WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.040 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I hope you're 00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:04.419 ready to get a little weird today. A little. 00:00:04.559 --> 00:00:06.480 Okay, a lot weird. And I don't mean, you know, 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:09.099 quirky weird. I mean, staring into a mirror until 00:00:09.099 --> 00:00:11.259 your face turns into a tentacle monster weird. 00:00:11.720 --> 00:00:15.140 We are wading into some truly murky, fascinating, 00:00:15.380 --> 00:00:19.010 and honestly, sometimes... terrifying waters 00:00:19.010 --> 00:00:22.809 it is certainly a departure from usual fare we 00:00:22.809 --> 00:00:25.550 are talking about a man who is arguably one of 00:00:25.550 --> 00:00:27.769 the most influential cultural figures of the 00:00:27.769 --> 00:00:30.589 20th century and yet if you just look at his 00:00:30.589 --> 00:00:33.310 rap sheet he looks more like a career criminal 00:00:33.310 --> 00:00:36.899 than a literary icon It's a strange juxtaposition, 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:38.740 isn't it? We are talking about a Harvard graduate, 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:41.780 a scion of American industry who also happened 00:00:41.780 --> 00:00:44.000 to be a heroin addict for most of his life. Right, 00:00:44.020 --> 00:00:46.619 and a convicted killer, albeit in absentia. And 00:00:46.619 --> 00:00:49.619 a man who believed quite literally in magic as 00:00:49.619 --> 00:00:51.640 a form of technology. We are talking, of course, 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:53.500 about William S. Burroughs. The man who wrote 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:56.060 Naked Lunch, the godfather of the beat generation. 00:00:56.579 --> 00:00:58.960 The guy who ended up influencing everyone from 00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:02.250 Kurt Cobain to the entire cyberpunk genre. That's 00:01:02.250 --> 00:01:04.629 right. And our mission today is to try and reconcile 00:01:04.629 --> 00:01:07.590 these massive contradictions. We have a huge 00:01:07.590 --> 00:01:10.150 stack of sources here, biographical details, 00:01:10.549 --> 00:01:13.329 critical analysis, his own journals. And we're 00:01:13.329 --> 00:01:14.829 going to try to answer a fundamental question. 00:01:15.390 --> 00:01:18.469 How does a boy from a wealthy St. Louis family 00:01:18.469 --> 00:01:21.989 end up living in a locker room in the Bowery? 00:01:22.030 --> 00:01:24.709 The bunker. The bunker, yeah. Shooting paint 00:01:24.709 --> 00:01:27.590 cans with a shotgun for art and rewriting the 00:01:27.590 --> 00:01:29.829 rules of literature because he believed he was 00:01:29.829 --> 00:01:32.450 possessed by a demon. And that's not hyperbole. 00:01:32.450 --> 00:01:35.469 For Burroughs, that was the literal truth. And 00:01:35.469 --> 00:01:37.189 I think to understand him, you have to look past 00:01:37.189 --> 00:01:40.989 the cool junkie image that pop culture has kind 00:01:40.989 --> 00:01:43.569 of pasted onto him. We need to look at his philosophy. 00:01:43.849 --> 00:01:46.400 The ugly spirit. We are definitely going to unpack 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:48.379 that. It sounds like the plot of a horror movie, 00:01:48.459 --> 00:01:50.359 but for Burroughs, it was his daily reality. 00:01:50.739 --> 00:01:53.019 It was. And before we get into the wild stories, 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:55.040 and there are plenty of them involving guns, 00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:59.040 drugs, and severed fingers, we need to set the 00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:01.459 tone. This isn't just a biography of a writer. 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:04.939 This is a look into a worldview that saw the 00:02:04.939 --> 00:02:07.500 entire world as a system of control. Control. 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:09.659 That's the key word for today, right? Absolutely. 00:02:10.060 --> 00:02:12.039 That is the thread that runs through everything 00:02:12.039 --> 00:02:15.150 he did. Whether it was the government, the police, 00:02:15.349 --> 00:02:18.030 addiction to heroin, or even the structure of 00:02:18.030 --> 00:02:20.229 language itself. Language itself. Burroughs spent 00:02:20.229 --> 00:02:23.370 his entire life trying to find a way to break 00:02:23.370 --> 00:02:25.990 out of the control system. He viewed himself 00:02:25.990 --> 00:02:29.490 as a sort of cosmic escape artist. So let's start 00:02:29.490 --> 00:02:31.229 at the beginning. Because when you see pictures 00:02:31.229 --> 00:02:33.629 of Burroughs later in life, that stark three 00:02:33.629 --> 00:02:36.110 -piece suit, the fedora, the glasses, that very 00:02:36.110 --> 00:02:40.229 dry expression, he looks like a banker. He does. 00:02:40.370 --> 00:02:42.710 He looks like a conservative grandpa. And in 00:02:42.710 --> 00:02:45.150 a way, he started out exactly where you'd expect 00:02:45.150 --> 00:02:47.849 a banker to come from. He really did. The appearances 00:02:47.849 --> 00:02:51.169 were very deceiving, but also historically accurate. 00:02:51.250 --> 00:02:54.289 He was born in 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri. Okay. 00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:56.860 And the name Burroughs meant something very specific 00:02:56.860 --> 00:02:59.919 in American industry. His grandfather, William 00:02:59.919 --> 00:03:02.960 Seward Burroughs I, was the founder of the Burroughs 00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:05.180 Adding Machine Company. Okay, so let's pause 00:03:05.180 --> 00:03:07.780 there. The Burroughs Adding Machine, that's basically 00:03:07.780 --> 00:03:10.039 the grandfather of the computer, isn't it? It's 00:03:10.039 --> 00:03:12.599 a proto -computer. In many ways, yes. It was 00:03:12.599 --> 00:03:15.960 the machine that allowed corporations to organize, 00:03:16.319 --> 00:03:19.960 to count money, to streamline bureaucracy. It 00:03:19.960 --> 00:03:22.560 was a tool of order and calculation. So you have 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:24.719 this incredible irony right out of the gate. 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:27.819 A huge irony. The grandfather invents the ultimate 00:03:27.819 --> 00:03:31.020 tool of corporate control. And the grandson spent 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:34.219 his entire life trying to destroy that very concept 00:03:34.219 --> 00:03:37.020 of control. That is just, it's poetic. So we're 00:03:37.020 --> 00:03:39.379 talking real money here. Old money. We're talking 00:03:39.379 --> 00:03:42.240 significant prominence, yes. And it wasn't just 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:45.180 on his father's side. His mother's brother was 00:03:45.180 --> 00:03:48.060 a man named Ivy Lee. Ivy Lee? That name sounds 00:03:48.060 --> 00:03:50.629 familiar. It should. He was a pioneer in public 00:03:50.629 --> 00:03:53.110 relations. He basically invented the modern press 00:03:53.110 --> 00:03:56.490 release and his main client, the Rockefellers. 00:03:56.569 --> 00:03:58.729 So he was the guy cleaning up the image of Standard 00:03:58.729 --> 00:04:01.270 Oil. Precisely. So Burroughs is growing up in 00:04:01.270 --> 00:04:03.729 this very high society, respectable environment. 00:04:03.949 --> 00:04:06.189 He attended private schools. He grew up on a 00:04:06.189 --> 00:04:07.909 street called Pershing Avenue in the central 00:04:07.909 --> 00:04:10.830 west end of St. Louis. It was a gated, manicured 00:04:10.830 --> 00:04:12.770 existence. But the family didn't actually own 00:04:12.770 --> 00:04:14.770 the company by the time William came along, right? 00:04:14.849 --> 00:04:17.160 He wasn't a billionaire. That's a crucial detail 00:04:17.160 --> 00:04:19.740 that often gets confused. No, they weren't billionaires. 