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The Electronic Revolution by William S. Burroughs
THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION
BY
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
1970 Expanded Media Editions
Published by Bresche Publikationen
Germany
(To my knowlege, no longer in print)
Text transcription By Flesh
01/16/92
FEEDBACK FROM WATERGATE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN
In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained one
of the mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was flesh we are
told. In the beginning of what exactly was this beginning word? In the
beginning of WRITTEN history. It is generally assumed that spoken word came
before the written word. I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came
after the written word. In the beginning was the word and the word was God
and the word was flesh ... human flesh ... In the beginning of WRITING.
Animals talk and convey information but they do not write. They cannot make
information available to future generations or to animals outside the range
of their communication system. This is the crucial distinction between men
and other animals. WRITING. Korzybski, who developed the concept of General
Semantics, the meaning of meaning, has pointed out this human distinction
and described man as 'the time binding animal'. He can make information to
other men over a length of time through writing. Animals talk. They dont
write. Now a wise old rat may know a lot about traps and poison but he cannot
write a text book on DEATH TRAPS IN YOUR WAREHOUSE for the Reader's Digest
with tactics for ganging up on digs and ferrets and taking care of wise guys
who stuff steel wool up our holes. It is doubtful if the spoke word would
have ever evolved beyond the animal stage without the written word. The
written word ist inferential in HUMAN speech. It would not occur to our wise
old rat to assemble the young rats and pass his knowledge along in an aural
tradition BECAUSE THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF TIME BINDING COULD NOT OCCUR WITHOUT
THE WRITTEN WORD. The written word is of course a symbol for something and
in the case of hieroglyphic language writing like Egyptian it may be a symbol
for itself that is a picture of what it represents. This is not true of an
alphabet language like English. The word leg has no pictorial resemblance to
a leg. It refers to the SPOKEN word leg. so we may forget that a written word
IS AN IMAGE and that written words are images in sequence that is to say
MOVING PICTURES. So any hieroglyphic sequence gives us an immediate working
definition for spoken words. Spoken words are verbal units that refer to this
pictorial sequence. And what then is the written word? My basis theory is
that the written word was literally a virus that made spoken word possible.
The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state
of stable symbiosis with the host...(This symbiotic relationship is now
breaking down for reasons I will suggest later.)
I quote from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION edited by Mr. Wilson Smith, a
scientist who really thinks about his subject instead of merely correlating
data. He thinks, that is, about the ultimate intentions of the virus
organism. In an article entitled VIRUS ADAPTIBILITY AND HOST RESISTANCE by
G. Belyavin, speculations as to the biologic goal of the virus species
are enlarged ... 'Viruses are obligatory cellular parasites and are thus
wholly dependant upon the integrity of the cellular systems they parasitize
for their survival in an active state. It is something of a paradox that
many viruses ultimately destroy the cells in which they are living..."
And I may add the environment necessary for any cellular structure they
could parasitize to survive. Is the virus then simply a time bomb left on
this planet to be activated by remote control? An extermination program in
fact? In its path from full virulence to its ultimate goal of symbiosis will
any human creature survive? Is the white race, which would seem to be more
under virus control than the black yellow and brown races, giving any
indication of workable symbiosis?
'Taking the virus eye view, the ideal situation would appear to be one in
which the virus replicates in cells without in any way disturbing their
normal metabolism.'
This has been suggested as the ideal biological situation toward which all
viruses are slowly evolving...'
Would you offer violence to a well intentioned virus on its slow
road to symbiosis?
'It is worth noting that if a virus were to attain a state of wholly benign
equilibrium with its host cell it is unlikely that its presence would be
readily detected OR THAT IT WOULD NECESSARILY BE RECOGNIZED AS A VIRUS. I
suggest that the word is just such a virus. Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz
has put forth an interesting theory as to the origins and history of this
word virus. He postulates that the word was a virus of what he calls BIOLOGIC
MUTATION effecting the biologic change in its host which was then genetically
conveyed. One reason that apes cant talk is because the structure of their
inner throats is simply not designed to formulate words. He postulates that
alteration in inner throat structure were occasioned by virus illness ...
And not occasion ... This illness may well have had a high rate of mortality
but some female apes must have survived to give birth to the wunder kindern.
The illness perhaps assumed a more malignant form in the male because of his
more developed and rigid muscular structure causing death through
strangulation and vertebral fracture. Since the virus in both male and
female precipitates sexual frenzy through irritation of sex centers in the
brain the males impregnated the females in their death spasms and the
altered throat structured was genetically conveyed. Having effected
alterations in the host's structure that resulted in a new species specially
designed to accomodate the virus the virus can now replicate without
disturbing the metabolism and without being recognized a virus. A symbiotic
relationship has now been established and the virus is now built into the
host which sees the virus as a useful part of itself. This successful virus
can now sneer at gangster viruses like small pox and turn them in to The
Pasteur Institute. Ach jungen what a scene is here ... the apes are moulting
fur steaming off them females whimpering and slobbering over dying males like
cows with aftosa and so a stink musky sweet rotten metal stink of the
forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden...
The creation of Adam, the Garden of Eden, Adam's fainting spell during
which God made Eva from his body, the forbidden fruit which was of course
knowledge of the whole stinking thing and might be termed the first Watergate
scandal, all slots neatly into Doc Steinplatz's theory. And this was a white
myth. This leads to the supposition that the word virus assumed a specially
malignant and lethal form in the white race. What then accounts for this
special malignance of the white word virus? Most likely a virus mutation
occasioned by radioactivity .All animal and insect experiments so far carried
out indicate that mutations resulting from radiation are unfavorable that is
not conductive to survival. These experiments relate to the effects of
radiation on autonomous creatures. What about the effects of radiation on
viruses? Are there not perhaps some so classified and secret experiments
hiding behind national security? Virus mutations occasioned by radiation may
be quite favorable for the virus. And such a virus might well violate the
equilibrium with the host cell. So now with the tape recorders of Watergate
and the fall out from atomic testing the virus stirs uneasy in all your white
throats. It was a killer virus once. It could become a killer virus again and
rage through cities of the world like a topping forest fire.
"It is the beginning of the end." That was the reaction of a science
attache' at one of Washington's major embassies to reports that a synthetic
gene particle had been produced in the laboratory ..."Any small country can
now make a virus for which there is no cure. It would only take a small
laboratory. Any small country with good biochemists could do it."
And presumeably any big country could do it quicker and better.
In the Electronic Revolution I advance the theory that a virus
IS a very small unit of word and image. I have suggested now such units
can be biologically activated to act as communicable virus strains. Let
us start with three tape recorders in The Garden of Eden. Tape recorder 1 is
Adam. Tape recorder 2 is Eve. Tape recorder 3 is God, who deteriorated after
Hiroshima into the Ugly American. Or to return to our primevil scene: Tape
recorder 1 is the male ape in a helpless sexual frenzy as the virus strangles
him. Tape recorder 2 is a cooing female ape who straddles him. Tape recorder
3 is DEATH.
Steinplatz postulates that the virus of biologic mutation, which he calls
Virus B-23, is contained in the word. Unloosing this virus from the word
could be more deadly that loosing the power of the atom. Because all hate
all pain all fear all lust is contained in the word. Perhaps we have here in
these three tape recorders the virus of biologic mutation which once gave
us the word and has hidden behind the word ever since. And perhaps three
tape recorders and some good biochemists can unloose this force. Now look at these
three tape recorders and think in terms of the virus particle. Recorder 1 is
the perspective host for an influenza virus. Tape recorder number 2 is the
means by which the virus gains access to the host, in the case of a flu virus
by disolving a hole in cells of the host's respiratory tract. Number 2, having
gained access to the cell. leads in number 3. Number 3 is the effect
produced in the host by the virus: coughing, fever, inflamation. NUMBER 3 IS
OBJECTIVE REALITY PRODUCED BY THE VIRUS IN THE HOST Viruses make themselves
real. It's a way viruses have. We now have three tape recorders. So we will
make a simple word virus. Let us suppose that our target is a rival
politician. On tape recorder 1 we will record speeches and conversation
carefully editing in stammers mispronouncing, inept phrases ... the worst
number 1 can assemble. now on tape recorder 2 we will make so a love tape
by bugging his bed room. We can potentiate this tape by splicing it in with
a sexual object that is inadmissible or inaccessible or both, say the
senator's teen age daughter. On tape recorder 3 we will record hateful
disapproving voices and splice the three recordings together at very short
intervals and play them back to the senator and his constituents. This
cutting and playback can be very complex involving speech scramblers and
batteries of tape recorders but THE BASIC PRINCIPAL IS SIMPLY SPLICING SEX
TAPE AND DISAPPROVAL TAPES IN TOGETHER. Once the associations lines are
established they are activated every time the senator's speech centres are
activated which is all the time heavan help that sorry bestard if anything
happened to his big mouth. So his teen age daughter crawls all over him while
Texas rangers and decent church going women rise from tape recorder 3
screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN FRONT OF DECENT PEOPLE."
