Conversations With William S. Burroughs

CORSO: What say you about political conflicts?

BURROUGHS: Political conflicts are merely surfaced manifestations. If
conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this
conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. To
concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of
the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is
for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull,
teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.

CORSO: What kind of advice you got for politicians?

BURROUGHS: Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.


http://gorgeaway.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_gorgeaway_archive.html

Conversations With William S. Burroughs
Monday, October 27, 2003
Prisoners of the earth come out
Q: We spoke of images and words which hold man prisoner, and which are the
logical outcome of a vast system of annihilation. The next step would be to
locate the various springs of the mechanism, and for a start, its origin.
How do you see it?

A: Image and word are the instruments of control used by the daily press and
by such news magazines as TIME, LIFE, NEWSWEEK, and their English and
Continental counterparts. Of course, an instrument can be used without
knowledge of its fundamental nature or its origins. To get to the origin we
must examine the instruments themselves; that is, the actual nature of word
and image. Research along these lines is discouraged by those who use word
and image as instruments of control. So we do not know what a word is or
what an image is. The study of hieroglyphic languages shows us that a word
is an image...the written word is an image. However, there is an important
difference between a hieroglyphic and a syllabic language. If I hold up a
sign with the word "ROSE" written on it, and you read that sign, you will be
forced to repeat the word "ROSE" to yourself. If I show you a picture of a
rose you do not have to repeat the word. You can register the image in
silence. A syllabic language forces you to verbalize in auditory patterns. A
hieroglyphic language does not. I think that anyone who is interested to
find out the precise relationship between word and image should study a
simplified hieroglyphic script. Such a study would tend to breakdown the
automatic verbal reaction to a word. It is precisely these automatic
reactions to words themselves that enable those who manipulate words to
control thought on a mass scale.

Q: What is the importance of power, in all its form, in the machinery of
destruction?

A: The exercise of power for power's sake is precisely the machine of
destruction. This would seem to be something we have had throughout history,
and in a sense this is true. The difference is a matter of degree.
Old-fashioned power, the generalissimo shooting a provincial governor across
his desk, has self-limiting goals, and at least a measure of
self-preservation. To confuse this old-style power with the manifestation of
control madness we see now on this planet is to confuse a disappearing wart
with an exploding cancer. You might as well expect a measure of moderation,
or at least self-preservation, from the virus of rabies which dies when you
do, mission accomplished. What we see now is power exercised for purely
destructive purposes. Whether they know it or not, the present controllers
are bent on annihilation.

Q: And what of money, ownership, property?

A: Vested interest of power and/or money is perhaps the most potent factor
standing in the way of freedom for the individual. New discoveries and
products are suppressed because they threaten vested interests. The medical
profession is suppressing Reich's orgone accumulator and his discoveries
relative to the use and dangers of orgonic energy. They are suppressing
Dianetics and Scientology discovered by Mr L. Ron Hubbard. They are
suppressing the use of massive doses of Vitamin E for the prevention of
heart disease, the use of massive doses of Vitamin A for curing the common
cold. (I have used this simple remedy for thirty years and it works.
Everyone I have passed it on to has found that it works either to abort or
modify the course of a cold. At the first soreness in the throat which
presages the onslaught of a common cold you take 500,000 units of Vitamin A.
Vitamin A alone. Not Vitamin C which is quite worthless for a cold. At one
time I had thought to market this remedy but was told it could not be
marketed because the American Medical Association is opposed to
self-medication. The AMA is opposed to self-medication if it works.) The
medical profession is suppressing the use of apomorphine for the treatment
of alcoholism and drug addiction and for the general regulation of disturbed
metabolism. The medical profession has a vested interest in illness. They
suppress any discovery that strikes at the roots of illness. The real-estate
lobby has a vested interest in the housing shortage. They sabotage any
attempt to provide good cheap housing. An example of this suppression is the
Lustron house. A man named Lustron devised a prefabricated house of
porcelain steel, with a layer of insulation in the middle. This house was
termite-proof, rust-proof, age-proof. It would still be there a thousand
years from now. Lustron planned to put this house out for five thousand
dollars. He only manufactured a few hundred Lustron houses before he was
forced out of business by the real-estate lobby. They blocked him from
obtaining the necessary materials. The Tucker car is another example: Tucker
devised a car so much better that any car on the market it would have forced
big motor companies to change their dies and produce a car of equal
performance. Since they could sell the inferior cars they were already set
up to produce, it was cheaper and easier to block Tucker... No materials! He
lost 20,000,000 dollars and nearly went to jail. The Tucker car never hit
the open market. Other examples are the blocking of the ramie industry by
the Duponts and other manufacturers of synthetic fabrics. Where are the
bicycle helicopters we were supposed to have by now? Where are the aluminium
houses? The police have a vested interest in criminality. The Narcotics
Department has a vested interest in addiction. Politicians have a vested
interest in nations. Army officers have a vested interest in war. Vested
interest, whether operating through private, capital or official agencies,
suppresses any discovery, product or way of thought that threatens its area
of monopoly. The cold war is used as a pretext by both America and Russia to
conceal and monopolize research confining knowldge to official agencies. It
is no exaggeration to say that all important research is now top secret,
until someone lets a rat out of the bag. Infrasound, for example: I quote
from a Sunday Times article, April 16, 1967, "Acoustics," by Frank Dorsey,
under the title "Joshua Knew a Thing or Two":
"The world is not noticeably short of lethal weapons, but a team of French
scientists in Marseille is working on a death-ray machine designed to
provide an entirely novel method of human destruction. The project began
when the Electro-Acoustical laboratory moved into a new building three years
ago. Staff complained of headache and nausea. Investigation began.
Electromagnetic waves were suspected and eliminated. So were ultra-sound
waves. At this point, one of the technicians got out an antique appparatus
for detecting infrasound--that is, air vibrations which oscillate at less
than ten vibrations a second, or 10 Hertz--(The human ear registers, as
sound vibrations, from 16Hz to 20,000Hz) It had been used during the First
World War to distinguish cannon fire and movement of trains too far off to
be unscrambled by ears. I quickly identified the source of the unease: the
giant ventilator of a factory next door. After changing the ventilator's
frequency, the five-man team headed by Professor Vladimir Gavreau decided to
find out more about the properties of infrasound."
As everyone knows, sound is a succession of waves in which the air is
alternatively compressed and decompressed. Fast vibrations either go right
through solid objects or bounce off them, usually doing relatively little
harm even when very powerful. But slow vibration, below the hearing level,
can create a sort of pendulum action, a reverberation in solid objects that
quickly builds up to intolerable intensity. To study this phenomenon the
team built a giant whistle, hooked to a compressed air hose. Then they
turned on the air. Professor Gavreau says:
"Luckily, we were able to turn it off quickly. All of us were sick for
hours. Everything in us was vibrating: stomach, heart, lungs. All the people
in the other laboratories were sick too. They were very angry with us."
The first blast was audible only to 190 Hz. It had an acoustical force of
about 100 Watts, compared with one watt for a football referee's whistle.
From then on the tem worked at lowering the frequency, but carefully kept
the power input down. A bigger whistle was built, measuring about five feet
across. It emits a very low but audible tone, at about 37 Hz. If turned on
full blast, it would develop 2000 Watts--and the building would fall down
like the walls of Jericho before Joshua's trumpet. At the pressures used it
has done no more than put cracks in the ceiling. The team has discovered
that the wave length most dangerous to human life is 7 Hz. At 7 Hz, turned
on very softly, one has a vague impression of sound, and a general feeling
of discomfort. At 3.5 Hz, nothing can be heard directly but there is a
curious incidental effect. Nearby sounds, such as air hissing into the pipe,
take on a pulsing quality--at 3.5 pulsations a second. All sounds in the
neighbourhood seem to ululate rhymically. The team has suffered from its
experiments. Some of the invisible injuries appear to be persistent.
"It not only affects the ears," Professor Gavreau says, "but it works
directly on the internal organs. There is a rubbing between the various
organs because of a sort of resonance. It provokes an irritation so intense
that for hours afterwards any low-pitched sound seems to echo through one's
body."
In developing a military weapon, scientists intend to revert to a
policeman's whistle form, perhaps as big as eighteen feet across, mount it
on a truck and blow it with a fan turned by a small airplane engine. This
weapon, they say, will give forth an all-destroying 10,000 acoustic watts.
It could kill a man five miles away. There is one snag: at present, the
machine is as dangerous to its operators as to the enemy. The team is
working on a way to focus it. Various systems of baffles have been tried,
but the most promising method appears to be propagation of a different and
complementary sound a wave length backward from the machine. This changes
the frequency of airwave length moving in that direction, thus protecting
anyone to the rear. There is, of course, a much simpler means of protection:
turn the machine on from a safe distance. This summary of Professor Vladimir
Gavreau's experiments with infrasound is based on the Sunday Times article.
A much more comprehensive article has appeared in an American periodical,
The National Enquirer, Vol.42, No. 27, March 10, 1968. Professor Gavreau's
discovery has been patented and anybody can obtain the plans and full
description from the French patent office upon payment of two francs.
Undoubtedly top secret projects are exploring the military potentials of
infrasound. Since sub-lethal infrasound paralyses the mental functions--(as
Professor Gavreau put it "I could not add two and two")--well add two and
two and you will see that infrasound is an ideal weapon against dissident
elements within the establishment. It is to be hoped that hobbyists will
obtain the plans and experiment. The materials necessary are cheap and
easily obtained. Perhaps infrasound has therapeutic properties at low volume
and borderline infrasound might add a new dimension to pop music. Another
scientist who freely published his discoveries was Wilhelm Reich. He died in
a federal prison. Most of you know something of Reich's experiments,
discoveries and theories so I will not undertake a detailed rundown here.
You can still buy Reich's books despite the book-burning carried out by the
Pure Food and Drug pigs in emulation of their Nazi prototypes. I would like
to draw attention to Reich's experiements with DOR-Deadly Orgone Radiation.
DOR is produced by putting any radioactive material into an orgone
accumulator. In Reich's experiments very small quantities of radioactive
material were used. None the less the effect is described as "being hit on
the head with a sledge hammer." One experimenter nearly died as a result of
exposure. Very dilute exposure produces mental confusion, depression,
anxiety and restlessness. Like infrasound DOR has a range from the almost
imperceptible to the lethal. The experiments with DOR are fully described in
The Selected Writings of Wilhelm Reich in the chapter entitled Orgone
Physics. Anyone with a radium watch dial can duplicate these experiments. It
seems that immunity to DOR is conveyed by gradient exposure. In fact the
purpose of the DOR experiments was to find a means of conveying mass
immunization to radiation sickness. As you know Reich's books and papers
were burned, his experiments outlawed and he himself imprisoned. It is to
say the least probable that top secret experiments with DOR are being
carried out by official agencies. Experiments which offer any possibility of
immunization to radiation sickness certainly deserve to be fully explored
and widely publicized.
Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, has also been
persecuted by the Pure Food and Drug Department. To date Mr. Hubbard has
refused to publish his advanced discoveries. There is every indication that
the discoveries of Scientology are being used by the CIA and other official
agencies. With these discoveries already in the worst possible hands it is
to be hoped that Mr. Hubbard will reserve his present policies.
To Mr. Hubbard belongs the credit for making public a secret weapon used
extensively by the Americans and the Russians in their dreary cold-war
farce. This weapon is pain-drug hypnosis. Ordinary hypnosis cannot force the
subject to act against his moral code or his own interests and survival.
Pain-drug hypnosis can. The subject is drugged into unconsciousness, beaten
in a way that will leave no mark-(telephone book, hard pillow)-and given
suggestions. He will obey these suggestions without knowing that he has been
drugged and subjected to pain-drug hypnosis. He will obey these suggestions
however much they may conflict with his moral code or his interests. Even
suicide can be so induced.
In the case of Reich and Hubbard discoveries have been suppressed by
official agencies in all probablility to mask secret experiments along the
same lines.
A recent article in ESQUIRE magazine written by a former CIA agent contains
this anecdote: A man with photos of the Bay of Pigs was on the way to a
newspaper office when the agent who was tailing him called a "special
number" in Washington. "On the way to the newspaper office he was run down
by a laundry truck." Not so easy to be sure of nailing someone on a walk
across town after all people do look before crossing a street. I would
venture the guess that he was pushed in front of the laundry truck by a
laser. Lasers can move satellites in and out of orbit. They could push
someone in front of a truck. Is this knowledge in the best hands?
Nine years ago in Amsterdam, I talked with a Dutch chemist who told me they
had synthesized a drug infinitely more potent than LSD, and could not take
the responsibility of testing this drug on human subjects, owing to the
possibility of residual brain damage. Subsequently, I heard that the drug
has now been released to "official agencies" in America. This may well be
the "non-lethal nerve gas" being used in Vietnam. Recently I heard from
someone connected with a laser research project conducted by the U.S. Navy:
"They can actually send a thought." Some years ago, experiments in Norway
indicated the possibility of activating speech patterns directly in the
brain by means of an electromagnetic field. Hearing voices? The Black Box
which develops positive ions, enabling anyone within its range to perform at
a high level of efficiency without fatigue, was used by the U.S. Army and
kept secret for ten years. Is it on the market yet?
Important research that could be used to free the human spirit is being
monopolized by paltry intellects in the name of "National Security." What
are you getting out of "national security"? The cold war is an essential
factor in maintaining the establishment of the West and in Russia, and has
all the marks of a deal under the table. Top secret classified research is
not top secret because the Russians might find out about it. The Russians
already know and in most cases are well ahead of the West. Top secret
research is top secret because establishments do not want young people of
the world to find out what they are doing.