00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:24.240 His parents sold their stock just before the 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:28.319 1929 stock market crash. Wow. They sold it for 00:04:28.319 --> 00:04:32.560 about $200 ,000. Now, in today's money, that 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:36.740 is something like $3 .7 million. I mean, impeccable 00:04:36.740 --> 00:04:39.300 timing on their part. Incredible timing. And 00:04:39.300 --> 00:04:41.259 this describes the financial safety net that 00:04:41.259 --> 00:04:44.449 defines Burroughs' entire life. When he graduated 00:04:44.449 --> 00:04:47.389 from Harvard in 1936, his parents put him on 00:04:47.389 --> 00:04:51.790 a monthly allowance. $200. $200 a month in the 00:04:51.790 --> 00:04:53.910 late 30s. That was a living wage. It was more 00:04:53.910 --> 00:04:55.610 than a living wage. It was a comfortable middle 00:04:55.610 --> 00:04:58.149 -class income. But more importantly, you have 00:04:58.149 --> 00:05:01.230 to understand, it was freedom. That money guaranteed 00:05:01.230 --> 00:05:03.889 his survival for the next 25 years. He never 00:05:03.889 --> 00:05:06.050 had to clock in. Never. He never had to hold 00:05:06.050 --> 00:05:08.800 down a traditional 9 -to -5 job. He could travel, 00:05:08.980 --> 00:05:11.180 he could experiment, he could drift. He could 00:05:11.180 --> 00:05:13.180 afford to be an outlaw because he had a capitalist 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:15.579 safety net. It's the ultimate irony, isn't it? 00:05:15.579 --> 00:05:17.980 The money from the establishment, from an adding 00:05:17.980 --> 00:05:19.879 machine company, is what funded the ultimate 00:05:19.879 --> 00:05:22.459 counterculture rebel. Exactly. He never had to 00:05:22.459 --> 00:05:25.240 answer to a boss. He never had to curb his behavior 00:05:25.240 --> 00:05:27.639 to keep a paycheck. That allows a certain kind 00:05:27.639 --> 00:05:29.920 of personality to develop, you know, completely 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:33.139 unchecked. And the cracks. They showed up early. 00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:35.079 He wasn't a normal kid playing baseball in the 00:05:35.079 --> 00:05:37.759 sandlot. Oh, far from it. By all accounts, he 00:05:37.759 --> 00:05:41.079 was a deeply strange child. He was prone to hallucinations 00:05:41.079 --> 00:05:43.399 from a very young age. There's a famous story 00:05:43.399 --> 00:05:45.620 of the green reindeer. I read about this. He 00:05:45.620 --> 00:05:48.279 was, what, four years old? Four or five. He was 00:05:48.279 --> 00:05:50.600 playing in the woods behind his house, and he 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:54.459 had a vision. He saw a small green reindeer about 00:05:54.459 --> 00:05:56.779 the size of a cat. That's scary. No, not scary 00:05:56.779 --> 00:05:59.139 at all. It was magical. Later in life, after 00:05:59.139 --> 00:06:01.839 he studied anthropology at Harvard, he identified 00:06:01.839 --> 00:06:05.819 this as his totem animal. So he was already seeing 00:06:05.819 --> 00:06:08.259 things or interpreting the world through this 00:06:08.259 --> 00:06:10.560 kind of magical lens way back then. Absolutely. 00:06:10.740 --> 00:06:13.620 He described seeing ghostly gray figures playing 00:06:13.620 --> 00:06:15.800 in his bedroom. He felt comfortable with them. 00:06:15.879 --> 00:06:18.339 He said he felt a sense of wonder, not fear. 00:06:18.699 --> 00:06:20.860 It suggests that his barrier between what we 00:06:20.860 --> 00:06:23.519 call reality and vision was porous from day one. 00:06:23.699 --> 00:06:26.879 And then there's the finger incident. This one. 00:06:27.879 --> 00:06:30.339 This one made me wince. It feels like something 00:06:30.339 --> 00:06:32.930 out of a psychological thriller. It is disturbing, 00:06:33.129 --> 00:06:35.129 but it reveals so much about his psychology. 00:06:35.410 --> 00:06:38.730 This was 1939. Burroughs is a young man. He's 00:06:38.730 --> 00:06:40.750 graduated from Harvard. He's studied medicine 00:06:40.750 --> 00:06:42.930 in Vienna for a bit. Right. He's traveling in 00:06:42.930 --> 00:06:45.110 Europe and he's struggling with his mental health 00:06:45.110 --> 00:06:47.170 and he's struggling with his sexuality. He was 00:06:47.170 --> 00:06:50.149 gay. But this was a time when that was heavily, 00:06:50.250 --> 00:06:52.870 heavily stigmatized and illegal. The pressure 00:06:52.870 --> 00:06:55.329 must have been immense. Of course. So he became 00:06:55.329 --> 00:06:58.769 infatuated with a man and to impress him or perhaps 00:06:58.769 --> 00:07:01.430 as a gesture of extreme emotion to prove his 00:07:01.430 --> 00:07:05.009 devotion. He deliberately severed the last joint 00:07:05.009 --> 00:07:07.550 of his left little finger. He cut off his own 00:07:07.550 --> 00:07:10.509 finger joint with what? A pair of poultry shears. 00:07:10.550 --> 00:07:12.750 Oh, my God. And he just sat there and did it. 00:07:12.829 --> 00:07:14.730 He later wrote about it in a story called The 00:07:14.730 --> 00:07:17.370 Finger, but it shows you the intensity of his 00:07:17.370 --> 00:07:20.290 personality. There was a masochistic performative 00:07:20.290 --> 00:07:23.149 streak there, a desire to damage the physical 00:07:23.149 --> 00:07:25.569 body to prove that the mind was in charge of 00:07:25.569 --> 00:07:28.029 it. It's like a rejection of the physical. It's 00:07:28.029 --> 00:07:30.319 a rejection of control. Even the control. His 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:32.439 own body had over him. So he's got the Harvard 00:07:32.439 --> 00:07:34.600 degree. He's got the allowance. He's got the 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:37.560 missing finger joint. And eventually, he drifts 00:07:37.560 --> 00:07:41.620 to New York City. This is 1943. And this is where 00:07:41.620 --> 00:07:44.160 history gets made. This is the birth of the Beats. 00:07:44.279 --> 00:07:47.060 Right. He meets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. 00:07:47.220 --> 00:07:48.980 But you have to understand the dynamic here. 00:07:49.339 --> 00:07:51.519 Burroughs was older. He was already in his late 00:07:51.519 --> 00:07:54.600 20s, whereas Ginsberg was just a student at Columbia. 00:07:54.860 --> 00:07:57.699 So he wasn't their peer. No. He was the mentor. 00:07:58.189 --> 00:08:01.149 He was the bad uncle. The experienced, world 00:08:01.149 --> 00:08:03.290 -weary figure. He was the guy your parents warned 00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:04.910 you about. Don't hang out with William. He has 00:08:04.910 --> 00:08:07.689 poultry shears and weird books from Europe. Precisely. 00:08:07.689 --> 00:08:09.810 He was the one with the apartment, the allowance, 00:08:10.029 --> 00:08:12.920 and the, uh... the real experience in the criminal 00:08:12.920 --> 00:08:15.540 underworld. He introduced them to Oswald Spengler, 00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:18.339 to Selene, to the darker side of literature. 00:08:18.819 --> 00:08:20.959 And he was also the one who got them entangled 00:08:20.959 --> 00:08:23.139 in a murder case. The Carr -Kammerer incident. 