The teen age daughter is just a refinement. Basically all you need is sex
recordings on number 2 and hostile recordings on number 3. With this simple
formula any CIA sonofabitch can become God that is tape tape recorder 3.
Notice the emphasis on sexual material in burglaries and bugging in the
Watergate cess pool ...Bugging Martin Luther King's bed room ...Kiss Kiss
bang bang ...A deadly assassination technique. At the very least sure to
unerve and put opponents at a disadvantage. So the real scandal of Watergate
that has not come out yet is not that bed rooms were bugged and the
offices of psychiatrists ransaked but THE PRECISE USE THAT WAS AND IS
MADE OF THIS SEXUAL MATERIAL. This formula works best on a closed circit.
If sexual recordings and film are widespread, tolerated and publicaly
shown tape recorder 3 losses ist power. Which perhaps explains why the Nixon
administration is out to close down set films and reestablish censorship on
all films and books. to keep close circit on tape recorder 3.
And this brings us to the subject of SEX. In the words of the late John
O'Hara I'm glad you came to me instead of one of those quacks on the top
floor ...Psychiatrists, priests whatever they call themselves they want
to turn in off and keep tape recorder 3 in business. Let's turn it on. All
you swingers use video cameras and tape recorders to record and photograph
your sessions. Now go over the session and pick out the sexiest pieces you
know when it really HAPPENS. Reich built a machine with electrodes
attached to the penis to measure this orgasm charge. Here is
unpleasurable orgasm sagging ominously as tape recorder 3 cuts in. He just
made it. And here is a pleasurable orgasm way up on the graph. So take the
best of your sessions and invite the nabors to see it. Its the naborly thing
to do. Try cutting them in together alternating 24 frames per second. Try
slow downs and speed ups.
Build and experiment with orgone accumulators. Its simply a box of any
shape or size lined with iron. Your intrepid reporter at age 37 achieved
spontaneous orgasm no hands in an orgone accumulator built in an orange grove
in Pharr/Texas. It was the small direct application accumulator that did the
trick. That's what every red blooded boy and girl should be doing in their
basement work shop. The orgone accumulator could be greatly potentiated by
using MAGNETIZED IRON which sends a powerful magnetic field through the body.
And small accumulators like ray guns.
There is Two Gun Maggee going off in his pants. The gun falls from his hand.
Quick as he was he was not quick enough.
For a small directional accumulator obtain six powerful magnets. Arrange
your magnetized squares so they form a box. In one end of the box drill a
hole and insert an iron tube. Now cover the box and tube with any organic
material ...rubber,leather,cloth. Now train the tube on your privates and the
privates of your friends and nabors. Its good for young and old man and beast
and is known as SEX. It is also known to have a direct connection with what
is known as LIFE. Let's get St. Paul off our backs and take off the bible
belt. And tell tape recorder 3 to cover his own dirty thing. It stinks from
the garden of Eden to Watergate.
I have said that the real scandal of Watergate is the use made of
recordings. And what is this use? Having made the recordings as described
what then do they do with them?
ANSWER: THEY PLAY THEM BACK ON LOCATION.
They play these recordings back to the target himself is the target is an
individual from passing cars and agents that walk by him in the street. They
play these recordings back in his naborhood. Finally they play them back in
subways, restaurants, air ports and other public places.
PLAYBACK is the essential ingredient.
I have made a number of experiments with street recordings and playback
over a period of years and the startling fact emerges THAT YOU DO NOT NEED
SEX RECORDINGS OR EVEN DOCTORED TAPES TO PRODUCE EFFECTS BY PLAYBACK. ANY
RECORDINGS PLAYED BACK ON LOCATION IN THE MANNER I WILL NOW DESCRIBE CAN
PRODUCE EFFECTS. No doubt sexual and doctored tapes would be more powerful.
But some of the power in the word is released by simple playback as anyone
can verify who will take the time to experiment ...I quote from some notes
on these playback experiments.
Friday July 28, 1972 ...Plan 28 at a glance ...First some remarks on the
tape recorder experiments started by Ian Sommerville in 196. these involved
not only street, pub, party, subway recordings but also PLAYBACK on location.
when I returned to London from the States in 1966 he had already accumulated
a considerable body of data and developed a technology. He had discovered
that playback on location can produce definite effects. Playing back
recordings of an accident can produce another accident. In 1966 I was staying
at the Rushmore Hotel, 11 Trebovir Road, Earl's Court, and we carried out a
number of these operations: street recordings, cut in of other material,
playback in the streets ...(I recall I had cut in fire engines and while
playing this tape back in the street fire engines passed.) These experiments
were summarized in THE INVISIBLE GENERATION ... ( I wonder if anybody but
CIA agents read this article or thought of putting these techniques into
actual operation) Anybody who carries out similar experiments over a period
of time will turn up more 'coincidences' than the law of averages allows. The
tech can be extended by taking still or moving pictures during playback. I
have frequently observed this operation: make recordings and take pictures of
some location you wish to discomode or destroy, now play recordings back and
take more pictures, will result in accidents, fires, removals. especially the
latter The target moves. We carried out this operation with the Scientology
Center at 37 Fitzroy Street. Some months later they moved to 68 Tottenham
Court Road, where a similar operation was carried out...
Here is a sample operation carried out against The Moka Bar at 29 Frith
Street London W1 beginning on August 3, 1972 ...Reverse Thursday ...Reason
for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisoned cheese
cake...
Now to close in on The Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around
outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there. The horrible old
proprietor, his frizzy haired wife and slack jawed son, the snarling
counter man. I have them and they know it.
"You boys have a rep for making trouble. Well come on out and make some.
Pull a camera breaking act and I'll call a Bobby. I gotta right to do what I
like in the public street."
If it came to that I would explain to the policeman that I was taking
street recordings and making a documentary of Soho. This was after all
London's First Expresso Bar was it not? I was doing them a favor. They
couldnt say what both of us knew without being ridiculous...
"He's not making any documentary. He's trying to blow up the coffee
machine, start a fire in the kitchen, start fights in here, get us a citation
from the Board of Health."
Yes I had them and they knew it. I looked in at the old Prop and smiled as
if he would like what I was doing. Playback would come later with more
pictures. I took my time and strolled over to the Brewer Street Market where
I recorded a three card Monte Game. Now you see it now you dont.
Playback was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their
business fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972 The
Moka Bar closed. The location was taken over by The Queens Snack Bar.
Now to apply the 3 tape recorder analogy to this simple operation. Tape
recorder 1 is the Moka Bar itself it is pristine condition. Tape recorder 2
is MY RECORDINGS of the Moka Bar vicinity. These recordings are ACCESS. Tape
recorder 2 in the Garden of Eden was Eve made from Adam. So a recording made
from the Moka Bar is a piece of the Moka Bar. The recording once made, this
piece becomes autonomous and out of their control. Tape recorder 3 is
PLAYBACK. Adam experiences shame when his DISCRACEFUL BEHAVIOR IS PLAYED BACK
TO HIM BY tape recorder 3 which is God. By playing back my recordings to the
Moka Bar when I want and with any changes I wish to make in the recordings, I
become God for this local. I effect them. They cannot effect me. And what
part do photos take in this operation? Recall what I said earlier about
written and sopken word. THE WRITTEN WORD IS AN IMAGE IS A PICTURE . The
spoken word could be defined as any verbal units that correspond to these
pictures and could be in fact be extended to ANY SOUND UNITS THAT CORRESPOND
to to the pictures ...Recordings and pictures are tape recorder 2 which is
access. Tape recorder 3 is playback and 'reality'. For example suppose your
bathroom and bed room are bugged and rigged with hidden infra red cameras.
These pictures and recordings give access. You may not experience shame
during defecation and intercourse but you may well experience shame when
these recordings are played back to a disapproving audience.
Now let us consider the arena of politics and the applications of bugging
in this area. Of course any number of recordings are immediately available
since politicians make speeches on TV. However, these recordings do not give
access. The man who is making a speech is not really there. Consequently more
intimate or at least private recordings are needed which is why the Watergate
conspirators had to resort to burgulary. A presidential candidate is not a
sitting duck like a Moka Bar. He can make any number of recordings of his
opponents. So the game is complex and competitive with recordings made by
both sides. This leads to more sophisticated techniques the details of which
have yet to come out.
The basic operation of recording pictures, more pictures and playback can
be carried out by anyone with a recorder and a camera. Any number can play.
Millions of people could nullify the control system which those who are
behind Watergate and Nixon are attempting to impose. Like all control systems
it depends on maintaining a monopoly position. If anybody can be tape
recorder 3 then tape recorder 3 loses power. God must be THE GOD.
ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION
In THE INVISIBLE GENERATION first published in IT and in the Los Angeles
Free Press in 1966 and reprinted in THE JOB, I consider the potential of
thousands of people with recorders, portable and stationary, messages passed
along like signal drums, a parody of the President's speech up and down the
balconies, in and out open windows, through walls, over courtyards, taken
up by barking dogs, muttering bums, music, traffic down windy streets, across
parks and soccer fields. Illusion is a revolutionary weapon:
TO SPREAD RUMORS
Put ten operators with carefully prepared recordings out at rush hour and
see how quick the words get around. People don't know where they heard it but
they heard it.
TO DISCREDIT OPPONENTS
Take a recorded Wallace speech, cut in stammering coughs sneezes hiccoughs
snarls pain screams fear whimperings apoplectic sputterings slobbering
drooling idiot noises sex and animal sound effects and play it back in the
streets subway stations parks political rallies.
AS A FRONT LINE WEAPON TO PRODUCE AND ESCALATE RIOTS
There is nothing mystical about this operation. Riot sound effects can
produce an actual riot in a riot situation. RECORDED POLICE WISTLES WILL DRAW
COPS. RECORDED GUNSHOTS, AND THEIR GUNS ARE OUT.
"MY GOD, THEY'E KILLING US."
A guardsman said later: "I heard and saw my buddy go down, his face covered
in blood (turned out he'd been hit by a stone from a sling shot) and I
thought, well this is it." BLOODY WEDNESDAY. A DAZED AMERICA COUNTED 23 DEAD
AND 32 WOUNDED, 6 CRITICALLY.
Here is a run of the mill, pre-riot situation. Protestors have been urged
to demonstrate peacefully, police and guardsmen to exercise restraint. Ten
tape recorders strapped under their coats, playback, and record controlled
from lapel buttons. They have pre-recorded riot sound effects from Chicago,
Paris, Mexico City, Kent/Ohio. If they adjust sound levels of recordings to
surrounding sound levels, they will not be detected. Police scuffle with the
demonstrators. The operators converge. turn on Chicago record, play back,
move on to the next scuffles, record playback, keep moving. Things are
hotting up, a cop is down groaning. shrill chorus of recorded pig squeals and
parody groans.
Could you cool a riot by recording the calmest cop and the most reasonable
demonstrator? Maybe! However, it's a lot easier to start trouble that to stop
it. Just pointing out that cut/ups on the tape recorder can be used as a
weapon. You'll observe that the operators are making a cutup as they go. They
are cutting in Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Kent Ohio with the present sound
effects at random and that is a cutup.
AS A LONG RANGE WEAPON TO SCRAMBLE AND NULLIFY ASSOCIATIONAL LINES PUT DOWN
BY MASS MEDIA
The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association.
When the lines are cut the associational connections are broken.
President Johnson burst into a swank apartment, held three girls at
gunpoint, 26 miles north of Saigon yesterday.
you can cut the mutter line of the mass media and put the altered mutter
line out in the streets with a tape recorder. Consider the mutter line of the
daily press. It goes up with the morning papers, millions of people read the
same words. In different ways, of course. A motion praising Mr. Callaghan's
action in banning the South African Cricket Tour has spoiled the colonel's
breakfast. All reacting one way or another to the paper world or unseen
events which becomes an integral part of your reality. You will notice that
this process is continually subject to random juxtapostation. Just what sign
did you see in the Green Park station as you glanced up from the PEOPLE?
Just who called as you were reading your letter in the TIMES? What were you
reading when your wife broke a dish in the kitchen? An unreal paper world
and yet completely real because it is actually happening. Mutter line of
the EVENING NEWS, TV. Fix yourself on millions of people all watching Jesse
James or the Virginian at the same time. International mutter line of the
weekly news magazine always dated a week ahead. Have you noticed it's the
kiss of death to be on the front cover of TIME. Madam Nhu was there when her
husband was killed and her government fell. Verwoerd was on the front cover
of TIME when a demon tapeworm gave the order for his death through a
messenger of the same. Read the Bible, kept to himself, no bad habits,
you know the type. Old reliable, read all about it.
So stir in news stories, TV plays, stock market quotations, adverts and put
the altered mutter line out in the streets.
The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing
power and more sophisticated technique used by establishment mass media to
falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a PRIORI
ridiculous or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books,
discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest.
I suggest that the underground press could perform this function much more
effectively by the use of cut/up techniques. For example, prepare cut/ups of
the ugliest reactionary statements you can find and surround them with the
ugliest pictures. Now give it the drool, slobber, animal noise treatment and
put it out on the mutter line with recorders. Run a scramble page in every
issue of a transcribed tape recorded cut/up of news, radio and TV. Put the
recordings out on the mutter line before the paper hits the stand. It gives
you a funny feeling to see a headline that's been going round and round
inside your head. The underground press could add a mutter line to their
adverts and provide a unique advertising service. Cut the product in with
pop tunes, cut the product in with advertising slogans and jingles of other
products and syphon off the sales. Anybody that doubts that these techniques
work has only to put them to the test. The techniques here described are in
use by the CIA and agents of other countries ...Ten years ago they were
making systematic street recordings in every district of Paris. I recall the
Voice of America man in Tangir and a room full of tape recorders and you
could hear some strange sounds through the wall. Kept to himself, hello in
the hall. Nobody was ever allowed in that room, not even a fatima. Of course,
there are many technical elaborations like long-range directional mikes.
When cutting the prayer call in with hog grunts it doesn't pay to be walking
around the market place with a portable tape recorder.
An article in NEW SCIENTIST June 4, 1970, page 470, entitled ' Electronic
Arts of Noncommunication ' by Richard C French gives the clue for more
precise technical instructions.
In 1968, with the help of Ian Sommerville and Anthony Balch, I took a
short passage of my recorded voice and cut it into intervals of one
twenty - fourth of a second movie tape (movie tape is larger and easier to
splice)- and rearranged the order of the 24th second intervals of recorded
speech. The original words are quite unintelligible but new words emerge.
The voice is still there and you can immediately recognise the speaker. Also
the tone of the voice remains. If the tone is friendly, hostile, sexual,
poetic, sarcastic lifeless, despairing, this will be apparent in the altered
sequence.
I did not realise at the time that I was using a technique that has been in
existence since 1881 ...I quote from Mr. French's article ... "designs for
speech scramblers go back to 1881 and the desire to make telephone and radio
communications unintelligible to third parties has been with us ever
since"... The message is scrambled in transmission and then unscrambled at
the other end. There are many of these speech scrambling devices that work on
different principles... "another device which saw service during the war was
the time division scrambler. The signal was chopped up into elements .005 cm
long. These elements are taken in groups or frames and rearranged in a new
sequence. Imagine that the speech recorded is recorded on magnetic tape which
is cut into pieces .02 long and the pieces rearranged into a new sequence.
This can actually be done and gives a good idea what speech sounds like
when scrambled in this way."
This I had done in 1968. And this is an extension of the cut/up method. The
simplest cut/up cuts a page down the middle and across the middle into four
sections. Section 1 is then placed with section 4 and section 3 with section
2 in a new sequence. Carried further we can break the page down into smaller
and smaller units in altered sequences.
The original purpose of scrambling devices was to make the message
unintelligible without scrambling the code. Another use for speech scramblers
could be to impose thought control on a mass scale. consider the Human body
and nervous system as unscrambling devices. A common virus like the cold sore
could sensitize the subject to unscramble messages. Drugs like LSD and Dim-N
could also act as unscrambling devices. Moreover, the mass media could
sensitize millions of people to receive scrambled versions of the same set of
data. Remember that when the human nervous system unscrambles a scrambled
message this will seem to the subject like his very own ideas which just
occurred to him, which indeed it did.
Take a card, any card. In most cases he will not suspect its extraneous
origin. that is the run of the mill newspaper reader who receives the
scrambled message uncritically and assumes that it reflects his own opinions
independently arrived at. On the other other hand, the subject may recognise
or suspect the extraneous origins of voices that are literally hatching out
in his head. Then we have a classic syndrome of paranoid psychosis.
Subject hears voices. Anyone can be made to hear voices with scrambling
techniques. It is not difficult to expose him to the actual scrambled
message, any part of which can be made intelligible. This can be done with
street recorders, recorders in cars, doctored radio and TV sets. In his own
flat if possible, if not in some bar or restaurant he frequents. If he
doesn't talk to himself, he soon will do. You bug his flat. Now he is really
round the bend hearing his own voice out of radio and TV broadcasts and the
conversation of passing strangers. See how easy it is? Remember the
scrambled message is partially unintelligible and in any case he gets the
tone. Hostile white voices unscrambled by a Negro will also activate by
association every occasion on which he has been threatened or humiliated by
whites. To carry it further you can use recordings of voices known to him.
You can turn him against his friends by hostile scrambled messages in a
friend's voice. This will activate ll his disagreements with that friend.
You can condition him to like his enemies by friendly scrambled messages in
enemy voices.
On the other hand the voices can be friendly and reassuring. He is now
working for the CIA, the GPU, or whatever, and these are his orders. They now
have an agent who has no information to give away and who doesn't have to be
paid. and he is now completely under control. If he doesn't obey orders they
can give him the hostile voice treatment. No, "They" are not God or super
technicians from outer space. Just technicians operating with well-known
equipment and using techniques that can be duplicated by anyone else who can
buy and operate this equipment.
To see how scrambling technique could work on a a mass scale, imagine
that a news magazine like TIME got out a whole issue a week before
publication and filled it with news based on predictions following a certain
line, without attempting the impossible, giving our boys a boost in every
story and the Commies as many defeats and casualties as possible, a whole new
issue of TIME formed from slanted prediction of future news. Now imagine this
scrambled out through the mass media.
With minimal equipment you can do the same thing on a smaller scale. You
need a scrambling device, TV, radio, two video cameras, a ham radio station
and a simple photo studio with a few props and actors. For a start you
scramble the news all together and spit it out every which way on ham radio
and street recorders. You construct fake news broadcasts on video camera.
For the pictures you can use mostly old footage. Mexico City will do for
a riot in Saigon Chile you can use the Londonderry pictures. Nobody knows
the difference. Fires, earthquakes, plane crashes can be moved around. for
example, here is a plane crash in Toronto 108 dead. so move the picture of
the Barcelona plane crash over to Toronto and Toronto to Barcelona. And you
scramble your fabricated news in with actual news broadcasts.
You have an advantage which your opposing player does not have. He must
conceal his manipulations. You are under no such necessity. In fact you can
advertise the fact that you are writing the news in advance and trying to
make it happen by techniques which anybody can use. And that makes you NEWS.
And TV personality as well, if you play it right. You want the widest
possible circulation for your cut/up video tapes. Cut/up techniques could
swamp the mass media with total illusion.
Fictional dailies retroactively cancelled the San Francisco earthquake and
Halifax explosion as journalistic hoaxes, and doubt released from the skin
law extendable and revenous, consumed all the facts of history.
Mr French concludes his article ..."The use of modern microelectric
integrated circits could lower the cost of speech scramblers enough to see
them in use by private citizens. Codes and ciphers have always had a strong
appeal to most people and I think scramblers will as well..."
It is generally assumed that speech must be consciously understood to
cause an effect. Early experiments with subliminal images have shown that
this is not true. A number of research projects could be based on speech
scramblers. We have all seen the experiment where someone hears his own
recorded voice back a few seconds later. Soon he cannot go on talking. Would
scrambled speech have the same effect? to what extent does a language act as
unscrambling in either-or conflict terms? To what extent does the tone of
voice used by a speaker impose a certain unscrambling sequence on the
listener?
Many of the cut/up tapes would be entertaining and in fact entertainment
is the most promising field for cut/up techniques. Imagine a pop festival
like Phun City scheduled for July 24th, 25th, 26, 1970 at Ecclesden
Common, Patching, near Worthing, Sussex. Festival area comprised of car park
and camping area, a rock auditorium, a village with booths and cinema, a
large wooded area. A number of Tape recorders planted in the woods and the
village. As many as possible so as to lay down a grid of sound over the whole
festival. Recorders have tapes of prerecorded material, music, news,
broadcasts, recordings from other festivals, etc. At all times some of the
recorders are playing back and some are recording. The recorders recording
the crowd and the other tape recorders that are playing back at varying
distances. This cuts in the crowd who will be hearing their own voices back.
Play back, wind back and record could be electronicly controlled with
varying intervals. Or they could be hand operated, the operator deciding what
intervals of play back, record, and wind to use. Effect is greatly increased
by a large number of festival goers with portable recorders playing back and
recording as they walk around the festival. We can carry it further with
projection screens and video cameras. Some of the material is pre-prepared,
sex films, films of other festivals, and this material is cut in with live
TV broadcasts and shots of the crowd. Of course, the rock festival will be
cut in on the screens, thousands of fans portable recorders recording, and
playing back, the singer could direct play back und record. Set up an area
for travelling performers, jugglers, animal acts, snake charmers, singers,
musicians, and cut these acts in. Film and tape from the festival, edited for
best material, could then be used at other festivals.
Quite a lot of equipment and engineering to set it up. the festival could
certainly be enhanced if as many festival goers as possible bring portable
tape recorders and play back at the festival.
Any message, music, conversation you want to pass around, bring
it pre-recorded on tape so everybody takes a piece of your tape home.
Research project: to find out to what extent scrambled messages are
unscrambled, that is scanned out by experimental subjects. The simplest
experiments consists in playing back a scrambled message to subject. Message
could contain simple commands. Does the scrambled message have any command
value comparable to post-hypnotic suggestion? Is the actual content of the
message received? What drugs, if any, increase ability to unscramble
messages? Do subjects vary widely in this ability? Are scrambled
messages in the subject's own voice more effective than messages in other
voices? Are messages scrambled in certain voices more easily unscrambled by
specific subjects? Is the message more potent with both word and image
scramble on video tape? Now to use, for example, a video tape message with a
unified emotional content. Let us say the message is fear. For this we take
all the past fear shots of the subject we can collect or evoke. We cut these
in with fear words and pictures, and threats, etc. This is all acted out and
would be upsetting in any case. Now let's try it scrambled and see if we can
get an even stronger effect. The subject's blood pressure, rate of heart
beat, and brain waves are recorded as we play back the scrambled tape.
His face is photographed and visible to him on video screen at all times.
the actual scrambling of the tape can be done in two ways. It can be a
completely random operation like pulling pieces out of a hat and if this is
done several consecutive units may occur together yielding an identifiable
picture of intelligible word. Both methods of course can be used at varying
intervals. Blood pressure, heart beat, and brainwave recordings will show the
operator what material is producing the strongest reaction, and he will of
course zero in. And remember that the subject can see his face at all times
and his face is being photographed. As the Peeping Tom said, the most
frightening thing is fear in your own face. If the subject becomes too
disturbed we have peace and safety tapes ready.
Now here is a sex tape: This consists of a sex scene acted out by the ideal
sexual object of the subject and his ideal self image. Shown straight it
might be exciting enough, now scramble it. It makes a few seconds for
scrambled tapes to hatch out, and then? can scrambled sex tapes zeroing
in on the subject's reactions and brain waves result in spontaneous orgasm?
Can this be extended to other functions of the body? A mike secreted in the
water closet and all his shits and farts recorded and scrambled in with stern
nanny voices commanding him to shit, and the young liberal shits his pants on
the platform right under Old Glory. Could laugh tapes, sneeze tapes,
hiccough tapes, cough tapes, give rise to laughing sneezing, hiccoughing, and
coughing?
To what extent extent can physical illness be induced by scrambled tapes?
Take for example, a sound and color picture of a subject with a cold. Later,
when the subject is fully recovered, we take color and sound film of
recovered subject. We now scrambled the cold pictures and sound track in
with present pictures on present pictures. We also project the cold
pictures on present pictures. Now we try using some of Mr. Hubbard's
reactive mind phrases which are supposed in themselves to produce illness. To
be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay there, to be a body, to be bodies, to
stay present, to stay past. now we scramble this in together and show it to
the subject. Could seeing and hearing this sound and image track, scrambled
down to very small units, bring about an attack of cold virus? Is such a cold
tape does actually produce an attack of cold virus, perhaps we have merely
activated a latent virus. Many viruses, as you know, are latent in the
body and may be activated. We can try the same with coldsore, with hepatitis,
always remembering that we may be activating a latent virus and in no sense
creating a laboratory virus. However, we may be in a position to do this. Is
a virus perhaps simply very small units of sound and image? Remember
the only image a virus has is the image and sound track it can impose on
you. The yellow eyes of jaundice, the postules of smallpox, etc. imposed on
you against your will. The same is certainly true of scrambled word and image
it can make you unscramble. Take a card, any card. This does not mean that it
is actually a virus. Perhaps to construct a laboratory virus we would need
both camera and sound crew and a biochemist as well. I quote from the
INTERNATIONAL PARIS TRIBUNE an article on the synthetic gene: "Dr. Har
Johrd Khorana has made a gene-synthetic."
"It is the beginning of the end," this was the immediate reaction to this
news from the science attache' at one of Washington's major embassies. "If
you can make genes you can eventually make new viruses for which there are no
cures. any little country with good biochemists could make such biological
weapons. It would take only a small laboratory. If it can be done, somebody
will do it. "For example, a death virus could be created that carries the
coded message of death. A death tape, in fact. No doubt the technical details
are complex and perhaps a team of sound and camera men working with
biochemists would give us the answer.
And now the question as to whether scrambling techniques could be
used to spread helpful and pleasant messages. Perhaps. On the other hand, the
scrambled words and tape act like a virus in that they force something on
the subject against his will. More to the point would be to discover how
the old scanning patterns could be altered so that subject liberates his own
spontaneous scanning pattern.
NEW SCIENTIST 2 July, 1970 ...Current memory theory posits a seven second
temporary "buffer store" preceding the main one: a blow on the head wipes out
memory of this much prior time because it erases the contents of the buffer.
Daedalus observes that the sense of the present also covers just this range
and so suggests that our sensory input is recorded on an endless time loop,
providing some seven seconds of delay for scanning before erasure. In this
time the brain edits, makes sense of, and selects storage key features. The
weird DEJA VU sensation "now" has happened before is clearly due to brief
erasure failure, so that we encounter already stored memory data coming
round again. Time dragging or racing must reflect tape speed. A simple
experiment will demonstrate this erasure process in operation. Making
street recordings and playing them back, you will hear things you do not
remember, sometimes said in a loud clear voice, must have been quite close
to you, nor do you necessarily remember them when you hear the recording
back. The sound has bee erased according to a scanning pattern which
is automatic. This means that what you notice and store as memory as you walk
down the street is scanned out of a much larger selection of data which is
then erased from the memory. For the walker the signs he passed, people he
has passed, are erased from his mind and cease to exist for him. Now to
make this scanning process conscious and controllable, try this:
Walk down a city block with a camera and take what you notice, moving the
camera around as closely as possible to follow the direction of your eyes.
The point is to make the the camera your eyes and take what your eyes are
scanning out of the larger picture. At the same time take the street at a
wide angle from a series of still positions. The street of the operator is,
of course, the street as seen by the operator. It is different from the
street seen at a wide angle. Much of it is in fact missing. Now you can make
arbitrary scanning patterns - that is cover first one side of the street and
then the other in accordance with a preconceived plan. So you are breaking
down the automatic scanning patterns. You could also make colour scanning
patterns, that is, scan out green, blue, red, etc. in so far as you can with
your camera. That is, you are using an arbitrary preconceived scanning
pattern, in order to break down automatic scanning patterns. a number of
operators do this and then scramble their takes together and with wide angle
tapes. This could train the subject to see at a wider angle and also to
ignore and erase at will.
Now all this is readily subject to experimental verification on control
subjects. Nor need the equipment be all on control subjects. Nor need the
equipment be all that complicated. I have shown how it could work with
feedback from brainwaves and visaaceral response and video tape photos of
subject taken while he is seeing and hearing the tape, simply to show
optimum effectiveness.
You can start with two tape recorders. The simplest scrambling device is
scissors and splicing equipment. You can start scrambling words, make any
kind of tapes and scramble them and observe the effects on friends and on
yourself. Next step is sound film and then video camera. Of course results
from individual experiments could lead to mass experiments, mass fear tapes,
riot tapes, etc. The possibilities here for research and experiment are
virtually unlimited and I have simply made a few very simple suggestions
"A virus is characterized and limited by obligate cellular parasitism. All
viruses must parasite living cells for their replication. For all viruses the
infection cycle comprises entry into the host, intracellular replication,
and escape from the body of the host to initiate a new cycle in a fresh
host." I am quoting here from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION edited by Dr.
Wilson Smith. In its wild state the virus has not proved to be a very
adaptable organism. Some viruses have burned themselves have burned out since
they were 100 per cent fatal and there were no reservoirs. Each strain of
virus is rigidly programed for certain attack on certain tissues. If the
attack fails, the virus does not gain a new host. There are, of course,
virus mutations, and the influenza virus has proved quite versatile in this
way.Generally it's the simple repitition of the same method of entry, and if
that method is blocked by any body or other agency such as interferon, the
attack fails. By and large, our virus is a stupid organism. Now we can think
for the virus, devise a number of alternate methods of entry. For example,
the host is simutaneously attacked by an ally virus who tells him that
everything is allright and by a pain and fear virus. so the virus is now
using an old method of entry, namely, the tough cop and the con cop.
We have considered the possibility that a virus can be activated or even
created by very small units of sound and image. So concieved, the virus can
be made to order in the laboratory. Ah, but for the takes to be effective,
you must have also the actual virus and what is the actual virus? New viruses
turn up from time to time but from where do they turn up? Well, lets see how
we could make a virus turn up. We plot now our virus's symptoms and make a
scramble tape. The susceptible subjects, that is those who reproduce
some of the desired symptoms, will then be scrambled into more tapes till we
scramble our virus into existence. This birth of a virus occurs when our
virus is able to reproduce itself in a host and pass itself on to another
host. Perhaps, too, with the virus under laboratory control it can be tamed
for useful purposes. Imagine, for example a sex virus. it so inflames the sex
centres in the back brain that the host is driven mad from sexuality, all
other considerations are blacked out Parks full of naked, frenzied people,
shitting, pissing, ejaculating, and screaming. So the virus could be
malignant, blacking out all regulation and end in exhaustion, convulsions, and
death.
Now let us attempt the same thing with tape. We organize a sex-tape
festival. We organise a sex-tape festival. 100,000 people bring their
scrambled sex tapes, and video tapes as well, to scramble in together.
Projected on vast screens, muttering out over the crowd, sometimes it slows
down, so that you see a few seconds, then scrambled again, then slow down,
scramble. Soon it will scramble them all naked. The cops and the National
Guard are stripping down. LET'S GET OURSELVES SOME CIVVIES. Now a thing
like that could be messy, but those who survive it recover from the madness.
Or, say, a small select group of really like-minded people get together with
their sex tapes, you see the process is now being brought under control. And
the fact that anybody can do it is in itself a limiting factor.
Here is Mr. Hart, who wants to infect everyone with his own image and
turn them all into himself, so he scrambles himself and dumps himself out in
search of worthy vessels. If nobody else knows about scrambling techniques
he might scramble himself quite a stable of replicas. but anybody can do it.
So gon on, scramble your sex words, and find suitable mates.
If you want to, scramble yourself out there, every stale joke, fart, chew,
sneeze, and stomach rumble. If your trick no work you better run. Everybody
doing it, they all scramble in together and the populations of the earth
just better settle down a nice even brown colour. Scrambles is the democratic
way, the way full cellular representation. Scrambles is the American way.
I have suggested that virus can be created to order in the laboratory from
very small units of sound and image. Such a preparation is not in itself
biologically active but it could activate or even create virus in
susceptible subjects. A carefully prepared jaundice tape could activate or
create or create the jaundice virus in liver cells, especially in cases
where the jaundice liver is already damaged. The operator is in effect
directing a virus revolution of the cells. Since DOR seems to attack those
exposed to it at the weakest point, release of this force could coincide with
virus attack. Reactive mind phrases could serve the same purpose of rendering
subjects more susceptible to virus attack.
It will be seen that scrambled speech already has many of the charictaristics
of virus. When the speech takes and unscrambles, this occurs compulsively and
against the will of the subject. A virus must remind you of its presence.
Whether it is the mag of a cold sore or the torturing spasms of rabies the
virus reminds you of its unwanted presence. "HERE ME IS."
So does scrambled word and image. The units are unscrambling
compulsively, presenting certain words and images to the subject and this
repetitive presentation is irritating certain bodily and neutral areas. The
cells so irritated can produce over a period of time the biologic virus
units. We now have a new virus that can be communicated and indeed the
subject may be desparate to communicate this thing that is bursting inside
him. He is heavy with the load. Could this load be good and beautiful? Is it
possible to create a virus which will communicate calm and sweet
reasonableness? A virus must parasitise a host in order to survive. It uses
the cellular material of the host to make copies of itself. in most cases
this is damaging to the host. The virus gains entrance by fraud and
maintains itself by force. An unwanted guest who makes you sick to look at is
never good or beautiful. It is moreover a guest who always repeats itself
word for word take for take.
Remember the life cycle of a virus ... penetration of a cell or activation
within the cell, replication within the cell, escape from the cell to invade
other cells, escape from host to infect a new host. This infection can take
place in many ways and those who find themselves heavy with the load of a new
virus generally use a shotgun technique to cover a wide range of infection
routes... cough, sneeze, spit and fart at every opportunity, Save shit, piss,
snot, scabs, sweat stained clothes and all bodily secretions for dehydration.
The composite dust can be unobtrusively billowed out a roach bellows in
subways, dropped from windows in bags, or sprayed out a crop duster ... Carry
with you at all times an assortment of vectors ... lice, fleas, bed bugs,
and little aviaries of mosquitoes and biting flies filled with your blood ...
I see no beauty in that.
There is only one case of favourable virus influence benefiting an obscure
species of Australien mice. On the other hand, if a virus produces no
damaging symptoms we have no way of ascertaining its existence and this
happens with latent virus infections. It has been suggested that yellow
races resulted from a jaundice- like virus which produced a permanent
mutation not necessarily damaging, which was passed along genetically. The
same may be true of the word. The word itself may be a virus that has
achieved a permanent status with the host. However, no known virus in
existence at the present time acts in this manner, so the question of a
benefit virus remains open. It seems advisable to concentrate on a general
defence against all virus.
Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, says that certain words and word
combinations can produces serious illnesses and mental disturbances. I can
claim some skill in the scrivener's trade, but I cannot guarantee to write a
passage that will make someone physically ill. If Mr.Hubbard's claim is
justified, this is certainly a matter for further research, and we can
easily find out experimentally whether his claim is justified or not.
Mr. Hubbard bases the power he attributes to words on his theory of engrams.
An engram is defined as word,sound,image recorded by the subject in a period
of pain and unconsciousness. Some of his material may be reassuring: "I think
he's going to be alright." Reassuring material is an ally engram. Ally
engrams, according to Mr Hubbard, are just as bad as hostile as pain engrams.
Any part of this recording played back to the subject later will reactivate
operation pain, he may actually develop a headache and feel depressed,
anxious, or tense. Well, Mr Hubbard's engram theory is very easily subject
to experimental verification. Take ten volunteer subjects, subject them to a
pain stimulus accompanied by certain words and sounds and images. You can
act out little skits.
"Quickly, nurse , before I lose my little nigger," bellows
the southern surgeon, and now a beefy white hand falls on the fragile
black shoulder. "Yes, he's going to be alright. He's going to pull through."
If I had my way I'd let these animals die on the operating table."
"You do not have your way, you have your duty as a doctor, we must do
everything in our power to save human lives."
And so forth.
It is the tough cop and the con cop. The ally engram is
ineffective without the pain engram, just as the con cop's arm around your
shoulder, his soft persuasive voice in your ear, are indeed sweet nothings
without the tough cop's blackjack. Now to what extent can words recorded
during medical unconsciousness be recalled during hypnosis or
scientological processing? To what Extent does the playback of this material
affect the subject unpleasantly? Is the effect enhanced by
scrambling the material, pain and ally, at very short intervals? It would
seem that a scrambled engram's picture could almost dump an operating scene
right in the subject's lap. Mr. Hubbard has charted his version of what he
calls the reactive mind. This is roughly similar to Freud's ID, a sort of
built-in self defeating mechanism. As set forth by Mr. Hubbard this consists
of a number of quite ordinary phrases. He claims that reading these phrases,
or hearing them spoken, can cause illness, and gives this as his reason for
not publishing this material. Is he perhaps saying that these are magic
words? Spells, in fact? If so, they could be quite a weapon scrambled up with
imaginative sound-and-image track. Here now is the magic that turns men
into swine. To be an animal: a lone pig grunts, shits, squeals and slobbers
down garbage. To be animals: A chorus of a thousand pigs. Cut that in with
video tape police pictures and play it back to them and see if you get a
reaction from this so reactive mind.
Now here is another. To be a body, well it's sure an attractive body, rope
the marks in. And a nice body symphony to go with it, rythmic heart beats,
contented stomach rumbles. To be bodies: recordings and pictures of hideous,
aged, diseased bodies farting, pissing, shitting, groaning, dying. To do
everything: man in a filth apartment surrounded by unpaid bills,
unanswered letters, jumps up and starts washing dishes and writing letters.
To do nothing: he slumps in a chair, jumps up, slumps in chair, jumps up.
Finally, slumps in a chair, drooling like an idiot helplessness, while he
looks at the disorder piled around him. The reactive mind commands can also
be used to advantage with illness tapes. While projecting past cold sore on
to the subject's face, and playing him back to him a past illness tape, you
can say: to be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay there, to be a body, to
be bodies, to stay in, to stay out, to stay present, to stay absent. To what
extent are these reactive mind phrases when scrambled effective in causing
disagreeable symptoms in control volunteer subjects? As to Mr. Hubbard's
claim for the reactive mind, only research can give us the answers.