# posted by William @ 1:23 AM
Friday, October 24, 2003
Penthouse Interviews Burroughs/1972
PENTHOUSE: It's nearly ten years since you gave a statirical but graphic
description of totalitarian control in THE NAKED LUNCH. Do you think your
visions of a decade ago are any nearer reality?

BURROUGHS: THE NAKED LUNCH was a science-fiction idea but is now absolute
fact, mainly because of the development of electrodes which can control the
brain. If anyone has these electrodes planted in him--and there may be many
ways to do this, not necessitating an actual surgical operation--he can be
made to think, feel, or even experience, anything that the manipulator of
the electrodes wants. He can be made to make involuntary movements: to pick
something up against his will. Also to feel fear, or sexuality, or any other
emotion. Where such control is possible, the question arises of who is to
exercise it. Once someone has the control box he is in complete control of
anyone fitted with electrodes.

PENTHOUSE: But a would-be dictator would need to overcome the practical
problem of implanting such electrodes.

BURROUGHS: One can imagine all sorts of scandalous ways of doing it. "Doctor
had 100 Love Slaves"...he would lure young girls in for minor operations,
plant electrodes in their brains and that would be it. Or an equivalent to
electrodes could be produced possibly by a virus, by microwaves or by an
electro-magnetic field. We also know that certain chemicals stimulate
particular brain areas, such as apomorphine which stimulates the back brain,
the hypothalamus. These brain areas haven't been carefully plotted but of
course they can be on an encephelographic machine.

PENTHOUSE: How much are we herded already without electrical means?