00:08:23.279 --> 00:08:25.199 We've touched on this in other deep dives, but 00:08:25.199 --> 00:08:28.240 let's recap how Burroughs fits into this specific 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:30.819 mess. So Lucien Carr was a friend of theirs in 00:08:30.819 --> 00:08:34.000 this circle. He killed David Kammerer, a man 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:35.860 who had been stalking him for years. It was a 00:08:35.860 --> 00:08:38.879 messy, tragic situation. An act of self -defense, 00:08:39.059 --> 00:08:42.100 Carr claimed. That was his claim. But Burroughs 00:08:42.100 --> 00:08:44.379 and Kerouac were arrested as material witnesses 00:08:44.379 --> 00:08:47.519 because they didn't report it. In fact, they 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:49.879 tried to help Carr dispose of the weapon and 00:08:49.879 --> 00:08:52.320 the evidence. They went to the movies while Carr 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:54.360 was trying to figure out what to do. That goes 00:08:54.360 --> 00:08:58.159 beyond literary rebellion. That is being an accessory 00:08:58.159 --> 00:09:01.039 after the fact to a homicide. It was a very harsh 00:09:01.039 --> 00:09:03.919 wake -up call for the group. It shattered whatever 00:09:03.919 --> 00:09:06.279 romantic, bohemian innocence they might have 00:09:06.279 --> 00:09:08.919 had. And for Burroughs, it was one of his first 00:09:08.919 --> 00:09:11.590 real brushes with the law. And this is what led 00:09:11.590 --> 00:09:13.970 to that book they wrote together, right? And 00:09:13.970 --> 00:09:16.190 the hippos were boiled in their tanks. Best title 00:09:16.190 --> 00:09:19.110 ever, by the way. It is a memorable title, taken 00:09:19.110 --> 00:09:21.649 from a news headline about a fire at a circus 00:09:21.649 --> 00:09:24.210 they heard on the radio. They wrote it in 1945, 00:09:24.769 --> 00:09:27.169 alternating chapters. It wasn't published for 00:09:27.169 --> 00:09:30.230 decades, but it was the literary result of that 00:09:30.230 --> 00:09:32.669 shared trauma. But for Burroughs, the trajectory 00:09:32.669 --> 00:09:35.470 was already spiraling downward from there. Oh, 00:09:35.470 --> 00:09:39.320 yes. After the murder, things get darker. He 00:09:39.320 --> 00:09:42.360 starts using morphine around 1945. And not just 00:09:42.360 --> 00:09:44.440 using, he was selling heroin in Greenwich Village. 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:46.879 He was a pusher. He was, a small -time pusher. 00:09:46.899 --> 00:09:49.740 And this is where Joan Vollmer enters the picture 00:09:49.740 --> 00:09:52.179 properly. She was living with him in the apartment 00:09:52.179 --> 00:09:55.000 with Ginsberg and Kerouac. She was brilliant, 00:09:55.159 --> 00:09:58.559 very well -read, arguably as smart as any of 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:02.000 the male beats, but she was addicted to Benzedrine. 00:10:02.639 --> 00:10:04.559 Amphetamines. So you have Burroughs on Downers, 00:10:04.580 --> 00:10:07.659 morphine and Joan on Uppers, Benzedrine. A volatile 00:10:07.659 --> 00:10:10.100 chemical mix in a very volatile environment. 00:10:10.220 --> 00:10:11.879 They formed a common law marriage. They had a 00:10:11.879 --> 00:10:15.379 child, William S. Burroughs Jr. or Billy. But 00:10:15.379 --> 00:10:17.659 their life was just chaos. They left New York, 00:10:17.759 --> 00:10:19.960 moved to Texas to try and grow marijuana. That 00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:21.779 didn't work out. It did not. They moved on to 00:10:21.779 --> 00:10:24.059 New Orleans. And in New Orleans, the law started 00:10:24.059 --> 00:10:26.519 closing in. The police raided his home. They 00:10:26.519 --> 00:10:29.019 found drugs and crucially unregistered handguns. 00:10:29.019 --> 00:10:30.919 Guns were already a big thing for him. Always. 00:10:31.610 --> 00:10:34.210 He had a deep, lifelong fascination with weaponry. 00:10:34.269 --> 00:10:36.950 He saw them as extensions of the will. So to 00:10:36.950 --> 00:10:40.610 avoid prison in Louisiana, specifically Angola 00:10:40.610 --> 00:10:43.190 State Prison, which was a terrifying place, notorious 00:10:43.190 --> 00:10:46.870 for brutality, he fled. He fled to Mexico. Joan 00:10:46.870 --> 00:10:48.850 and the kids followed him down. And this brings 00:10:48.850 --> 00:10:51.909 us to the tragedy in Mexico. This is the moment 00:10:51.909 --> 00:10:53.750 that changes everything. If you are listening 00:10:53.750 --> 00:10:56.250 and you think you know the story, you need to 00:10:56.250 --> 00:10:58.049 hear the details because it explains everything 00:10:58.049 --> 00:11:00.309 that comes after. It is the pivot point of his 00:11:00.309 --> 00:11:05.139 entire existence. It's 1951, Mexico City. Burroughs 00:11:05.139 --> 00:11:07.440 and Joan are living there. By all accounts, it 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:09.539 was an unhappy time. Burroughs was off heroin, 00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:12.580 but he was drinking heavily. Joan was suffering 00:11:12.580 --> 00:11:14.879 from Benzedrine withdrawal and drinking too. 00:11:15.080 --> 00:11:17.100 And the dynamic between them was getting nasty. 00:11:17.399 --> 00:11:20.240 Very. Accounts from friends say Joan was mocking 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:22.799 him, calling him impotent. He was openly pursuing 00:11:22.799 --> 00:11:25.820 other men. There was a lot of tension. One night, 00:11:25.899 --> 00:11:28.179 September 6th, they were at a party at a friend's 00:11:28.179 --> 00:11:30.279 apartment above a place called the Bounty Bar. 00:11:31.100 --> 00:11:33.159 Everyone is very intoxicated. And Burroughs has 00:11:33.159 --> 00:11:37.360 a gun. He allegedly took a star model .380 automatic 00:11:37.360 --> 00:11:40.279 pistol out of his travel bag to show it off. 00:11:40.279 --> 00:11:42.639 He was trying to sell it. And in a moment of 00:11:42.639 --> 00:11:45.580 drunken bravado, he said to Joan, it's time for 00:11:45.580 --> 00:11:47.879 our William Tell act. Now, for anyone who doesn't 00:11:47.879 --> 00:11:49.860 know the William Tell legend, it's the archer 00:11:49.860 --> 00:11:52.200 who shoots an apple off his son's head to prove 00:11:52.200 --> 00:11:54.779 his marksmanship. Exactly. But Burroughs didn't 00:11:54.779 --> 00:11:57.940 have a bow and arrow. He had a pistol. And Joan. 00:11:58.840 --> 00:12:01.860 She played along. She put a highball glass. Some 00:12:01.860 --> 00:12:03.820 say it was a gin and tonic on her head. She was 00:12:03.820 --> 00:12:06.259 going along with it. She was giggling, according 00:12:06.259 --> 00:12:08.320 to witnesses. She was out of the game. A dark, 00:12:08.399 --> 00:12:11.179 drunken party trick. God, it's just, the negligence 00:12:11.179 --> 00:12:13.399 is suffocating. Burroughs sat at the table across 00:12:13.399 --> 00:12:16.519 the room. He raised the gun. He fired. He missed 00:12:16.519 --> 00:12:18.320 the glass. He shot her in the forehead. She died 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:20.840 almost instantly. It's just, it's such a senseless, 00:12:20.860 --> 00:12:23.720 stupid, tragic waste. A life ended because of 00:12:23.720 --> 00:12:26.759 a party trick. It is. And the aftermath was messy 00:12:26.759 --> 00:12:29.820 and, frankly, corrupt. Burroughs was arrested. 00:12:30.399 --> 00:12:33.779 He spent 13 days in jail. And then what? Then 00:12:33.779 --> 00:12:36.259 the machinery of his privilege kicked in. His 00:12:36.259 --> 00:12:38.159 brother came down from St. Louis with money. 00:12:38.759 --> 00:12:41.419 Lawyers were paid off. Ballistics experts were 00:12:41.419 --> 00:12:44.620 bribed to testify that the gun had misfired or 00:12:44.620 --> 00:12:47.320 that it had dropped. He changed his story, right. 00:12:47.399 --> 00:12:49.580 The initial story was the William Tell Act. That 00:12:49.580 --> 00:12:51.980 was the initial story he told police. Then it 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:54.480 was revised. The official story for the court 00:12:54.480 --> 00:12:57.320 became that he dropped the gun, that it fell, 00:12:57.440 --> 00:13:00.019 and discharged accidentally. But the witnesses 00:13:00.019 --> 00:13:01.960 knew the truth. The witnesses knew the truth. 00:13:02.139 --> 00:13:04.639 He was eventually convicted of homicide and absentia 00:13:04.639 --> 00:13:07.179 because he fled the country when his lawyer got 00:13:07.179 --> 00:13:09.820 into his own legal trouble. He got a two -year 00:13:09.820 --> 00:13:12.480 suspended sentence. which he never served. So 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:15.559 he kills his wife and he essentially walks free. 00:13:15.639 --> 00:13:17.620 He goes back to his life. But psychologically, 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:21.460 he didn't walk free. No. And this is where we 00:13:21.460 --> 00:13:23.840 get into the ugly spirit. This is the core of 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:27.059 this entire deep dive. Burroughs explicitly stated 00:13:27.059 --> 00:13:29.120 later that he would never have become a writer 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:31.700 if it weren't for Joan's death. That's a heavy 00:13:31.700 --> 00:13:34.120 statement. It almost sounds like he's justifying 00:13:34.120 --> 00:13:36.679 it or finding meaning in it. It's more complex 00:13:36.679 --> 00:13:39.629 than that. He wrote, I live with a constant threat 00:13:39.629 --> 00:13:42.370 of possession and a constant need to escape from 00:13:42.370 --> 00:13:45.570 possession, from control. He believed that at 00:13:45.570 --> 00:13:48.009 the moment he pulled the trigger, he was possessed 00:13:48.009 --> 00:13:50.950 by a malevolent entity he called the ugly spirit. 00:13:51.250 --> 00:13:52.889 Now, do you think he meant that metaphorically? 00:13:52.909 --> 00:13:54.549 Like, oh, I have demons, I have a dark side. 00:13:54.769 --> 00:13:57.029 He was very, very clear that he meant it literally. 00:13:57.289 --> 00:14:00.230 He said his concept of possession was closer 00:14:00.230 --> 00:14:02.990 to the medieval model. He believed an alien entity, 00:14:03.149 --> 00:14:05.809 an invading consciousness, invaded him and used 00:14:05.809 --> 00:14:08.409 his hand to kill Joan. That sounds like, I mean, 00:14:08.409 --> 00:14:10.090 that sounds like a psychological defense mechanism 00:14:10.090 --> 00:14:13.090 to deal with unimaginable guilt. It could be. 00:14:13.169 --> 00:14:15.789 And that's the rational interpretation. But for 00:14:15.789 --> 00:14:18.529 Burroughs, it was his metaphysical reality. And 00:14:18.529 --> 00:14:21.470 writing, writing became his method of exorcism. 00:14:21.570 --> 00:14:23.669 So he wasn't writing for fame. He wasn't writing 00:14:23.669 --> 00:14:26.889 for art. He was writing to save his soul. He 00:14:26.889 --> 00:14:30.009 was writing to fight a demon. He viewed writing 00:14:30.009 --> 00:14:33.110 as a form of sorcery. He believed that the word 00:14:33.110 --> 00:14:36.590 itself language was a mechanism of control. A 00:14:36.590 --> 00:14:40.029 virus. And the ugly spirit used words to control 00:14:40.029 --> 00:14:42.889 him. So to fight back, to keep the demon at bay, 00:14:43.110 --> 00:14:45.230 he had to write his way out. He had to break 00:14:45.230 --> 00:14:48.029 the language. That recontextualizes his entire 00:14:48.029 --> 00:14:51.029 career. He's not an author. He's a magician fighting 00:14:51.029 --> 00:14:53.929 a duel. Precisely. And that duel took him away 00:14:53.929 --> 00:14:56.230 from the Western world entirely. After Mexico, 00:14:56.429 --> 00:14:59.110 he drifts through South America. He's looking 00:14:59.110 --> 00:15:01.980 for a drug called Yage. What we now call ayahuasca. 00:15:02.039 --> 00:15:04.480 Why ayahuasca? This was way before it was trendy 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:07.100 for tech bros to go do it in Peru. Right. He 00:15:07.100 --> 00:15:08.860 wasn't looking for spiritual enlightenment in 00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:10.759 the modern sense. He was looking for telepathy. 00:15:11.179 --> 00:15:13.820 He believed Yage was a kind of truth serum that 00:15:13.820 --> 00:15:15.679 would allow him to communicate without words, 00:15:15.919 --> 00:15:18.320 thus bypassing the control system of language. 00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:20.100 You've got to get outside of language. Get outside 00:15:20.100 --> 00:15:22.259 of the virus. His letters from this time were 00:15:22.259 --> 00:15:24.639 collected in a book, The Yage Letters. It's a 00:15:24.639 --> 00:15:27.440 fascinating look at his mindset. But eventually, 00:15:27.539 --> 00:15:32.129 he lands in Tangier, Morocco. 1954. The interzone. 00:15:32.409 --> 00:15:34.769 That's what he called it. Tell us about Tangier 00:15:34.769 --> 00:15:37.370 in the 50s. Why was it the perfect place for 00:15:37.370 --> 00:15:40.470 him? Tangier was a geopolitical anomaly. It was 00:15:40.470 --> 00:15:42.789 an international zone governed by a committee 00:15:42.789 --> 00:15:45.149 of different nations, which meant essentially 00:15:45.149 --> 00:15:47.710 that no single nation's laws really applied. 00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:50.789 So it was lawless. Effectively, yes. It was a 00:15:50.789 --> 00:15:54.269 haven for spies, smugglers, eccentrics, and exiles. 00:15:55.429 --> 00:15:57.919 Homosexuality was tolerated. Drugs were legal 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:00.440 or easily available over the counter at pharmacies. 00:16:00.779 --> 00:16:04.240 And most importantly for him, it was cheap. So 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:06.620 his $200 a month allowance could let him live 00:16:06.620 --> 00:16:09.799 like a king. Or like a ghost. He fell deep into 00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:12.500 addiction there. He was using a drug called eucadol, 00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:15.360 which is a very strong opioid, and eating mejun, 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:18.379 a potent confection made of marijuana, honey, 00:16:18.460 --> 00:16:20.720 and spices. He essentially locked himself in 00:16:20.720 --> 00:16:22.860 a room for four years. Just him and the ugly 00:16:22.860 --> 00:16:25.399 spirit. And the typewriter. He sat in this state 00:16:25.399 --> 00:16:27.580 of altered consciousness, just generating text. 00:16:27.799 --> 00:16:29.840 He wasn't writing a story with a beginning, middle, 00:16:29.899 --> 00:16:32.440 and end. He was writing routines, satirical sketches, 00:16:32.759 --> 00:16:35.340 hallucinations, memories of St. Louis. He would 00:16:35.340 --> 00:16:36.940 write a page and just throw it on the floor. 00:16:37.100 --> 00:16:39.580 This pile of paper became known as the word hoard. 00:16:39.879 --> 00:16:44.200 Yes. Thousands and thousands of pages. A chaotic 00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:47.580 mess of genius and filth. And his friends had 00:16:47.580 --> 00:16:51.240 to come rescue him, basically. Kerouac and Ginsberg 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:55.080 and Alan Anson arrived in Tangier in 1957. The 00:16:55.080 --> 00:16:57.799 cavalry arrives. They did. They found burrows 00:16:57.799 --> 00:16:59.860 surrounded by these papers looking gaunt and 00:16:59.860 --> 00:17:01.960 haunted, and they essentially acted as editors. 00:17:02.120 --> 00:17:04.559 They typed up the handwritten scrawls. They tried 00:17:04.559 --> 00:17:06.299 to find some kind of structure. They literally 00:17:06.299 --> 00:17:08.880 taped pages together. That collection of chaos 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:12.349 became Naked Lunch. Naked Lunch. It's such a 00:17:12.349 --> 00:17:14.309 weird book. If you pick it up expecting a novel, 00:17:14.369 --> 00:17:16.509 you are going to be very, very confused. You 00:17:16.509 --> 00:17:18.809 are. It's nonlinear. You can dip in anywhere. 00:17:19.109 --> 00:17:22.049 It's a series of routine skits, almost, that 00:17:22.049 --> 00:17:24.390 are satirical, grotesque, and horrifying. It 00:17:24.390 --> 00:17:26.589 attacks everything. The death penalty, bureaucracy, 00:17:27.009 --> 00:17:28.869 medical malpractice, capital punishment. Not 00:17:28.869 --> 00:17:30.690 even the title. What does that mean? Naked Lunch. 