In 1998 I began to do work hard on experimental writing on my first, beloved old PC, the Olivetti 486-DX, a battleship grey hunk'o'junk that, once it was hooked to the mainline, changed my life forever. Inspired by Burroughs and my own metaphysical mayhem, and with the help of early text manipulation programs like Random Verse Lab, I cutup countless thousands of words, published numerous websites and recorded numerous files of voice weirdness.
Stumbling around online I rediscovered one of my cutup sites, an old Geocities workhorse heaving with little programs, machine-generated texts and visionary hypotheses. Usually I would shove random 'net-tech content, my poetry and prose and news material into Random Verse Lab and then spend long hours lost in an unlanguage haze, editing my ass off. It became obsessive and a kinda carpal tunnel turn-on. There were times when I changed realities. You can laugh, but "the end of words" (Burroughs) really is the kickoff to the unknown. Beyond words lies the corridors of unarticulated energy flux. And we ain't talking a hobby here: this stuff can rip your heart off and your head out. We hold back the collapse by force of will invoked in the words we use. After that?
Amongst the glories squirreled away in this cardboard catacomb is one experiment I particularly am proud of. This was an attempt to get others to finish a book I had an idea for based on words that came to me in a dream:
"wanna write my book? i got 60 words. i need more:
"Anybody who thinks there is not evil in this world is in for a big surprise. Hell is the Parasite. The Master Parasite. On our shoulders like a marine rifle, seeped into bruises. I woke up smoking listening television. I have known Bliss, The White River. Father, forgive them, they know exactly what they do. Jesus loves a liar: Judas."
The work continued apace for a few years. At its peak, my cutup cook-down took up weeks at a time, endless alchemical copy and paste to the point of exhaustion and, sometimes, exultation.
No comments:
Post a Comment