And then I was taken back to a hotel in Rue Monsieur le Prince, late Sixties, having a disorderly and entirely forgotten conversation with Brian Gysin.Come to think of it, more a morning-after monologue on his part.
Checking online, I see the relevance of your chat/his monologue
Brion Gysin (January 19, 1916 - July 13, 1986) was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born outside of London, Taplow, Buckinghamshire.[1] He is best known for his rediscovery of Tristan Tzara's cut-up technique and its influence on the work of William S. Burroughs, calligraphic paintings inspired by Japanese and Arabic script, and for co-inventing the Dreamachine, a flicker device. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brion_Gysin
Brion Gysin (January 19, 1916 - July 13, 1986) was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born outside of London, Taplow, Buckinghamshire.[1]
He is best known for his rediscovery of Tristan Tzara's cut-up technique and its influence on the work of William S. Burroughs, calligraphic paintings inspired by Japanese and Arabic script, and for co-inventing the Dreamachine, a flicker device.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brion_Gysin
"Language is an abominable misunderstanding which makes up a part of matter. The painters and the physicists have treated matter pretty well. The poets have hardly touched it. In March 1958, when I was living at the Beat Hotel, I proposed to Burroughs to at least make available to literature the means that painters have been using for fifty years. Cut words into pieces and scramble them. You'll hear someone draw a bow-string. Who runs may read, To read better, practice your running. Speed is entirely up to us, since machines have delivered us from the horse. Henceforth the question is to deliver us from that other so-called superior animal, man. It's not worth it to chase out the merchants: their temple is dedicated to the unsuitable lie of the value of the Unique. The crime of separation gave birth to the idea of the Unique which would not be separate. In painting, matter has seen everything: from sand to stuffed goats. Disfigured more and more, the image has been geometrically multiplied to a dizzying degree. A snow of advertising could fall from the sky, and only collector babies and the chimpanzees who make abstract paintings would bother to pick one up." - Cut-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success
I've done a little remembrance of things past, savoured that period of my life. It was either in 1970 or 1971. Gysin lodged then in rue M. le Prince, in a hotel as always. I can't remember much of what was said. The impression is morning and a young woman standing naked on a table, which I'm afraid clouds everything else out.
I've done a little remembrance of things past, savoured that period of my life.
Funny you should say that - I've just been reading: "How Proust can change your life" Alain De Botton - very interesting. Thanks to the internet the real thing is available online.
Regarding the approach - there's also surrealism - which links to the above coincidence :-)
They rejected Futurism, preferring the Metaphysical painters, especially the haunting enigmas of Giorgio de Chirico (b 1888). Andre Breton's phrase 'pure psychic automatism' was intended to apply to the process of writing and Breton even gave practical hints on how to do it. In 1930 he published his second Manifeste du surréalisme in which he defined 'surreality' as the reconciliation of the reality of dreams with the reality of everyday life into a higher synthesis. Underlying the interest in automatism and dream lay the Surrealist notion of what was called 'objective chance'. They believed that the existence of coincidences (events for which there were no rational explanations) was evidence and that true reality was not ordered or logical. Access to reality could only be gained through the unconscious mind. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/surrealism.html
Andre Breton's phrase 'pure psychic automatism' was intended to apply to the process of writing and Breton even gave practical hints on how to do it. In 1930 he published his second Manifeste du surréalisme in which he defined 'surreality' as the reconciliation of the reality of dreams with the reality of everyday life into a higher synthesis.
Underlying the interest in automatism and dream lay the Surrealist notion of what was called 'objective chance'. They believed that the existence of coincidences (events for which there were no rational explanations) was evidence and that true reality was not ordered or logical. Access to reality could only be gained through the unconscious mind.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/surrealism.html
Though generally I'm very rationalist, but it's good to sometimes remember that much still escapes our reason and we too easily accept reasons which are later shown to be mistaken. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience
Our slight difference with other organisms is language which does get in the way of perceiving exactly that which language suggests or enables us to be aware of.
I really can't perceive of "realities" beyond us or that some sort of "unconscious" mind may have "access" to "it." It's all there for the grabs. Tying it down and trying to communicate it to others is the crux of the problem. So we have the arts and the farther reaches of science to suggest- to re-mind us of- the ineffable, the stochastic, the ordinary chaos from which we distill meaning.
It comes as no surprise that Benjamin translated Proust into German.
My daughter gave me De Botton's book as a birthday gift when it came out. I enjoyed it, especially Proust's fascination with crime and trashy periodicals. Another delightful aspect of Proust's character was to write two versions of a review or a letter- one in which he confided to posterity what he really thought while publishing or sending a perfectly false version of his judgements or sentiments.