00:17:31.170 --> 00:17:33.230 Kerouac apparently mistyped it from Burroughs' 00:17:33.230 --> 00:17:34.509 handwriting. It's supposed to be Naked Lust. 00:17:34.730 --> 00:17:36.890 But Burroughs loved the mistake. He kept it. 00:17:37.259 --> 00:17:39.599 He kept it. He said it means a frozen moment 00:17:39.599 --> 00:17:41.579 when everyone sees what is on the end of every 00:17:41.579 --> 00:17:45.579 fork. Meaning seeing reality exactly as it is. 00:17:45.660 --> 00:17:48.960 The naked, unvarnished truth of what we are consuming. 00:17:49.059 --> 00:17:52.559 Exactly. The algebra of need. He used heroin 00:17:52.559 --> 00:17:55.799 addiction as a metaphor for everything. Consumerism, 00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:58.140 politics, religion. He argued that everything 00:17:58.140 --> 00:18:00.380 is a relationship between a pusher and an addict. 00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:03.440 The state is a pusher. The citizen is an addict. 00:18:03.579 --> 00:18:05.539 And actually, the American government hated it. 00:18:05.619 --> 00:18:07.980 Oh, they loathed it. It was first published in 00:18:07.980 --> 00:18:11.559 Paris by Olympia Press in 1959. When Grove Press 00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:13.940 tried to publish it in the U .S., it was prosecuted 00:18:13.940 --> 00:18:16.819 for obscenity in Massachusetts. This became a 00:18:16.819 --> 00:18:19.720 landmark legal battle. Why was this trial so 00:18:19.720 --> 00:18:22.140 important? It became the last major literary 00:18:22.140 --> 00:18:24.759 censorship trial in the United States. Writers 00:18:24.759 --> 00:18:26.900 like Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg testified 00:18:26.900 --> 00:18:29.559 that the book had literary value. They argued 00:18:29.559 --> 00:18:31.680 that just because it depicted ugly things didn't 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:34.019 mean the book itself was obscene. It was a moral 00:18:34.019 --> 00:18:36.859 condemnation of those ugly things. Exactly. It 00:18:36.859 --> 00:18:38.980 wasn't promoting them. And the argument won. 00:18:39.140 --> 00:18:42.279 In 1966, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts 00:18:42.279 --> 00:18:46.029 declared it not obscene. That ruling effectively 00:18:46.029 --> 00:18:49.789 ended literary censorship in America. If Naked 00:18:49.789 --> 00:18:52.089 Lunch, which contains some truly shocking sexual 00:18:52.089 --> 00:18:54.369 and violent content, could be published, anything 00:18:54.369 --> 00:18:57.470 could. So Burroughs, the junkie outlaw, the wife 00:18:57.470 --> 00:19:00.069 -tiller, actually secured freedom of speech for 00:19:00.069 --> 00:19:02.250 writers in America. That is a huge part of his 00:19:02.250 --> 00:19:04.769 legacy. He subverted the moral system and the 00:19:04.769 --> 00:19:06.910 legal system. He forced the culture to look at 00:19:06.910 --> 00:19:09.730 the ugly things it wanted to hide. OK, so Naked 00:19:09.730 --> 00:19:11.970 Lunch is out. He's a controversial figure, but 00:19:11.970 --> 00:19:14.390 he doesn't stop there. He moves to Paris and 00:19:14.390 --> 00:19:16.829 things get even weirder. He discovers the cut 00:19:16.829 --> 00:19:19.329 up. Now, this is the part that I think is most 00:19:19.329 --> 00:19:21.769 relevant to our modern world of algorithms and 00:19:21.769 --> 00:19:24.150 remix culture. This is part four. He's at the 00:19:24.150 --> 00:19:27.769 Beat Hotel in Paris around 1959. It's this rundown 00:19:27.769 --> 00:19:29.869 boarding house in the Latin Quarter, but it's 00:19:29.869 --> 00:19:32.670 filled with artists. And Burroughs meets a painter 00:19:32.670 --> 00:19:34.869 named Brianne Gyson. And Gyson is the one who 00:19:34.869 --> 00:19:37.849 shows him the technique. Yes. The story goes 00:19:37.849 --> 00:19:41.369 that Geisen was mounting a drawing. He put down 00:19:41.369 --> 00:19:43.890 a stack of newspapers to protect his table, and 00:19:43.890 --> 00:19:46.210 he cut through them with a razor blade. When 00:19:46.210 --> 00:19:48.630 he looked at the sliced layers, he noticed that 00:19:48.630 --> 00:19:51.809 the words combined to form new sentences. Funny 00:19:51.809 --> 00:19:55.029 sentences. Profound sentences. And for most people, 00:19:55.029 --> 00:19:57.150 that would just be a collage. Oh, look, Daddy 00:19:57.150 --> 00:20:00.170 has poetry. Exactly. But for Burroughs, it was 00:20:00.170 --> 00:20:02.970 a revelation. Remember his obsession with control 00:20:02.970 --> 00:20:05.559 and the ugly spirit. He believed language was 00:20:05.559 --> 00:20:07.920 a control system. He believed that the structure 00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:11.279 of our language subject, verb, object, locks 00:20:11.279 --> 00:20:13.980 us into a certain way of thinking. It forces 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:16.859 us to think in linear time. It limits what our 00:20:16.859 --> 00:20:19.000 brains can do. So if you cut the paper... You 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:21.319 break the timeline. You break the control. Burroughs 00:20:21.319 --> 00:20:23.079 was adamant. He said that cut -ups are not for 00:20:23.079 --> 00:20:25.640 artistic purposes. For him, they were a tool 00:20:25.640 --> 00:20:27.859 of political warfare and scientific research. 00:20:28.099 --> 00:20:30.019 He thought that by cutting up texts, you could 00:20:30.019 --> 00:20:32.900 actually predict the future? He did. He called 00:20:32.900 --> 00:20:35.980 it letting the future leak out. He believed that 00:20:35.980 --> 00:20:38.359 everything is pre -recorded. The universe is 00:20:38.359 --> 00:20:41.299 a tape recording. By cutting the tape or the 00:20:41.299 --> 00:20:44.240 text, you can see what's coming next. He claimed 00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:46.579 he would cut up a newspaper and find sentences 00:20:46.579 --> 00:20:48.759 that referred to events that happened days later. 00:20:49.039 --> 00:20:51.799 That is some heavy magical thinking. But he was 00:20:51.799 --> 00:20:54.799 serious about it. Deadly serious. He and Geisen 00:20:54.799 --> 00:20:56.839 were doing occult experiments at the Beat Hotel. 00:20:57.400 --> 00:21:00.789 Mirror gazing. Scrying. Like a wizard looking 00:21:00.789 --> 00:21:03.650 into a crystal ball. Yes. Burroughs would stare 00:21:03.650 --> 00:21:06.690 into a mirror for hours. He reported seeing his 00:21:06.690 --> 00:21:09.450 hands turn into tentacles. He saw his face transform 00:21:09.450 --> 00:21:13.029 into an other, a green man -like entity. He believed 00:21:13.029 --> 00:21:15.529 he was seeing his other selves, or perhaps the 00:21:15.529 --> 00:21:17.329 entities that were trying to possess him. He 00:21:17.329 --> 00:21:19.390 was trying to map the unseen geography of his 00:21:19.390 --> 00:21:22.950 own mind. It's terrifying, but also... Creatively, 00:21:22.970 --> 00:21:25.250 it worked for him. He wrote the entire Nova trilogy 00:21:25.250 --> 00:21:27.990 using this method, the soft machine, the ticket 00:21:27.990 --> 00:21:30.490 that exploded, Nova Express. Those books are 00:21:30.490 --> 00:21:33.190 dense. They are very difficult to read because 00:21:33.190 --> 00:21:35.329 they are literally cut up. Paragraphs are spliced 00:21:35.329 --> 00:21:37.849 together randomly. But the theme is consistent 00:21:37.849 --> 00:21:40.730 throughout. Humanity is under attack by a virus 00:21:40.730 --> 00:21:43.069 from outer space, and that virus is language. 00:21:43.640 --> 00:21:45.779 Language is a virus from outer space. That's 00:21:45.779 --> 00:21:48.279 one of his most famous quotes. And he meant it. 00:21:48.339 --> 00:21:50.680 He thought language was a parasitic organism 00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:53.460 that had invaded the human host, using us to 00:21:53.460 --> 00:21:56.099 replicate itself. Thinking is just the virus 00:21:56.099 --> 00:21:58.460 thinking through you. Okay, let's move on. Part 00:21:58.460 --> 00:22:01.960 five, the London years. He leaves Paris and goes 00:22:01.960 --> 00:22:05.400 to London. And here, he tries to get clean again. 