Cosmic Trigger - reload

Spring Equinox, and we sense stirrings in the Cosmic Trigger camp - get the T-Shirt and help fund another glorious adventure.

 For several of the Maybe Logic crew witnessing (or performing in) the heroic performance in Liverpool and London formed a highlight of last year.

Triumphant performance in Liverpool, 2014

A Small Package Of Value Will Come To You, Shortly

JOHN WILCOCK: (LSD History) Michael Hollingshead Turns on the World

Fun cartoon history on Boing Boing...

Furthur Reading:

The Man Who Turned on the World

  Michael Hollingshead  at The Psychedelic Library

Mr Burroughs arrived 100 years ago

William Burroughs remains someone who appears respected or disliked by a range of people,  with very little neutral ground.

Easy enough to use the "anti" adjectives and nouns, but you won't find them here.

Here's a wonderful extended piece about WSB on The Quietus:

The Third Man: William S. Burroughs At One Hundred

RAW liked his work enough to adopt at least some of the cut-up technique (evolved with Brion Gysin) in Illuminatus!  In fact, Burroughs appears in the book.
WSB also studied with Korzybski, and was way ahead of the game when it came to paranoia about Control, Belief Systems, Authoritarian States, and the manipulation of others.

William Burroughs at 100 - the official website

Life-Time also have a piece:

William S. Burroughs at 100: Rebel, Junkie, Exile, Genius

If you are in the US: have a look at The Burroughs Century

LISTEN TO MY LAST WORDS anywhere. Listen to my last words any world. Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever—
“Don’t let them see us. Don’t tell them what we are doing—”
Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth?
“For God’s sake don’t let that Coca-Cola thing out—”
“Not The Cancer Deal with The Venusians—”
“Not The Green Deal—Don’t show them that—”
“Not The Orgasm Death—”
“Not the ovens—”
Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it all back. Play it all pay it all play it all back. For all to see. In Times Square. In Piccadilly.
“Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time.”
Time for what? More lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words are not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go.

–William Burroughs, Nova Express  1964

Cosmic Trigger - The Play

Here is the brilliant video of Daisy Eris Campbell from the recent Horse Hospital gig:



The plan is for the play to start in the UK and then head to America.
In the meantime anyone who donates £23 or $23 (or multiples thereof) in this pre-launch phase will be on the guest list for
The Grand Discordian opening night. (One in the UK and one in The States).
Much of the money raised will contribute directly to The RAW Estate by securing the rights.

So write an e-mail now to get on the mailing list.
The E-mail address is: cosmictriggerplay at gmail dot com
You can use paypal, or if you would rather use online banking, E-mail Daisy and she'll send you the details.

Another Cosmic Trigger event along the lines of this one, looks likely for Liverpool on *UPDATE* February 23rd, 2014.
A Kickstarter with lots of fun incentives will launch, hopefully on April 23rd, 2014.

GENERAL semANTICS

A general semanticist is someone who, upon encountering a person with a beard, would say it was probably a man, but would hold open the possibility that it might be a bearded lady.  - Richard P. Marsh

The subject of General Semantics (and Count Alfred Korzybski) came up quite often when studying with RAW, even if only indirectly (as in discussions of E-Prime, for instance, or Non-Aristotelean Logic).

GS aims to improve one's ability to evaluate the world and one's place in it.

The younger generation(s) appear to know little of GS, but it had a period of great influence on people like William Burroughs (born 1914) who actually went and studied with Korzybski in 1939. 
Details of that amazing sounding set of lectures, here.

I guess RAW learned about GS later, perhaps via Burroughs, and A.E.Van Vogt, etc - or through the founders of NLP - Bandler and Grinder (say). Or maybe Bucky Fuller, Alan Watts or Gregory Bateson.

Bob himself gave a lecture at the Institute of General Semantics - here in PDF format.

More recently, Graham Rae gave this interesting presentation:

GENERAL SEMANTICS MEETS EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE: THE LIFELONG EFFECT OF ALFRED KORZYBSKI ON WILLIAM S BURROUGHS

He posted the text of the talk on this forum at Reality Studio.


This OM post has appeared now in response to our hearing about  a huge biography of Korzybski written by Bruce Kodish which sounds fascinating (to me).

Kodish has a blog related to this material here.

And here, on the relationship to Burroughs.

For those who do not know anything about the subject, this brief summary by Piero Scaruffi might give you a glimpse, although whether such a brief description may confuse more than enlighten, who can say?

Synopsis:

• Animals: hunters and gatherers = bind to territory, i.e."space-binders"
• Humans: agriculture = bind to a memory of the past and prediction of the future, i.e. "time-binders"
• Time-binding is enabled by a nervous system that is capable of constructing and manipulating symbols
• Time-binding allows to transmit knowledge to succeeding generations
• The rate of growth of human knowledge is exponential  (aka the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon)
• Language allows time-binders to categorize/generalize experiences and communicate them to others
• General Semantics to remedy the limits of language:
• We have fewer words and concepts than experiences: we "confuse" similar situations
• We must evaluate a situation less by intension (its category) and more by extension (its unique features)
• We must avoid categorization/generalization and spot the unique characteristics of a situation

This link goes to the Institute of General Semantics, relating to the new biography.

New York Society of General Semantics - about Korzybski by Susan and Bruce Kodish

Random Research

fUSION aNOMALY on Korzysbski

fUSION aNOMALY on Burroughs

Steven Lewis - brief bio of Korzybski

Steven Lewis on General Semantics

Donald Fagen mentions GS, RAW, Van Vogt and Burroughs

Language, a virus?    By Florian Cramer

The Road to Interzone: Reading William S. Burroughs Reading    by Michael Stevens

Michael Stevens - The Road to Interzone Interview        by Paul Hawkins

Other Tales

The new dynamic 'looks' for Blogger do have a tantalising way of revealing old posts, so it seems worth a try. It does seem a shame to lose all the great links we accumulated down the right hand sidebar - of like-minded sites, interesting places to visit, etc. For some reason the dynamic views shed all that, in their desperation to get rid of the linear blog format.

You may find this week that the blog occasionally displays with the new dynamic templates.

Here's Uncle Bill, who I guess might encourage the cutting up and re-mixing of the site....

 

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS