Celebrating Maestro Brion Gysin

Photo: me having an ecstatic experience at the October Gallery, London, by Carl.

Today is Brion Gysin's day of death so it's only fitting to pay tribute to the man who is the modern age discoverer of the cut-up method.

Both Carl and I have worked with Gysin and his techniques in our own ways for years now (decades even). This a great time to experiment with the cut-up method yourself, as we enter the period between Brion Gysin’s and William Burroughs’ death days (July 13–August 2).

Above I’ve included a track Carl and I made for Gysin some years ago… here is the cut-up collage I’m reading as the spoken word for the piece:

Below, I’ve also included some writings about the various ways Carl, artist and magical practitioner Katelan Foisy, and I have worked with the cut-up method over the years. I share this as inspiration for your own cut-up journey!

If you want to learn more about Brion Gysin, be sure to check out this incredible book Brion Gysin: His Name Was Master: (Expanded Edition) by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, with contributions from Peter Christopherson, Carl Abrahamsson, Kathelin Gray, and Paul "Bee" Hampshire. Enjoy!

As a magical practitioner, I love to create oils for artists that inspire me. One of the first oils I ever created was a Third Mind oil together with artist Katelan Foisy. To do this, I created an oil for Brion Gysin and she created one for William S. Burroughs. We worked on these oils from July 13 (Gysin's day of death) to August 2 (Burroughs day of death). This was the year 2015. Following Burroughs’ death day, we got together and ritually combined the two oils to create what we called the Third Mind blend.

For years, I brought a vial of this oil with me everywhere I went, especially when I was giving a talk about cut-ups. I often wear this oil when creating cut-ups at home. It's a way of communing with these adopted ancestors and facilitating the work with them. Katelan has basically an altar piece she created for Burroughs, and I commissioned her to create a portrait of Gysin for me.

Our work is an exploration of the intersection, integration, and application of chaos magic, witchcraft and the cut-up method of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Here are some of the various ways we've experimented with the cut-up method over the years:

Paying homage to Burroughs and Gysin's seminal work The Third Mind (1978), Foisy and Sinclair underwent a series of experimentations over the course of a year. Some experiments were taken directly from The Third Mind itself, while others were inspired by it.

Utilizing examples of Burroughs' cut-ups in his own magical workings, such as the trying on of different identities and the manipulation of photos, concepts found in chaos magic and witchcraft are explored and a variety of phenomena and practices are shown to be variations of the cut. The cut-up method as applied to writing, audio recording, video/film, photography, visual art, collage, and combinations thereof, as well as matter, language, memory, action, and magical practice. Over time, we have come to understand that life itself is created by a series of cuts, and to appreciate the essentiality of the cut in creation.

We kept daily dream diaries for a period of time and created cut-ups in the first moments upon awakening, as we recorded our dreams. It was interesting to see how the dreamwork and cut-ups mirrored each other, as well as how they were reflective of occurrences in the our daily lives.

Cut-up as a tool of divination: The tarot is a cut-up, the countless ways the 78 cards may be assembled and reassembled. Sigils are cut-ups, a fundamental deconstruction of language. A new method of combining the tarot with the cut-up of language has be developed. During a reading, cut-up phrases are drawn for the cards that are laid out. The cut-ups can aid in specifying what that card may be alluding to, or if the card may have multiple meanings, the cut-up may point to which is pertinent in the current situation. Cut-ups may be used to clarify and add richness to a tarot reading.

Cut-ups can be created from cutting one's own writing into four quadrants and rearranging the four pieces. This method was taken directly from The Third Mind.

Cut-ups can be created by cutting up and rearranging an essay of one's own. Cutting up one's own work in this way can aid one in looking at one's work in a refreshing new way, generating new ideas and taking ideas further than one was able to before. Great method to use when one has reached a standstill in one's writing.

Cut-ups can be created by splicing together two different pieces of one's own writing.

Cut-ups can be created by splicing together an article of yours with an article of someone else’s. See what you two have to say to each other! Or what your Third Mind would say…

I have cut together an article I wrote about a specific artist with a piece of that artist's writing. Again, generates new ideas!

Creating new cut-ups of Burroughs’ and Gysin’s words that they themselves never cut together.

Creating new Third Minds by cutting together the work of Freud and Jung for example. One could even see this as mending the divide…

Another exercise taken directly from the Third Mind: take any poem by an author you admire, a poem that you've read so many times the words have become meaningless, and cut it up and rearrange it. I chose the poem “Ceremony” by Ian Curtis.

The intentions of the artist are living within their words. When one cuts apart and brings together the words of an artist you admire, it’s fascinating to see what new things they say!

An exercise: listen to a song on repeat whose lyrics have meaning for you; allow yourself to free write while the song is playing; allow yourself to write lyrics from the song in with your own words if that's what you feel compelled to do... see what it says.

Cut-up up photos or magazines and see what they say. I have found personal items like your own images and words work best.

Get together with friends and cut-up each other's writing. Mix it together and see what it says!

Create collages and cut-ups with a group. The group process, we call the 23rd Mind.

Image: Third Mind of Katelan Foisy and I, created by Katelan.

I hope you all enjoyed this! Feel free to share your experiments with me. We can chat about them in the Discord! (link below).

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