Chapter.
And in which
the narrator hires a corrupt doctor
to get him a special
drug that
will enable the narrator
to travel into the past
and take over the body of another person.
And after
he's taken the drug,
the narrator travels back into the Old Mayan period,
takes the body of a simple
field worker and
reports the following.
I quote it.
I translated it into German.
Of course, it's different in English, but
I think it should fit.
I have explained that
the control system of the Maya
depends on the calendar
and the codex,
which contain symbols
that represent all states of thought
and feeling
which human beings
can feel under such limited circumstances.
These are the instruments
with which they turn
and control thought units.
I think it's a very
interesting way of thinking.
These codexes and calendars
are instruments
of control for
the Bureau,
of thought control
with which the rulers
keep their subjects
in order.
After the narrator
has entered the temple
and this
telepathic
and
telepathic machinery
– it's all about
thought control, according to the Bureau –
and after
the machine has been sabotaged
and the thousand-feet priest
have been destroyed,
the final sentences of the
chapter come and they are
as follows.
A great weight fell from the sky.
Winds of the earth
crushed palms to the ground.
Rolls over the Maya control calendar.
And it describes
what
is apparently
in the Dresden Codex
where it is mentioned
that this apocalyptic event,
this shift
of human consciousness
is represented
by a god
who pours water on the earth.
Like a great flood
which is also shown
in the Bible,
in the Gospels,
in the Bible, etc.
It's everywhere.
He has
certainly influenced
this 2012 apocalyptic event.
We are still
in Mexico
in order to locate
where Burrosin has fled
after he
has built marijuana in Texas.
And there
he has continued to study
and to deal with the Maya
and their mythology.
And Mexico City
is also
the place in the world
where the most
significant event of his life
took place.
If it is not that
this sexual abuse
was in his childhood, then it was definitely the eliseness
that I will tell you about in a moment.
He and his wife were at a party
with a friend in Mexico City.
Both of them were already very drunk.
And
they then
had the wonderful idea
probably,
well, you don't know exactly why,
there are different sources
that describe the whole process
a little differently.
On the one hand, it means that,
well, maybe I should tell you
what exactly happened.
They wanted
to
recreate the apple scene
from Wilhelm Tell
which is very famous
where Wilhelm Tell
shoots the apple from the head of his son
with a bow.
They wanted to recreate it with a glass
on Joann's head
and William Burroughs,
who I haven't mentioned yet,
was a great weapon lover,
generally a very American character.
He
was very close to a great weapon,
always slept under a pillow with a weapon,
always wore a...
A big drinker.
He always wore weapons, bite on his body,
knives, pistols.
Yes,
he always had to defend himself
or at least be prepared.
Sounds still pretty paranoid.
Yes, very paranoid,
very American.
Anyway, they wanted to recreate this apple scene
in an extremely drunk,
very drunk state.
And yes,
that went wrong, of course.
He shot her in the forehead and she died.
Later, I think, Burroughs
told the investigators in America
the story that he wanted to show his friends
his great weapons
and then his pistol fell out of his hand
or from the table
and then fell on the floor and then the shot
and she was standing there stupidly
and everyone shot her in the face.
But it actually sounds
more like a story
aftertaste.
Oh, his hand went around in a circle.
Yes, the gun fell very stupidly, you know.
But it didn't hit her as much as the woman
from Burroughs.
Yes.
Tadaam!
He said that maybe
because Joanne was also
addicted to drugs
and maybe it was also
a death wish of her own
but I don't know if that's a
criminal offense.
I think so.
I think Burroughs
got away very well.
He was only 14 days in prison
in Mexico and then his
parents bought him out again.
And he was
stamped off as an accident.
What it probably was.
But I can't say.
You could talk about a
fatal death
if you were drunk in Wilhelm Tell
and probably on heroin and other drugs
in a room with your wife
to impress any friends.
That's at least fatal
if you're careful.
But I think it's a very
serious crime.
I think it's a very serious crime.
At least fatal.
Probably with a statement.
He got away very well.
Let's put it this way.
If Wilhelm Tell had killed his child
instead of getting an apple
Switzerland would either be a different country
or he wouldn't be the national hero of Switzerland.
Yes.
What he killed his wife
took him very well with it.
He couldn't explain
how he
was capable of
getting it to this point.
How the universe could allow it.
He was such a good shooter.
In the introduction
to Queer
he writes again
He says in principle
that he would never become a writer
without the death of his wife.
That that was driving
you in a certain way.
And that of course he says
that he takes
when he wrote that he was possessed by a bad spirit that went into him
and that he didn't leave him until the end of his life.
Does the evil spirit mean heroin?
No.
But the ugly spirit, the ugly spirit is always called,
he didn't give the name to the creature himself.
That came from Brian Geiss, who we will also talk about later,
an important figure in his life.
But he assumed that he was possessed and that this evil spirit brought him to miss the shot.
Well, he hit him.
That was evil.
He tries to write something out of it and of course he tries to find an explanation for it.
Why this happens and what is the evil spirit that went into him.
So possession, also in his books, plays a central role.
Ghosts or that you enter another body and control it.
That's how he explained this miss shot.
He also had several exorcisms done to get rid of this spirit.
So really, until the end of his life he tried to get rid of this spirit.
Whether it was in the swiss huts with Sioux shamans or through his own experiments,
we will come back to that later.
It all starts when he has shot his wife.
Does he have to leave America first?
Does he have to process it somehow?
Does he have to understand what happened?
Because he doesn't do that in any way.
That's why he goes to South America first.
He heard about a miracle drug called Yahweh, today called Ayahuasca.
Are you Joe Rogan?
He is definitely the one who was so ahead of Joe Rogan with all this talk.
It's unbelievable.
He is definitely the direct precursor.
Definitely.
He then hoped to reduce his obscenity through the experience with Ayahuasca.
And also to process the whole tragedy with his wife, to make new spiritual experiences.
During this time in South America he wrote two novels.
I think it was the first novel he published.
And also Queer, in which he negotiates his homosexuality.
It was published later, a few decades later.
In Junkie, this search for this miracle drug is teased.
And in Queer, it is followed as a side storyline.
Exactly.
And while he was in South America, he also wrote many letters to Elginzberg.
They were also published, the Yahweh letters.
You can also read these correspondence.
And he then made the first experience.
He probably popularized Ayahuasca as one of the first white, one of the first old-fashioned men who had Ayahuasca in it.
If he had had it, he would have filmed it for his channel.
Since then, he has to write letters to Elginzberg.
He traveled a bit through South America.
I think he was especially in Columbia, in Putamayo, right?
Putumayo.
Exactly.
Interestingly, the McKenners, for example, all went to Putamayo.
They all read the Bureaus.
And yes, it's very interesting to follow this series back.
Exactly.
When he was done with South America, his desire for travel was still not stopped.
He was on the road a lot, in general.
Then he went back to Europe, to London, to Paris.
In Paris, it was called the Beat Hotel.
Yes, it was in Paris, and then he started writing Naked Lush.
1959, just as an orientation.
We are now in the late 50s.
He then traveled to Tanga, Morocco, over Europe.
At that time, still an international zone, i.e. internationally managed.
It was a paradise for drug addicts, for smugglers.
It was not controlled much, it was cheap.
You write today's Maoco relatively well, I think.
Yes, he could live without problems from his pocket money, that his parents gave him.
And he lived on stubborn boys and heroin.
That was all he consumed in that time.
Yes.
Love and air.
Yes, love and air.
Oh my God.
It always means that he wrote so much while he was on heroin.
But you don't write on heroin, so you probably don't do anything.
But he did write a lot of letters, right?
He wrote letters his whole life, like books, I think.
He wrote a lot of letters, but he also published some books.