The RM then is an artifact designed to limit and stultify on a
mass scale. In order to have this effect it must be widely
implanted. This can readily be done with modern electronic equipment and
techniques described in this treatis. The RM consists of commands which seem
harmless and in fact unavoidable ... To be a body ... but which have the
most horrific consequences.
Here are some sample RM screen effects ...
As the theatre darkens a bright light appears on the left side of the
screen. The screen lights up.
To be nobody ... On screen shadow of ladder and soldier incinerated by
the Hiroshima blast
To be everybody ... Street crowds, riots, panics
To be me ... A beautiful girl and a handsome young man point to selves
To be you ... They point to audience
Hideous hags and old men, lepers, drooling idiots point to themselves and
to the audience as they intone ...
To be me
To be you
Command no 5 ... To be myself
Command no 6 ... To be others
On screen a narcotics officer is addressing an audience of school boys,
spread out in front of him are syringes, kief pipes, samples of heroin,
hashiesh, LSD.
Officer: "Five trips on a drug can be a pleasant and exciting
experience..."
On screen young trippers ..."I'm really myself for the first time"
Etc. Happy trips ...To be myself ...no 5 ...
Officer: "THE SIXTH WILL PROBABLY BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF"
Shot shows a man blowing his head off with a shotgun in his mouth...
Officer: "Like a 15 year old boy I knew until recently, you
could well end up dying in your own spew ..."
To be others no 6 ...
To be an animal ... A lone Wolf Scout ...
To be animals: He joins other wolf scouts playing, laughing, shouting
To be an animal ... Bestial and ugly human behaviour
...brawls, disgusting, eating and sex scenes
To be animals ... Cows, sheep and pigs driven to the slaughter house
To be a body
To be bodies
A beautiful body ... a copulating couple ... Cut back and forth
and run on seven second loop for several minutes ... scramble at
different speeds ... Audience must be made to realise that to be a body is
to be bodies
...A body only exists to be other bodies.
To be a body ...Death scenes and recordings ... a scramble of last words
To be bodies ... Vista of cemeteries ...
To do it now ... Couple embracing hotter and hotter
To do it now ... A condemned cell ... Condemned man is same actor
as lover ... He is led away by the guards screaming and struggling. Cut back
and forth between sex scene and man led to execution. Couple in sex scene
have an orgasm as the condemned man is hanged, electrocuted, gassed,
garroted, shot in the head with a pistol
To do it later ... The couple pull away ...One wants to go out and eat and
go to a show or something... They put on their hats
To do it later ... Warder arrives at condemned cell to tell the
prisoner he has a stay of execution
To do it now ... Grim faces in the Pentegon. Strategic is on the way
... Well THIS IS IT ... This sequence cut in with sex scenes and a condemned
man led to execution, culminates in execution, orgasm, nuclear explosion
...The condemned lover is a horribly burned survivor
To do it later ... 1920 walk out sequence to "The Sunny Side of the Street"
... A disappointed general turns from the phone to say the president has
opened top level hot wire talks with Russia and China ... Condemned man gets
another stay of execution
To be an animal ... One lemming busily eating lichen ...
To be animals ... Hordes of lemmings swarming all over each other in
mounting hysteria ...A pile of drowned lemmings in front of somebody's
nice little cottage on a Finnish lake where he is methodically going
through sex positions with his girl friend. They wake up in a stink
of dead lemmings
To be an animal ... Little boy put on a pot
To be animals ...The man has just been hanged. The doctor steps
forward with a stethoscope
To stay down ... Body is carried out with the rope around neck ... Naked
corpses on the autopsy table ... corpse buried in quick lime.
To stay up ...Erect phallus
To stay down ... White man burns off a Negro's genitals with blow
torch ... Theatre darkens into the blow torch on the left side of the
screen
To stay present
To stay absent
To stay present ... A boy masturbates in front of sex pictures ... Cut to
face of white man who is burning off black genitals with blow torch
To stay absent ... Sex phantasies of the boy ... The black slumps dead with
genitals burned off and intestines popping out
To stay present ... Boy watches strip tease, intent, fascinated ...A man
stands on trap about to be hanged
To stay present ...Sex phantasies of the boy ..."I ponounce this man
dead."
To stay present ... Boy wistles at girl in street ... A man's body twists
in the electric chair, his leg hairs crackling a blue fire
To stay absent ... Boy sees himself in bed with girl ... Man slumps dead in
chair smoke curling from under the hood saliva dripping from his mouth...
The theatre lights up. In the sky a plane over Hiroshima
...Little Boy slides out
To stay present ... The plane, the pilot, thew American flag ...
To stay absent ... theatre darkens into atomic blast on screen
Here we see ordinary men and women going about their ordinary everyday jobs
and diversions ... subways, streets, buses, trains, airports, stations,
waiting rooms, homes, flats, restaurants. offices, factories ...working ,
eating, playing, defecating, making love.
A chorus of voices cuts in RM phrases
To stay up
To stay down
Elevators, airports, stairs, ladders
To stay in
To stay out
Street signs, door signs, people at head of lines admitted to
restaurants and theatres
To be myself
To be others
Customs agents check passports, man identifies himself at bank to cash
cheque
To stay present
To stay absent
People watching films, reading, looking at TV ...
A composite of this sound and image track is now run on seven
second loop without change for several minutes.
Now cut in the horror pictures
To stay up
To stay down
Elevators, airports, stairs, ladders, hangings, castrations
To stay in
To stay out
Door signs, operation scenes ... doctor tosses bloody tonsils, adenoids,
appendix into receptacle
To stay present
To stay absent
People watching film ... ether mask, ether vertigo ... triangles, spheres,
rectangles, pyramids, prisms, coils go away and come in regular
sequence ...a coil coming in, two coils coming in, three coils coming in
... a coil going away, two coils going away, four going away
A coil straight ahead going away, two coils on the left and right
going away. three coils left right and centre going away, four coils
right left centre going away
A coil coming, two coils coming in, three coils coming in, four coils
coming in ... spirals of light ... round and round faster, baby eaten by
rats, hangings, electrocutions, castrations....
The RM can be cut in with the most ordinary scenes covering the planet in a
smog of fear ...
The RM is a built-in electronic police force armed with hideous threats.
You don't want to be a cute little wolf cub? All right, cattle to the
slaughter house meat on a hook.
Here is a nostalgic reconstruction of the old fashioned Mayan methods. The
wrong kind of workers with wrong thoughts are tortured to death in
rooms under the pyramid ... A young worker has been given a powerful
hallucigen and a sexual stimulant ... Naked he is stripped down and skinned
alive ... The Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time
...The Ouab bird stands there, screams, washing through his wild blue eyes.
Others are crabs from the waist up clicking their claws in ecstasy,
they dance around and mimic the flaved man. The scribes are busy with
sketches ...Now he is strapped into a segmented copper centipede and placed
gently on a bed of hot coals ... Soon the priests will dig the soft meat from
the shell with their golden claws ... Here is another youth staked out on an
ant hill honey smeared on his eyes and genitals ...Others with heavy weights
on their backs are slowly dragged through the wooden troughs in which shards
obsidian have been driven ...So the priests are the masters of pain and
fear and death ...To do right... to obey the priests ... To do wrong? the
priest's very presence and a few banal words....
The priests postulated and set up a hermetic universe of which they were
the axiomatic controllers. In so doing they became Gods who controlled
the known universe of the workers. They became Fear and Pain, Death
and Time. By making opposition seemingly impossible they failed to make any
provision for opposition. There is evidence that this control system broke
down in some areas before the arrival of the White God. Stellae have been
found defaced and overturned, mute evidence of a worker's revolution. How
did this happen? The history of revolutionary movements shows that they are
usually led by defectors from the ruling class. The Spanish rule in South
America was overthrown by Spanish revolutionaries. The French were driven out
of Algeria by Algerians educated in France. Perhaps one of the priest Gods
defected and organised a worker's revolution ...