00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:08.460 He does. He hears about a Dr. John Dent, who 00:22:08.460 --> 00:22:11.039 had a specific cure for heroin addiction using 00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:13.660 something called apomorphine. Apple morphine. 00:22:13.660 --> 00:22:15.500 What is that? It's a derivative of morphine, 00:22:15.500 --> 00:22:17.200 but it's not psychoactive. It doesn't get you 00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:20.160 high. It acts as an emetic. It makes you vomit. 00:22:20.500 --> 00:22:22.859 The theory was that it regulated the metabolism 00:22:22.859 --> 00:22:26.380 and reset the body's need for the drug. Burroughs 00:22:26.380 --> 00:22:28.839 was convinced it was a miracle. He wrote a famous 00:22:28.839 --> 00:22:31.019 piece called Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous 00:22:31.019 --> 00:22:33.559 Drugs, praising this cure. Did it work for him? 00:22:33.640 --> 00:22:36.880 For a while. He advocated for it fiercely his 00:22:36.880 --> 00:22:39.839 whole life. But during this London period in 00:22:39.839 --> 00:22:42.000 the 60s, he also got involved with something 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:43.980 else that claimed to have a technology for the 00:22:43.980 --> 00:22:46.920 mind. Scientology. Wait, William S. Burroughs 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:49.779 was a Scientologist? For a time in the 60s, yes. 00:22:50.200 --> 00:22:52.220 He joined the Church of Scientology in London. 00:22:52.359 --> 00:22:54.759 He took the courses. He reached the level of 00:22:54.759 --> 00:22:57.640 clear. I cannot imagine Burroughs taking orders 00:22:57.640 --> 00:23:00.680 from anyone, let alone an organization like that. 00:23:00.940 --> 00:23:03.619 Well, that was the problem. He actually liked 00:23:03.619 --> 00:23:06.819 the techniques, the auditing, the e -meter. He 00:23:06.819 --> 00:23:08.779 felt they were useful tools for exploring the 00:23:08.779 --> 00:23:11.599 mind and deprogramming trauma. He said it helped 00:23:11.599 --> 00:23:15.019 him with his writing. But he hated the organization. 00:23:15.400 --> 00:23:18.180 Why? He felt it was authoritarian, secretive, 00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:20.740 and suppressed any critical thought. He saw it 00:23:20.740 --> 00:23:22.619 as just another system of control. So he took 00:23:22.619 --> 00:23:25.099 the tools and ran. And he turned on them. He 00:23:25.099 --> 00:23:26.940 wrote critical articles about his experiences. 00:23:27.180 --> 00:23:29.160 There was a huge feud that played out in the 00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:31.920 pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Burroughs versus 00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:35.140 the Scientologists. He famously wrote, Scientology 00:23:35.140 --> 00:23:37.400 is a model for the control of a population. I 00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:39.700 love that. He's just picking fights with everyone, 00:23:39.819 --> 00:23:42.079 the government, the literary establishment, L. 00:23:42.180 --> 00:23:44.319 Ron Hubbard. And during this time in London, 00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:46.599 he starts refining his magical attacks. Yes. 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:49.099 We absolutely have to talk about the mocha bar. 00:23:49.279 --> 00:23:53.069 Yes. The Mocha Bar Operation. This is my absolute 00:23:53.069 --> 00:23:55.549 favorite Burroughs story because it's so petty 00:23:55.549 --> 00:23:58.869 but so elaborate. So this is 1972. There's a 00:23:58.869 --> 00:24:00.750 coffee bar in London on Fritz Street called the 00:24:00.750 --> 00:24:03.509 Mocha Bar. And Burroughs felt he was treated 00:24:03.509 --> 00:24:06.309 rudely there. He claimed the cheesecake was poisonous 00:24:06.309 --> 00:24:09.289 and the service was surly. As one does, most 00:24:09.289 --> 00:24:11.230 people would just, you know, leave a bad tip 00:24:11.230 --> 00:24:13.990 or a bad Yelp review. Not Burroughs. Burroughs 00:24:13.990 --> 00:24:17.450 decided to destroy the business using magic and 00:24:17.450 --> 00:24:20.559 technology. How? What did he do? He used a technique 00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:23.440 he called playback. He went to the bar with a 00:24:23.440 --> 00:24:25.980 concealed tape recorder and discreetly recorded 00:24:25.980 --> 00:24:28.680 the background sounds, the clatter of cups, the 00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:31.039 chatter, the hiss of the espresso machine. Okay. 00:24:31.119 --> 00:24:33.440 Then he would come back day after day, stand 00:24:33.440 --> 00:24:36.880 outside, and play those sounds back at a subliminal 00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:39.240 level. He would also take photos of the place, 00:24:39.319 --> 00:24:41.700 then go home and curse the photos. He was playing 00:24:41.700 --> 00:24:45.339 the bar's own pass back to it. Yes. His theory 00:24:45.339 --> 00:24:48.359 was that by superimposing the past audio onto 00:24:48.359 --> 00:24:51.160 the present reality, he would disrupt the timeline. 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:53.720 He wanted to break the reality of the location. 00:24:54.039 --> 00:24:56.960 He called it scrambling the control lines and 00:24:56.960 --> 00:24:59.660 creating a psychic disturbance. And did it work? 00:24:59.960 --> 00:25:01.940 Well, according to Burroughs, accidents started 00:25:01.940 --> 00:25:04.180 happening inside. The espresso machine broke, 00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:07.099 fights broke out, business dropped off, and on 00:25:07.099 --> 00:25:10.839 October 30, 1972, the Mocha Bar closed down for 00:25:10.839 --> 00:25:13.430 good. He cursed a coffee shop out of business 00:25:13.430 --> 00:25:15.849 with a tape recorder. She viewed it as a successful 00:25:15.849 --> 00:25:18.710 magical operation. For him, cameras and tape 00:25:18.710 --> 00:25:20.809 recorders were not passive devices. They were 00:25:20.809 --> 00:25:22.869 weapons. They could freeze and manipulate time. 00:25:23.049 --> 00:25:25.289 That is some real -life cyberpunk sorcery right 00:25:25.289 --> 00:25:27.490 there. It really is. And this brings us to his 00:25:27.490 --> 00:25:30.690 return to America, part six. In 1974, he moves 00:25:30.690 --> 00:25:33.029 back to New York City. To the bunker. He moves 00:25:33.029 --> 00:25:35.950 into a converted YMCA locker room on the Bowery. 00:25:35.970 --> 00:25:38.150 No windows, just concrete walls and communal 00:25:38.150 --> 00:25:40.380 showers down the hall. He called it the bunker. 00:25:40.519 --> 00:25:42.920 And this is where he becomes the godfather, the 00:25:42.920 --> 00:25:45.420 elder statesman. Exactly. It's the mid -70s. 00:25:45.420 --> 00:25:48.839 The CBGB scene is exploding. Punk is happening. 00:25:49.220 --> 00:25:52.519 Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, 00:25:52.980 --> 00:25:55.619 Susan Sontag. They all make the pilgrimage to 00:25:55.619 --> 00:25:58.700 the bunker to pay homage to the old man. He's 00:25:58.700 --> 00:26:00.019 the one who lived through the things they were 00:26:00.019 --> 00:26:02.140 just starting to experiment with. But he was 00:26:02.140 --> 00:26:04.440 also struggling, right, financially and physically. 00:26:04.700 --> 00:26:07.309 He was. His allowance had long since run out. 00:26:07.369 --> 00:26:09.430 He was teaching writing. But then a man named 00:26:09.430 --> 00:26:12.549 James Growerholz arrived. This is a key figure 00:26:12.549 --> 00:26:15.170 in Burroughs' later life. Who was James Growerholz? 00:26:15.430 --> 00:26:17.910 He was a young bookseller from Kansas, a huge 00:26:17.910 --> 00:26:20.650 devotee of the Beats. He came to visit Burroughs 00:26:20.650 --> 00:26:23.690 and basically realized the man needed help. He 00:26:23.690 --> 00:26:26.109 became Burroughs' secretary, then his manager, 00:26:26.250 --> 00:26:28.730 literary executor, and essentially his savior. 