BURROUGHS: There is always psychological influence, there's nothing new
about that. All governments, all religions have used it throughout history.
The point is that now the means of control are much more efficient. We have
computers. We have populations exposed to exactly the same images and words,
millions of people every day. So the opportunities to control are much more
potent now than they have ever been. The same development started with the
industrial revolution, the same thing has happened with weapons--they've
become more and more efficient, which of course has brought a whole new,
almost a biological mutation, into revolutionary tactics. Anyone can go down
into his basement and make a spear or a club--but they can't make automatic
weapons, they can't make tanks, they can't make dive bombers. So while the
methods of psychological control are much more effective, so are the methods
of physical control. Since the people in control hold heavy weapons, 1%
could keep down 99% if it came to that. This was all implicit in the
industrial revolution: first, that we'd have larger and larger populations,
which means more and more control. Just take the job of feeding all these
people in London--think of the technical job of doing that and the number of
people involved in it. When Jerry Rubin and people like that talk about
dropping out and doing their thing--my God, how many people could live on
what England could produce? As you have larger and larger populations, more
and more elaborate apparatus is needed to give them even the necessities.
The bigger the thing gets, the more control you need just to run it, just to
keep it moving, just to keep it from foundering completely. The nature of
control is also hierarchical. You can't really get anything done unless one
does it, unless someone gives the orders. So I don't think it's too
far-fetched to say that the orders now are given by fewer and fewer people.

PENTHOUSE: So society would be even more hierarchical if electrode control
were to reach a high degree of refinement?

BURROUGHS: Who's going to use it, and how, is an absolutely open question. I
cannot think of any existing society in whose hands I would like this power
to fall. Suppose the people in the Pentagon could condition people so
believe in what they believed in--or what they pretend to believe in, at
least--and turn everyone into decent Americans. That would be horrible. This
control would be more than just a case of pressing this button here and this
button there, this could be a whole computer program. Scientists have
already wired up an ape's brain to a computer. Now the ape's brain can give
orders to the computer, and initiate action in the computer; then the
computer can chew this over and shoot it back. In other words it's a
feed-back between the computer and the brain. The computer can be programmed
to erase past conditioning--this has been done with apes--or to accentuate
any particular aspect of conditioning. You would have a computer program
that would determine a person's entire actions and feelings, and the person
would be physiologically incapable of doing anything about it. But the fact
that this knowledge is all out in the open is encouraging, because these
developments need not be used for control at all.

# posted by William @ 3:31 AM
Interview with Burroughs/1961
CORSO: What say you about political conflicts?

BURROUGHS: Political conflicts are merely surfaced manifestations. If
conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this
conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. To
concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of
the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is
for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull,
teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.

CORSO: What kind of advice you got for politicians?

BURROUGHS: Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.

CORSO: What if people don't want to change, don't want no new consciousness?

BURROUGHS: For any species to change, if they are unable and are unwilling
to do so--I might for example have suggested to the dinosaurs that heavy
armor and great size was a sinking ship, and that they would do well to
convert to mammal facilities--it would not lie in my power or desire to
reconvert a reluctant dinosaur. I can make my feeling very clear, Gregory. I
feel like I'm on a sinking ship and I want off.

CORSO: Could you or do you think it wise to say who it will be or just what
force it will be that will destroy the world?

BURROUGHS: You want to create panic? That's top secret--want to swamp the
lifeboats?

CORSO: O.K. How did them there lifeboats get there in the first place?

BURROUGHS: Take for instance some Indians in South America I seen. There
comes along this sloppy cop with his shirt buttons all in the wrong hole,
well then, Parkinson's law goes into operation--there's need not for one cop
but seven or eight, need for sanitation inspectors, rent collectors, etc.;
so after a period of years problems arise, crime, dope taking and traffic,
juvenile delinquency--So the question is asked, "What should we do about
these problems?" The answer as Gertrude Stein on her deathbed said comes
before the question--in short before the bastards got there in the first
place!

# posted by William @ 2:45 AM


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