So...
Eh.
There was no SMS or something like that.
I don't know if he used that, probably.
But I never see him on Twitter.
I see him on Ed Kuhn.
He was actually very shady or darknated and not on the road.
On very, very funny forums he borrows.
Yes, yes.
So he was there in Tanshan.
There he also met the painter Brian Gysin for the first time.
They actually had similar interests.
They both wanted drugs, mythology, the paranormal.
But at the beginning they didn't get along well with each other.
And so they first separated.
I think Gysin went to Paris.
He first had a restaurant in Tanga that was closed.
He believes because he was cursed.
So he was also superstitious like Borrows.
He went back to Paris.
And in Paris they met again.
And this time it worked out between the two.
They then got along very well.
So they took drugs together, conducted consciousness experiments.
Which Borrows also did in New York with Joe and Folmer, with Ginsburg.
So telepathy experiments and everything that concerns the paranormal.
To get in touch with some creatures, with ghosts.
And they did that in Paris and Tanga.
Gysin was also enthusiastic about Scientology.
The Trance music, the Master Musicians of Tachukal are perhaps some of the terms.
They played in his restaurant.
So it's Berber music, Trance-like.
Scientology was also a completely new invention at that time.
After the Second World War.
That's a new, aspiring movement.
Yes.
So Bill Borrows and Brian Gysin conducted consciousness research.
And they also mixed things wildly together.
They took psilocybin, set themselves up by stroboscopic light.
And added three radios on white noise.
To have three different types that penetrate your consciousness.
And yes.
If you've ever taken such substances, you might be aware that it's not the best environment.
Flashlight and white noise sounds.
Borrows had a lot of horror trips.
And his opinion of psychedelic drugs has also had a lot of influence.
He always thought it was shit.
So not good.
Then also the Dream Machine was developed.
And he called it his flicker induction device.
You have to imagine it like a plate plate.
And then it was like a piece of paper.
Or it could also be metal with holes in it.
Different shapes.
A light in the middle, a horn.
And then it turned and you had a kind of light game.
So you could look inside.
And then you should expand your consciousness.
And take other things into account.
Hypnotize.
You look inside with closed eyes.
Because through the eyelids you can see something.
And as I said, they also combined other drugs with it.
And then the effect is probably enhanced.
Yes.
What did this result in with all the experiments?
In fact, yes.
Both Borrows pushed themselves a little.
The more the relationship with Geisen intensified, the more esoteric experiences Borrows had.
Both pushed themselves a little.
It's like in the last episode, the and Edward Kelly maybe.
Geisen was a bit like his medium, his guru.
The whole group, also Ginsburg, popularized the whole thing a bit.
Also the gnostic trends that he slowly took on.
I haven't gotten to talk about that yet.
They really have mirror work, tell-telling, telepathy experiments,
trance, induced by whatever, through music, dance and so on.
They apparently did that every day.
And then they threw in munter, hashish, mescaline and other substances.
And yes, sometimes they then...
The devil suddenly appeared in their room,
dressed like a Swedish gentleman from the 18th century and walked around.
And Borrows was very enthusiastic about it.
He then wrote to Ginsburg,
I have made such incredible discoveries in the field of psychological research.
What is happening now is that I am literally transforming into someone else.
Not into a human creature, but human-like.
He wears a kind of green uniform.
His face is full of black, boiling fumes and what people would call evil.
I would like to read another quote from Borrows where he describes
what they did in the world of Tanga and Paris.
All these experiments that were supposed to be there.
And he writes,
We all thought we were interplanetary agents
who were involved in a deadly battle.
Slaves, codes,
detainees.
Back then, everything seemed real.
From today on, who knows.
They promised us a transport from the area, from time
and into space.
Everything had a purpose.
The danger and the fear were real enough.
If someone tries to kill you, you know it.
So, yes, they were in a fight.
So they believed that they were agents in an esoteric war against demyurgy.