00:26:29.009 --> 00:26:31.029 What did he do for him? He organized his life. 00:26:31.150 --> 00:26:33.589 He cataloged the word hoard. Most importantly, 00:26:33.630 --> 00:26:36.319 he organized reading tours. He got Burroughs 00:26:36.319 --> 00:26:38.579 out of the apartment and onto stages across the 00:26:38.579 --> 00:26:40.400 country and Europe. He turned Burroughs into 00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:43.259 a performing artist. Which revitalized his career 00:26:43.259 --> 00:26:46.799 and his bank account. Suddenly, William S. Burroughs 00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:50.200 was a rock star of literature. But amidst this 00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:53.259 big comeback, there was a deep personal tragedy 00:26:53.259 --> 00:26:56.240 occurring in the background. His son, Billy. 00:26:56.519 --> 00:26:59.339 The boy who was there or nearby when his mother 00:26:59.339 --> 00:27:02.210 was shot. Yes. William S. Burroughs Jr. Billy 00:27:02.210 --> 00:27:04.809 grew up effectively without a mother and with 00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:07.109 a mostly absent father who was traveling the 00:27:07.109 --> 00:27:08.970 world looking for drugs and enlightenment. And 00:27:08.970 --> 00:27:11.369 he also became a writer. He did. He wrote a great 00:27:11.369 --> 00:27:14.289 book called Kentucky Ham. But sadly, he became 00:27:14.289 --> 00:27:17.470 an addict too. Speed, alcohol. Like father, like 00:27:17.470 --> 00:27:20.369 son. But Billy didn't have William's Iron Constitution. 00:27:20.990 --> 00:27:25.309 In 1976, Billy's liver failed completely. He 00:27:25.309 --> 00:27:27.250 had a liver transplant, a pioneering surgery 00:27:27.250 --> 00:27:29.720 at the time. Burroughs spent time in Colorado 00:27:29.720 --> 00:27:31.980 helping him recover. It was the most time they 00:27:31.980 --> 00:27:34.059 had spent together in years. Did they reconcile? 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.140 Was that a healing moment? It was strained. Billy 00:27:37.140 --> 00:27:39.400 had written an article in Esquire basically blaming 00:27:39.400 --> 00:27:41.819 his father for poisoning his life. He felt the 00:27:41.819 --> 00:27:44.019 way of the name, the legacy of his mother's death. 00:27:44.200 --> 00:27:46.200 And tragically, Billy kept drinking and using 00:27:46.200 --> 00:27:48.339 drugs even after the transplant. Then he died 00:27:48.339 --> 00:27:53.240 young. He died in 1981 at age 33. He was found 00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:55.759 in a ditch near a highway in Florida. It was 00:27:55.759 --> 00:27:58.460 a heartbreaking, squalid end. That must have 00:27:58.460 --> 00:28:01.319 weighed on Burroughs immensely. It did. The guilt 00:28:01.319 --> 00:28:04.579 over Joan, the failure with Billy. It reinforced 00:28:04.579 --> 00:28:07.039 his belief that he was cursed or that the ugly 00:28:07.039 --> 00:28:08.960 spirit destroyed the people around him while 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:11.339 leaving him alive. He was a survivor, but at 00:28:11.339 --> 00:28:13.680 a terrible cost. Everyone around him seemed to 00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:16.400 fall, but he just kept going. That's a very accurate 00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:18.000 way to put it. He was the eye of the hurricane. 00:28:18.299 --> 00:28:21.460 So after Billy dies, Burroughs makes a very surprising 00:28:21.460 --> 00:28:23.440 move. He leaves New York. He leaves the bunker. 00:28:23.619 --> 00:28:27.450 He moves to Kansas. Lawrence, Kansas. 1981. Why 00:28:27.450 --> 00:28:29.910 Kansas? It seems like the absolute last place 00:28:29.910 --> 00:28:32.809 a heroin -shooting, queer, avant -garde magician 00:28:32.809 --> 00:28:35.150 would go. He told people it was practical, it 00:28:35.150 --> 00:28:38.029 was cheaper, it was less violent, and crucially, 00:28:38.089 --> 00:28:40.650 he could go fishing and shooting. Shooting, right. 00:28:41.049 --> 00:28:42.990 We haven't talked enough about the guns. He was 00:28:42.990 --> 00:28:45.289 a huge gun enthusiast. Burroughs loved guns. 00:28:45.470 --> 00:28:49.549 He owned many. Cobras, Colts, shotguns. In Kansas, 00:28:49.589 --> 00:28:51.410 he could go out into the cornfields and target 00:28:51.410 --> 00:28:54.230 practice without the NYPD bothering him. This 00:28:54.230 --> 00:28:56.779 leads us to his visual art. The shotgun art. 00:28:56.960 --> 00:28:59.200 He would set up spray paint cans in front of 00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:01.680 a piece of plywood, then stand back and blast 00:29:01.680 --> 00:29:04.240 them with a shotgun. The paint would explode 00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:06.299 onto the wood in these abstract patterns. It's 00:29:06.299 --> 00:29:08.500 the cut -up technique again, but with ballistics, 00:29:08.680 --> 00:29:11.619 it's violent and random. Exactly. It's about 00:29:11.619 --> 00:29:14.839 surrendering control. You pull the trigger. And 00:29:14.839 --> 00:29:16.920 the result is dictated by physics and chance, 00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:20.079 not by the artist's conscious hand. It was the 00:29:20.079 --> 00:29:22.359 ultimate expression of his philosophy. So he 00:29:22.359 --> 00:29:25.180 really settled down in Kansas, became this local 00:29:25.180 --> 00:29:28.059 celebrity. He did. He lived in a small bungalow. 00:29:28.059 --> 00:29:32.130 He had cats. He absolutely adored cats. He became 00:29:32.130 --> 00:29:35.430 a sort of kindly eccentric old neighbor who just 00:29:35.430 --> 00:29:37.670 happened to be a counterculture legend. And this 00:29:37.670 --> 00:29:39.789 is when he starts popping up in pop culture everywhere. 00:29:39.809 --> 00:29:42.190 The 90s were huge for him. He became an icon 00:29:42.190 --> 00:29:45.109 all over again. The 90s were a renaissance. He 00:29:45.109 --> 00:29:47.549 was in the movie Drugstore Cowboy playing an 00:29:47.549 --> 00:29:50.910 old junkie priest. That famous line. You see, 00:29:50.970 --> 00:29:53.210 you have to be a priest to be a good drug fiend. 00:29:53.349 --> 00:29:55.930 He collaborated with Tom Waits and Robert Wilson 00:29:55.930 --> 00:29:58.859 on the play The Black Rider. He recorded with 00:29:58.859 --> 00:30:01.299 the Industrial Metal Band Ministry. He was in 00:30:01.299 --> 00:30:05.180 a U2 music video for Last Night on Earth. And 00:30:05.180 --> 00:30:08.160 Kurt Cobain. That collaboration is legendary. 00:30:08.640 --> 00:30:10.380 They recorded The Priest They Called Them Together. 00:30:11.539 --> 00:30:14.240 Cobain playing dissonant guitar noise while Burroughs 00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:17.299 read a story. Cobain absolutely idolized him. 00:30:17.400 --> 00:30:19.420 He even came to visit him in Lawrence, Kansas. 00:30:19.920 --> 00:30:22.920 It's tragic that Cobain, another figure struggling 00:30:22.920 --> 00:30:25.299 with addiction and the pressures of fame, sought 00:30:25.299 --> 00:30:27.559 him out. Burroughs actually felt sorry for Cobain. 00:30:27.640 --> 00:30:29.559 He said later, there's something wrong with that 00:30:29.559 --> 00:30:32.259 boy. He frowns for no reason. Burroughs, the 00:30:32.259 --> 00:30:34.599 old survivor, recognized the doom in Cobain. 00:30:34.799 --> 00:30:37.019 He knew Cobain wasn't going to make it. Let's 00:30:37.019 --> 00:30:39.420 touch on the 23 Enigma. This is another weird 00:30:39.420 --> 00:30:41.440 Burroughs thing that has really entered the culture. 00:30:41.740 --> 00:30:44.599 It is. Back in Tangier, he met a ferry captain 00:30:44.599 --> 00:30:47.519 named Clark. Captain Clark bragged he'd been 00:30:47.519 --> 00:30:50.000 sailing for 23 years without a single accident. 