The priest Gods in the temple. They move very slowly, faces ravaged with
age and disease. Parasitic worms infest their flesh. They are making
calculations for the sacred books.
"400,000,000 years ago on this day a grievous thing happened..."
Limestone skulls rain in through the porticos. The Young Maize God leads
the workers as they storm the temple and drag the priests out. They build a
huge brush fire, throw the priests in and then throw the sacred
books in after them. Time buckles and bends. The old Gods, surfacing
from the immemorial depths of time, burst in the sky ... Mr Hart stands
there looking at the broken sellae ... "How did this happen?"
His control system must be absolute and world wide. Because such a control
system is even more vulnerable to attack from without than revolt within...
Here is Bishop Luanda burning burning sacred books. To give you an idea as to
what is happening, imagine our civilisation invaded by louts from outer
space...
"Get some bulldozers in here. Clear out all this crap..." The formulae of
all natural sciences, books, paintings, the lot, swept into a vast pile and
burned. and that's it. No one ever heard of it.
Three codices survived the vandalism of Bishop Landa and these
are burned around the edges.
No way to know if we have here the sonnets, the Mona Lisa or the
remenants of a Sears Roebuck catalogue after the old out-house burned
down in a brush fire. A whole civilisation went up in smoke...
When the Spaniards arrived, they found the Mayan aristocrats lolling in
hammocks. Well, time to show them what is what. Five captured workers bound
and stripped, are castrated on a tree stump. the bleeding sobbing,
screaming bodies bodies thrown into a pile...
"And now get this through your gook nuts. We want to see a pile of gold big
and we want to see it pronto. The White God has spoken."
Consider now the human voice as a weapon. To what extent can the unaided
human voice duplicate effects that can be done with a tape
recorder? Learning to speak with the mouth shut, thus displacing your speech,
is fairly easy. You can also learn to speak backwards, which is fairly
difficult. I have seen people who can repeat what you are saying after you
and finish at the same time. This is a most disconcerting trick, particularly
when praciticed on a mass scale at a political rally. Is it possible to
actually scramble speech? A far-reaching biologic weapon can be forged from a
new language. In fact such a language already exists. It exists as Chinese,
a total language closer to multileval structure of experience, with a script
derived from hieroglyphs, more closely related to the objects and areas
described. The equanimity of the Chinese is undoubtedly derived from their
language being structured for greater sanity. I notice the Chinese, wherever
they are retain the written and spoken language, while other immigrant
peoples will lose their language in two generations. The aim of this
project is to build up a language in which certain falsifications inherit in
all existing western languages will be made incapable of formulation. The
follow-falsifications to be deleted from the proposed language.
This IS OF IDENTITY. You are an animal. You are a body. Now whatever you
may be you are not an "animal", you are not a "body", because these are
verbal labels. The IS of identity always carries the assignment of permanent
condition. To stay that way. All name calling presupposes the IS of identity.
This concept is unnecessary in a hieroglyphic language like ancient
Egyptian and in fact frequently omitted. No need to say the sun IS in
the sky, sun in sky suffices. The verb TO BE can easily be omitted from any
languages and the followers of Count Korgybski have done this, eliminating
the verb TO BE in English. However, it is difficult to tidy up the
English language by arbitrary exclusion of concepts which remain in
force so long as the unchanged language is spoken.
THE DEFINITE ARTICLE THE. THE contains the implication of one and only:
THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, The wrong, If there is another,
then THAT universe, THAT way is no longer THE universe, The way. The definite
article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take it's
place.
THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or
false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and replaced
by juxtaposition, by AND This is done to some extent in any pictorial
language where two concepts stand literally side by side. These
falsifications inherent in the English and other western alphabetical
languages give the reactive mind commands their overwhelming force
in these languages. Consider the IS of identity. When I say to be me,
to be you, to be myself, to be others- whatever I may be called upon to be or
to say that I am- I am not the verbal label "myself." The word BE in the
English language contains, as a virus contains, its precoded message of
damage, the categorial imperative of permanent condition. To be a
body, to be an animal. If you see the relation of a pilot to his
ship, you see crippling force of the reactive mind command to be a body.
Telling the pilot to be the plane, then who will pilot the plane?
The IS of identity, assigning a rigid and permanent status, was greatly
reinforced by the customs and passport control the came in after World
War I. Whatever you may be, you are not the verbal labels in your passport.
any more than you are the word "self." So you must be prepared to prove at
all times that you are what you are not. Much of the falsification inherent
in the categorical definite THE. THE now, THE past, THE time, THE space,
THE energy, THE matter, THE unIverse. Definite article THE contains the
implications of no other. THE universe locks you in THE, and denies the
possibility of any other. If other universes are possible, then the universe
is no longer THE it becomes A. The definite article THE is deleted and
replaced by A. many of the RM commands are in point of fact contradictory
commands and a contradictory command gains its force from the Aristotelian
concept of either/or. To do everything, to do nothing, to have
everything, to have nothing, to do it all, to do not any, to stay up, to
stay down, to stay in, to stay out, to stay present, to stay absent. These
are in point of fact either/or propositions. To do nothing OR everything, to
have it all, OR not any, to stay present OR to stay absent. Either/or is
more difficult to fomulate in a written language where both alternatives
are pictorially represented and can be deleted entirely from the spoken
language. The whole reactive mind can be in fact reduced to three little
words - to be "THE". That is to be what you are not, verbal formulations.
I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting
as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It will be seen that
the falsifications of syllabic western languages are in point of fact actual
virus mechanisms. The IS of identity the purpose of a virus is to SURVIVE. To
survive at any expense to the host invaded. To be an animal, to be a body. To
be an animal body that the virus can invade. To be animals, to be bodies. To
be more animal bodies, so that the virus can move from one body to another.
To stay present as an animal body, to stay absent as antibody or resistance
to the body invasion.
The categorial THE is also a virus mechanism, locking you in THE virus
universe. EITHER/OR is another virus formula. It is alway you OR the
virus. EITHER/OR. This is in point of fact the conflict formula which is
seen to be archetypical virus mechanism. The proposed language will delete
these virus mechanisms and make them impossible of formulation in the
language. This language will be a tonal language like Chinese, it will
also have a hieroglyphic script as pictorial as possible without being to
cumbersome or difficult to write. This language will give one option of
silence. When not talking, the user of this language can take in the silent
images of the written, pictorial and symbol languages.
I have described here a number of weapons and tactics in the war game.
Weapons that change consciousness could call the war game in question. All
games are hostile. Basically there is only one game from here to eternity.
Mr Hubbard says that Scientology is a game where everybody wins. There are no
games where everybody wins. That's what games are all about, winning and
losing ... The Versailles Treaty ... Hitler dances the Occupation Jig ...
War criminals hang at Nuremberg ...It is a rule of this game that there can
be no final victory since this mean the end of the war game. Yet every
player must believe in final victory and strive for it with all his power.
Faced by the nightmare of final defeat he has no alternative. So all
technologies with escalating efficiency produce more and more total weapons
until we have the atom bomb which could end the game by destroying all
players. Now mock up a miracle. The so stupid players decide to save the
game. They sit down around a big table and draw up a plan for the immediate
deactivation and eventual destruction of all atomic weapons. Why stop there?
Conventional bombs are unnecessarily destructive if nobody has them hein?
Let's turn back the war clock back to 1917:
Keep the home fires burning
Through the hearts are yearning
There's a long, long trail awinding ... .
Back to the American Civil War...
"He has loosed the fatal lightning of this terrible swift sword."
His fatal lightning didn't cost as much in those days. Save a lot on the
defence budget this way on back to flintlocks, matchlocks, swords, armour,
lances, bows and arrows, spears, stone axes and clubs. Why stop there? Why
not grow teeth and claws, poison fangs, stingers, spines, quills, beaks
and suckers and stink glands and fight in out in the muck hein?
That is what this revolution is about. End of game. New games?
There are no new games from here to eternity.
END OF THE WAR GAME.
Williams Burroughs
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