And that also appears in Borrows' novels.
Often, against some...
So, in his novel, the Archons are...
I wanted to talk about that later.
In his novel, the Archons...
Demyurgy is a bad god.
And there are gods who keep people from the transcendence.
These are the Archons.
It's described in the Gnosis.
There are different currents.
But that...
Demyurgy is not necessarily evil.
He is the creator of the world.
He brings the world into being.
And he stands for wisdom, for knowledge, for spirit.
He can be experienced by people.
So, the Gnosis is a mystical current.
It developed especially in the Urchristian era.
There are many apocryphal writings.
There are also many Gnostic communities today.
The Yesibs are, as you can see, Gnostic.
Or whoever calls them Gnostic.
There is Mandaea.
Manichea.
There are also incredibly interesting religions.
The term Gnosis is, however,
a scientific collection of drawings
for all these Urchristian currents.
And it goes back to the Greek term Gnosis,
for your information.
And all these currents,
summarized under this term,
are closely related to the concept of wisdom
and divine knowledge.
And that's what Burroughs tried to achieve
in these seances, in these
parapsychological, mystical experiences.
But I have to add something, Jonas.
Because most of the time,
Demyurgy is often the creator of the world.
And because we live in an imperfect world,
we are considered an imperfect god,
or an imperfect creator of worlds.
Who gave us wisdom, but not enough.
And Gnosis is striving to get away from the world
into a better one.
So this paradisiacal idea
that there is the perfect world
has a strong influence on Christianity
and the belief in life after death.
But Demyurgy is definitely not the good god,
that we know from modern Christian religion.
Maybe a short sentence about Gnosis or Gnostics.
Many believed in Demyurgy,
but that there is a good god
who loves you,
above Demyurgy.
That's what Burroughs didn't believe.
I read some papers by Tommy T. Cowan,
who called it Archonism.
And that's probably more correct.
Archons are in Burroughs works,
mostly insect overlords,
scorpions, thousand-feet-long-trails.
Probably all creatures
that he saw on his trips,
into these horror worlds
where he was catapulted.
And beside that,
in Burroughs works,
the body is something
that has to be overcome,
destroyed in most cases.
He strives to...
Many of his romans
play in an in-between world
where bodies don't really exist.
And another important Archon
in his work is the language itself.
He believes that language is a virus,
that it stops the human being
from perceiving things as they are.
I saw a nice diagram.
There is a virus,
the language itself is the virus,
that has affected the human being.
And the language, in turn,
controls our perception of the mind.
What is true,
is determined by the language.
And with that, he also
influences the French post-structuralism,
the literary and philosophical postmodernism
a lot.
He also gives a great criticism of the language.
He says that the language is something like
a curse that affects us humans,
that lies between us and reality.
Jacques Lacan also says
that we, through the entry into the symbolic universe,
through the learning of a language,
actually remove ourselves from the world
and no longer perceive it with children's eyes,
as we would perceive it before we learned it.
And through the language we learn,
we are bound into a culture
that dominates us more and more,
that makes us unhappy
and confuses us into complexities.
And actually nothing is a veil
that lays over the world.
And seeing a veil
wanted to break through burrows.
Exactly.
I also noticed something else
about the bodies.
On the one hand, they overcome,
on the other hand, the bodies are also ambivalent,
because sex is also a way
to escape the body.
It is also a form
where you can transcend and break out.
So on the one hand, the body is a prison
and on the other hand, it is also possible
to somehow reach this transcendence
with the body
and escape the Archon.
Did Alistair Crowley read all of this?
Because it sounds very much like
his sex magic,
where he also tried to channel
all of the sexual energy
that is released in the orgasm
and thus...
I'm sure that Burrows
read Crowley.
Wilhelm Reich definitely read
the orgasm.
I haven't read Reich, so I can't say much.
But he also deals a lot with sex.
And in Burrows,
he explains that
it causes over-sex
for bodies.
And brutality,
a lot of fighting, a lot of murder,
a lot of beatings, a lot of violence.
But all of this has its own meaning.
The Archons have to be fought.
But that sounds
very much like Scientology.
He was also briefly at Scientology,
but he didn't
get along with them.
He was briefly at them,
but he didn't get along with them.
I don't know why.
You have to become a straight edger.
You have to be very tough against drug consumption.
And that doesn't fit at all
to Burrows' daily routine.
To subordinate the hierarchy,
I don't see the little Willy either.
No.
He quickly makes a Wilhelm Tell.
In no case.
The basic idea was maybe good,
but he's more of a
the real deal.
Fight aliens? Yes.
Refuse to ask? No.
Back to Tanga,
to Geisen and Burrows.
We were just speaking as Archons.
And it's great
that we can follow the cut-up method
developed by Burrows
and Geisen.
Burrows writes to Geisen
that he's the inventor.
But even Tristan Zahra
with his Dada poems
has already introduced
this cut-up style.
It was then further developed
by Burrows.
The idea is that you
cut a text or several texts
into pieces,
and then put them together again.
I also learned it
not by chance,
because you still have a certain
way of putting the pieces together.
And for him
it was
often seen as
an anti-authoritarian method
to tear up language,
to create intertextuality.
But
in all
literary criticism
it became
so indistinguishable,
this cut-up method
has an indistinguishable meaning.
Unfortunately,
that's over.
His esoteric
is not serious enough.
For him, the magic was what he
used to cut up the language.
The cutting of the language
was probably the same
in fighting, I would say.
And then in Tanga
in Paris
he wrote a lot.
He called the whole thing
the world-horde.
The word-hound,
the word-herde, if you will.
It must have been a lot.
And from this big text body
four books were created.
One was Naked Lunch
and then the Nova Trilogy.
The Nova Trilogy
are pure cut-up books.
Not so easy to read.
Not easy at all to read.
It's a fight.
But everything you get when you read
a cut-up book is
a floating association.
Small words
that you can hang around
often very beautiful
metaphorically, allegorically.
They're solving something in one go.
But there's no reading flow.
There's not
this feeling of
sinking into a book.
You're still in your head
at the same time
to understand every single sentence
what this sentence can mean.
You're thrown back
to a completely different context,
to a completely different association.
You're jumping in your head all the time
and this reading has something
disturbing,
something mystical,
because you're used to
to want to find a logic,
to want to interpret
a text
and to want to interpret the text.
But this doesn't work here.
And that's what breaks my idea
that a book should be
built up linearly,
contains truths and yeah.
I can maybe give
a quote from him.
He said
or said it sensibly that
these exercises to expand
the consciousness
should teach him
to think in association spots
instead of in words.
And that
is exactly what happens with cut-up.
You have to...
He also dealt with
the hieroglyph systems,
the Egyptian
hieroglyph system, the Maya.
I think he assumed
that the picture was
in front of the word,
I think he said that.
That's why he wanted
to go back to these association spots,
as he called it.
And he also meant that
the words or at least
the way we use them
can be
in the way of what I
call non-physical experience,
he said.
And that it's time
to think about leaving the body behind us.
So here again
that we step out of the body.
Again a motif
that appears in the postmodern
again and again, especially
in the Leus Guattari and
the famous Antonin Arthor
with the
theater of terror.
In general, all the
Plemiscan currents finally live
from leaving the body and the material world behind
and coming into
the transcendent state of mind
where you communicate with absolute truths
and recognize truths
that may not be expressed
by language.
And what he might mean
that the language stops you from doing so
is probably also
related to terms like
mystic or esoteric
or
paranormal
that question
the experience itself in a certain way
and that
prove with a word
that this experience is already
pre-ordered and integrated
without such experiences or creative
input
the attention and significance
of the language.
What kind of beings are they?
And it was quite good
to cut the texts
to reorder
to reveal new meanings
that were previously hidden.