00:30:50.619 --> 00:30:53.819 That very same day, his ship sank, killing him 00:30:53.819 --> 00:30:56.829 and everyone aboard. That evening, Burroughs 00:30:56.829 --> 00:30:59.049 heard on the radio that Flight 23 from New York 00:30:59.049 --> 00:31:01.829 to Miami had crashed. And the pilot's name was 00:31:01.829 --> 00:31:04.109 Clark. The pilot's name was also Captain Clark. 00:31:04.470 --> 00:31:07.269 From that moment on, Burroughs started collecting 00:31:07.269 --> 00:31:10.849 occurrences of the number 23. He believed it 00:31:10.849 --> 00:31:13.809 was a cosmic signal, often associated with death 00:31:13.809 --> 00:31:16.259 or synchronicity. Now, if you look for it, you 00:31:16.259 --> 00:31:18.779 see 23 everywhere. It's a classic example of 00:31:18.779 --> 00:31:20.859 confirmation bias, but... It's classic Burroughs. 00:31:20.940 --> 00:31:23.440 He hacks your perception. Once he points it out, 00:31:23.480 --> 00:31:25.880 you can't unsee it. It's a virus of an idea. 00:31:26.140 --> 00:31:28.039 We also need to talk about his politics, because 00:31:28.039 --> 00:31:30.319 he doesn't fit in any box. You can't call him 00:31:30.319 --> 00:31:32.519 a liberal or a conservative. He really doesn't 00:31:32.519 --> 00:31:35.960 fit anywhere. He was a staunch, lifelong, gun 00:31:35.960 --> 00:31:38.779 -loving Second Amendment supporter. He said, 00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:41.359 I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society 00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:44.259 where the only people allowed guns are the police 00:31:44.259 --> 00:31:46.599 and... the military. Which sounds very right 00:31:46.599 --> 00:31:48.839 -wing libertarian. But he was also a radical 00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:51.319 libertine who hated the government, hated bureaucracy, 00:31:51.599 --> 00:31:54.480 hated the police, and wanted total drug legalization. 00:31:55.180 --> 00:31:58.519 He called himself a frontier individualist. But 00:31:58.519 --> 00:32:00.920 he lived on a trust fund and, as the source says, 00:32:01.099 --> 00:32:03.779 used the GI Bill to pay for his studies in Mexico. 00:32:04.220 --> 00:32:06.779 Oh, absolutely. He had a quote. I always say, 00:32:06.779 --> 00:32:09.740 keep your snout in the public trough. He hated 00:32:09.740 --> 00:32:12.319 the system, but he was more than happy to exploit 00:32:12.319 --> 00:32:14.750 it. He saw it as getting some of his own back. 00:32:15.210 --> 00:32:19.049 That is practically honest, at least. It fits 00:32:19.049 --> 00:32:21.529 his philosophy. If the system is a machine of 00:32:21.529 --> 00:32:24.210 control, you don't owe it any loyalty. You take 00:32:24.210 --> 00:32:27.190 what you can to survive. In his later years, 00:32:27.369 --> 00:32:29.710 he even joined the Illuminates of Thanateros, 00:32:29.789 --> 00:32:32.609 an order dedicated to chaos magic. So he went 00:32:32.609 --> 00:32:35.269 all in on the magic. He went all in. And he did 00:32:35.269 --> 00:32:37.569 survive. Against all odds, he lived to be 83. 00:32:37.990 --> 00:32:41.859 He died on August T, 1997. He had a heart attack 00:32:41.859 --> 00:32:44.559 in Lawrence. He is buried in the family plot 00:32:44.559 --> 00:32:46.819 in St. Louis, right next to the white granite 00:32:46.819 --> 00:32:48.920 obelisk of his grandfather, the adding machine 00:32:48.920 --> 00:32:51.720 tycoon. Back to the BNX? Full circle. The man 00:32:51.720 --> 00:32:53.539 who invented a tool of control and the man who 00:32:53.539 --> 00:32:56.119 tried to smash it. So what is the legacy here? 00:32:56.259 --> 00:32:58.599 When we look back at William S. Burroughs, what 00:32:58.599 --> 00:33:01.500 do we see? We see the grandfather of the counterculture. 00:33:01.940 --> 00:33:04.180 Without him, you don't get the Velvet Underground, 00:33:04.440 --> 00:33:06.799 you don't get punk, you certainly don't get cyberpunk. 00:33:07.500 --> 00:33:10.519 William Gibson, who wrote Neuromancer, owes a 00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:13.279 huge debt to Burroughs' ideas of interzone and 00:33:13.279 --> 00:33:15.480 reality hacking. A term heavy metal comes from 00:33:15.480 --> 00:33:17.819 here, too, right? It does. It appears in his 00:33:17.819 --> 00:33:20.529 novel The Soft Machine. Character Uranian Willie, 00:33:20.750 --> 00:33:22.789 the heavy metal kid. And then there's Steely 00:33:22.789 --> 00:33:25.289 Dan. The band Steely Dan. The band Steely Dan 00:33:25.289 --> 00:33:28.069 is named after a steam -powered dildo in Naked 00:33:28.069 --> 00:33:30.990 Lunch. No way. That smooth jazz rock band is 00:33:30.990 --> 00:33:33.869 named after a sex toy in a Burroughs book. Absolute 00:33:33.869 --> 00:33:36.769 fact. His DNA is in the bloodstream of our culture, 00:33:36.890 --> 00:33:39.369 often in places we don't realize. Soft Machine, 00:33:39.650 --> 00:33:42.460 other band, Thin White Rope. The list goes on. 00:33:42.599 --> 00:33:44.920 But beyond the trivia and the band names, it's 00:33:44.920 --> 00:33:48.039 the ideas. The idea that reality is malleable, 00:33:48.140 --> 00:33:50.420 that language creates our world. And that we 00:33:50.420 --> 00:33:53.119 are living in a magical universe. Burroughs insisted 00:33:53.119 --> 00:33:55.700 that there are no coincidences. Nothing happens 00:33:55.700 --> 00:33:58.019 unless someone wills it to happen. That is both 00:33:58.019 --> 00:34:00.539 an empowering thought and a terrifying one. It 00:34:00.539 --> 00:34:02.920 places the ultimate responsibility on the individual. 00:34:03.900 --> 00:34:06.299 If you are controlled, it's because you haven't 00:34:06.299 --> 00:34:08.059 figured out how to cut the wires yet. You know, 00:34:08.079 --> 00:34:10.539 thinking about his central warning. that language 00:34:10.539 --> 00:34:14.179 is a virus a control system it feels incredibly 00:34:14.179 --> 00:34:17.719 relevant right now how so well Look at the world 00:34:17.719 --> 00:34:19.980 we live in. We are living in the age of algorithms. 00:34:20.039 --> 00:34:22.820 We have AI generating text, generating images, 00:34:22.980 --> 00:34:25.480 generating a kind of reality on social media. 00:34:25.719 --> 00:34:28.679 We are swimming in a sea of manipulated information. 00:34:29.179 --> 00:34:32.179 We are constantly being fed a narrative. That 00:34:32.179 --> 00:34:34.320 connects perfectly to Burroughs' cut -up philosophy. 00:34:34.960 --> 00:34:37.400 He believed that by cutting up the word lines, 00:34:37.639 --> 00:34:39.800 you could break the programming. You could disrupt 00:34:39.800 --> 00:34:41.659 the narrative and see what was really there. 00:34:41.960 --> 00:34:44.840 But now the programming is writing itself. The 00:34:44.840 --> 00:34:47.480 machine is generating the language that we consume. 00:34:47.639 --> 00:34:49.659 Which raises a provocative final thought, doesn't 00:34:49.659 --> 00:34:52.719 it? Burroughs warned us that control seeks to 00:34:52.719 --> 00:34:54.699 make us predictable, to turn us into machines. 00:34:55.300 --> 00:34:57.400 He used a pair of scissors and a tape recorder 00:34:57.400 --> 00:35:00.219 to fight back. In an age where our thoughts are 00:35:00.219 --> 00:35:03.019 increasingly shaped by predictive texts and algorithmic 00:35:03.019 --> 00:35:05.960 feeds, are we living in the ultimate control 00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:09.639 system he prophesied? And if language is a virus 00:35:09.639 --> 00:35:13.389 from outer space. Have we all been infected? 00:35:13.710 --> 00:35:16.530 I think the answer, according to Burroughs, would 00:35:16.530 --> 00:35:20.630 be a resounding yes. The question is, what are 00:35:20.630 --> 00:35:22.469 you going to do to break the spell? On that note, 00:35:22.510 --> 00:35:24.849 maybe go pick up a pair of scissors and a newspaper. 00:35:25.070 --> 00:35:26.929 See what the future holds. Just be careful what 00:35:26.929 --> 00:35:28.969 you let leak out. Thanks for listening to The 00:35:28.969 --> 00:35:30.949 Deep Dive. We'll see you in the Interzone.