In general, control
is also a big concept
in his books and everything
that controls you.
Whether it's drugs, violence, sex
these are also
forms of control
with which the body
is also penetrated, attacked.
But interestingly
as I said, sex is also a way
to escape the body
in his books, just like drugs.
So everything is ambivalent in him.
And even violence
can be used
to escape it.
I'll try to find the right place
because I found it quite good.
Exactly.
You could also see
Birol's books as dead books
as well as the
Egyptian dead book
or the Tibetan dead book
because
in the books
they often find
between worlds
between life and death
between these worlds
and most of the protagonists
have to fight
against some evil evil.
I think there are also
some tests in the Egyptian
before the heart is
weighed
and then
transcended.
This is also seen
in his books
that you have to fight through it
and that's why there is also a lot of violence in his books.
You could even see it
as a guide.
A guide that he wrote for us
for the readers, how we can
survive in this in-between world
and for that
you can read the books.
And that is
that his writing
is thought as a weapon
you could say
that can be used in this land between life and death.
So it's
a metaphysical fight.
It goes quite well together with this
change of consciousness
that Birol maybe also wanted to call through his books.
He believed in the magic
and also the magic of the words.
Exactly, and Birol then
tries to prepare the reader, if he should be there,
to prepare.
And eventually
the violence in his own life
that he experienced could play a central role
and of course
the guilt feelings that he had because of the death
of his wife.
It's very interesting.
Maybe Birol also had
the desire to prepare other people
for this
spiritual fight
this fight in the spirit
in an in-between world
not only that
you find a form of freedom
of transcendence, but also
a moral resolution for himself
a kind of goodwill.
And also his belief
in fate
in predestination
because
in the magical universe
nothing happens without meaning
and everything happens for a good reason
and if you step on the snake
and the snake bites you to death, then it's not
a good thing.
And in such a universe
there are also his own circumstances
or maybe
the frames of life
that are easier to
to strengthen or to classify
as a coping mechanism.
But I don't think
that it was
about
to process it rationally.
What you meant is that
it somehow follows this.
It doesn't follow it at all.
In a completely irrational way
the irrational thing that
is going on in his head
is trying to process the incomprehensible symbolically
with the growth of
aliens, the argons
of some supernatural forces
that of course
are not...
But these are all rationalizations, his fear
and his paranoia.
But I don't think there was such a linear logic
that he tried to break
in his cut-ups.
The exciting thing in these years is that Boris
is already an established writer
in the 60s.
He was already there in the first hour.
That means that Summer of Love
takes place
in the 60s
and then
very quickly
the Hells Angels and the heroines
appear in the hippie scene in San Francisco
and the whole thing falls a little bit
on it.
So Boris is an established personality
just like Ginsburg
and
in the 70s
Boris
took a lot of heroin with other people
and never
was infected with anything
so no HIV, no other diseases
because he
was always the one who
as the heroine's guru
was always the one who
was always the one who got the first one
and then the needle went round.
That means that if someone got something
then probably from Burroughs as the first one.
But he himself was relatively long
in the clear and he also
experimented more and more
over his life.
I think in the late
I don't want to go too far
but in the late 80s he was blinded
because heroin sprayed his eyes in Kansas.
I don't think he's blinded.
I think his
wildest phase was actually
Tanga
so the time with Brian Guyson
they definitely took it
especially when it comes to psychedelic
substances
heroin
he was never free of it.
He tried it a lot
and maybe
he was free of it for a while
but I think he also
often said to the TV
that he believes that if you're addicted once
then you're always addicted
and that definitely hit him.
I wanted to say something
about his belief in the
magical universe because he
actually said something about it
that also speaks very explicitly
where he says I believe in the
magical universe where
nothing happens, unless
you want something to happen.
And what we see is
that not one god but many gods
who are in conflict with each other
are at power and also that
time is not
so big. So it could have been
based on the past and it had an influence
on what happened now.
So two cause-aloon events
with this
big text body that he created
he couldn't have done without the help of
Ginsberg and Kerouac
they helped him
a lot
to put it in shape
and that's how Naked Lunch came about.
Naked
Lunch is always assumed
to be a cut-up novel.
There are a few pages
where it's clearly
cut-up, everything else.
It's not a cut-up novel.
The three novels that follow
that came out of the same text body
are cut-up texts
cut-up novels.
But Naked Lunch is probably his most famous
work. You could think
it's a cut-up but it's just a whir.
It's just a whir if you want it that way.
But he describes
more or less
the time he spent
in Tanga
and in the
in the in-between worlds.
Exactly.
Naked Lunch was then
in the USA.
Some states
wanted to ban the novel because of obscenity.
So
we're now at the end of the 50s,
59.
It was then rejected.
Ginsburg also took part in it.
He also appeared in court.
Why does it have a literary value?
And luckily, you have to say,
it was decided
Naked Lunch is not obscenity
and may be published.
The novel gave him a lot of attention.
It was one of the last
big,
before the Panic,
maybe later,
but one of the last big censorship,
classic censorship processes in American literature history.
And it generated
so much publicity
that it was then made less, I think.
It was a basic argument.
What is literature allowed to do now
after the war and in the new era?
What does Freedom of Speech mean
for the writers in America?
Exactly.
Naked Lunch was then also filmed
by David Cronenberg,
I think in the 90s.
So the film
does not describe what happened in the book,
but rather describes the origin story of the book.
But you can watch it.
In any case, it is a good film.
Then in the early 60s
he went to London.
He also worked
on texts.
From this
other books were created,
for example The Wild Boys.
What was also filmed
for a long time,
or at least the book served as a template for a film,
rather in the 80s and 90s
he really became an icon of pop culture.
I would like to cut that short.
The 70s is not that exciting.
That was briefly with Scientology.
Maybe I will just jump into the 80s and 90s,
where he actually became
an icon of pop culture.
He had a lot of famous musicians,
also writers,
esoteric people
who sought contact with him.
Probably because they also read his books
and he was this
well-known figure.
He also had appearances in films,
small KBOs,
and he worked with Tom Waits
in a theatre play.
He also appeared more often,
as spoken word,
he read his texts
because he has a very, very pregnant voice,
very slow,
and yes,
you have to listen to him.
You don't forget his voice.
You also hear his voice
with the many drugs
and all the experiences.
It's a sad, beautiful kind of sing-song.
There was a short introduction.
I just read it.
In 1978,
there was a reading in New York
about the
southern Ginsburg Smith Frank Zappa,
who jumped in for Keith Richards
because he had a legal problem.
And Timothy Leary
and Robert A. Wilson,
about whom we will also follow.
All of whom were inspired by Burroughs.
Exactly, with whom he had discussions.
That means that Tom Leary
met him.
I also have a whole list
of people who he influenced.
For example,
J.G. Ballard,
the writer Hunter S. Thompson,
Alan Moore,
the comic writer,
and also the bookseller,
for example,
The Watchmen,
Chuck Palaniuk,
Fight Club,
Nick Land,
philosopher,
Timothy Leary, of course,
and many other musicians.
The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Iggy Pop,
Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Kurt Cobain,
with whom he also recorded an album.
He was also on the album cover
of the Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band,
the Beatles, which probably speaks
for its iconic status.
He also hung out with the Beatles
when they recorded the album.
That's why he's also on the cover.
And then of course his influence
on these esoteric and New Age movements,
on the Chaos Magic scene,
even on the rave culture, punk.
He's been a little bit
in every way.
He's influenced many people around him.
In high age he moved to the countryside
to Lawrence, Kansas.
There he also did a little bit of art
in his old age.
Didn't he shoot with shotguns
on a paint canister?
Exactly, something like that.
He connected his love for weapons
with art.
His shotgun pictures, I don't think,
are very detailed.
Action art, people.
I hope you understand.
There's also a nice documentary
A Man Within,
where you also have footage
of how he as an old man,
the old, violent man,
runs around with his shotgun
and shoots paint cans.
his secretary and his
People came to him.
He also managed his secretary
his secretary and his
secretary and his secretary.
He got visitors over and over.
He had an argon battery
in his garden
which he wanted to
use to accumulate
the argons.
They were apparently good for his body.
I think you can also find them in Wilhelm Reichsuche.
I'm not sure.
It was supposed to be good for everything,
against cancer and so on.
It was just a wooden box
that had metal inside.
And then he was there in 1997, when he became the oldest of the whole Beat Generation,
despite the fact that he probably consumed the most drugs of all.
And even though he was the oldest, he still lived the longest.
I made a very short introduction from 1993, before you end your life,
from the ministry of front singer Al Jurgensen.
We were hanging around in Burroughs in 1993, and he went to his house.
He decided to spray heroin on us, and he took out this belt full of syringes.
Huge old-fashioned syringes from the 1950s.
I have no idea how an 80-year-old man would find this, but he knew what he was doing.
So we were all hanging around, and then I noticed the post on the couch table,
a letter from the White House. I said, hey, that looks important.
And he said, no, that's probably just junk mail.
I opened the letter, and it was from President Clinton,
who invited Burroughs to a reading of a poem in the White House.
I said, wow, do you have any idea how important that is?
He said, what? Who is the president these days?
I think he didn't even know that he had a son.
Oh, his son is right, he's a little bit out of it now.
We forgot that, too.
Just like Burroughs, we neglected his son.
I could say something about that. After he shot his wife,
the daughter who wasn't his, the one before him,
she came to his wife's grandparents.
And his son is... I think he grew up with his parents.
He had very little contact with him. He was a real shit father.
We have to imagine this from the situation of the little boy,
who lives in the living room, how his father shoots his mother.
Before that, the father was very dependent on ruin all the time,
and probably not for the family anyway.
I also suspect that the child plays such a small role in junkie and queer
because Burroughs wanted to be the personality rights of his child,
because he had never been protected by anyone else in his environment.
It was probably more about the fact that he didn't have
such a relevant role in his life, and that's very sad for the child.
I think he died at the age of 30.
He was very eager about his father. He also wrote.
He also processed his experiences,
especially when he had to experience how his mother was shot.
He also took a lot of drugs,
because he probably wanted the attention of his father,
which he didn't get.
And I think he died at the age of 30 because he gave up his liver.
How unfair is life?
The father takes 15 times as many drugs
and somehow becomes so old with his incredibly low life cycle
and the son dies at the age of 30.
So you can definitely see that Burroughs
is probably too well off in today's reception.
He probably wasn't a very pleasant time-friend.
He was admired by many, but he did so much shit.
And for that he was fired for the guilt he had with himself,
which somehow also set his writing on fire.
And then of course what he experienced as a child
is of course not to be neglected,
but he gets away pretty well, I would say.
And he has his privileges.
So he would have had a different skin color
if he had been in jail, for sure.
But he was an old white man.
So you should emphasize that again.
No, and he was rich, especially if he had been poor.
He had all the privileges.
He didn't have to go to the Second World War,
because his mother had kicked him out.
He could use his spare time somehow to take drugs in Morocco
and to carry out experiments himself.
And probably Burroughs,
when you read his books, he doesn't seem particularly happy,
but he was definitely driven.
He was a demurk himself.
He created new worlds and influenced the world sustainably.
He withdrew and left behind the world he created
and left us humans.
He was an inspiration for many artists and philosophers
of the 20th and 21st centuries.
A light switch in the shadows is his story.
That's a good ending note to the podcast.
Let's go.
If you're standing here now and it's like a dead man,
then you're really mean.
What?
I'll just buy you.
You mean...
You