William S. Burroughs: A Man Within Page #4

the nature of consciousness

and science and mind travel.

You know, magic,

tantrism, genetics,

the cloning worlds,

looking at semantics,

looking at intrinsic nature,

looking at impermanence,

looking at how

we name and qualify,

and where does that come from.

[ Burroughs ]

That is all, all, all

gossip. Stop it.

His dedication to altered

states and knowledge...

and tinkering

with consciousness,

that, as well, always

leads one into conflict

with the powers that be,

because that, too,

is an illegal activity.

[ Burroughs ]

"Flicker administered

under large dosage...

and repeated later,

could well lead to...

overflow of the brain areas...

sounds and even odors,

that is a categorical

characteristic of

the consciousness-expanding...

Grey Walters produced

many of the phenomena...

Anything that

can be done chemically

can be done in other ways"...

[ P-Orridge ]

The first things that William

was investigating...

as a personal crusade

or as a personal philosophy...

all of those things made him

an outcast, an outsider...

and an outlaw, quite literally.

When you have someone

who's knowingly choosing

to be outside the law...

or to refuse to accept

the template of legality...

that some society

has imposed upon them,

then you have the potential

for some degree of chaos...

or destruction

of that status quo,

that nonsense that's reality.

So William chose a path

that he knew would

bring him into conflict...

with the powers that be,

with social norms...

and with the legal system.

And he chose it because it

would be intolerable to him...

to be a hypocrite

and hide away

his real sense of being.

I bring not peace, but a sword!

It's no mistake that the main

obsession of Burroughs

was control.

The first time we met in 1971,

just before we left

his apartment, he said to me,

"How do you short-circuit

control?

That's what I want you to spend

your time thinking about."

Meaning my life.

And that's basically

what we've done.

As long as you don't decide

not to either react or say,

but just sort of hide

and be a hypocrite,

then you're doing their job.

People do it different ways.

But no, I think that William

was a very, very political,

radical, anarchist man.

[ Gunshot ]

[ Gunshot ]

[ Regina Weinreich ]

His upbringing was middle-class,

but he had a housekeeper

who introduced him to opium.

So it's not surprising that

he went in the direction

that he went.

Well, if you've got

the Yage Papers...

And he's the only guy

I've ever known to take yage,

which is the absolute

sine qua non of

hallucinogenic drugs.

He's also the guy

that Timothy Leary

and Baba Ram Dass...

came over to Morocco

and had him try psilocybin.

He's the only guy

I've ever heard of or known...

to take the original

C.I.A.'s version of L.S.D.,

L.S.D.-6,

which is like

a horse-pill of insanity.

I mean, the stuff

that I did as a hippie

in the '60s was like bubble gum.

It was fool's gold compared

to the extensive experiences

that guy had.

He was a walking pharmacologist,

an encyclopedia of it.

[ Burroughs ]

"There's a junk gesture

that marks the junkie...

like the limp wrist

marks the fag.

"The hand swings out

from the elbow,

stiff-fingered, palm up."

[ Waters ]

William Burroughs,

sure he romanticized drug use,

but not in the way that usually

people think romantic.

I think no one

had written about it.

Nobody had read about it.

It was a hidden,

terrible thing.

So that someone wrote about it

in any kind of joyous way,

which he did...

joyous and terrible

and wonderful...

sure, he did romanticize it.

Did anybody read Naked Lunch

and try heroin? Probably.

So what? That doesn't mean

that book shouldn't be read.

I'm for anybody that shows...

writes about their obsession

and shows...

A murderer can write a book

about how great it is to murder.

Doesn't mean

it's not a good book.

What the breakthrough

of the late '50s was,

after Howl,

was a breakthrough

to those people who lived

in America and were American...

but were never focused on.

And so the whole question

of narcotics, to kind of...

I mean, even with

the fantastic thing

that Burroughs conceived of...

The idea that there

were junkies in America...

[ Chuckles ]

you know, was somewhat

of a social breakthrough.

[ Grauerholz ]

Burroughs was cool,

particularly in his persona.

Usually when we think of cool

in the context of the hip world,

the Beat world,

we're thinking of the difference

between alcohol and heroin.

Hip people

who liked to take dope,

or who were addicted to it,

they thought it was

the pinnacle of coolness

to go score a bag,

maybe of Dr. Nova.

They even had, like,

William's own brand,

in a way, or many brands.

Score a glassine bag of this

and take it to the Bunker...

to share it

with the Pope of Dope.

[ John Giorno ] On the street

outside... Rivington and Bowery...

was a big pick-up place.

Junkies for five blocks

going east.

Howard was coming to visit.

He said, "John,

I scored for William."

And they shot up together.

Howard, at that point,

had to be H.I.V.-positive.

But William, having seniority,

shot up first.

William shot up many times.

People came and visited,

and, uh...

But he always

got the first shot,

so he never got AIDS.

I thought that

was pretty great.

I mean, everyone died!

Sadly so.

[ Bockris ] There's always

the question with someone

who has the glamour image...

that, say, Burroughs had

or Keith Richards has

or Lou Reed has,

where they're seen to kind

of glamorize using heroin.

Seems like a very cool

sort of thing, you know.

But if you read everything

William wrote about heroin,

it was to warn people

to not take it.

And he was using it

as a sort of image

or symbol of control.

This is the ultimate control.

You have to buy the product

or else you're sick.

[ Peter Weller ]

I'm doing this press

conference with Bill.

I said, Bill, you know,

I had this migraine last night.

I came by these pills

in my medicine cabinet,

two Percodans.

And his eyes went, "What?"

I said, "Well, what are they?"

And he said, "What do you mean

what are they?"

I said, "Well,

what is Percodan?"

And he put his face about

an inch from mine and said,

"It's junk!"

And walked away.

And I sat there with my...

metaphorical ass spanked.

And immediately...

saw the distinction

between this actor...

who was acting Bill Lee

and his addictions...

and a guy who, like,

roamed the world in a sewer...

hooked on this sh*t.

That said,

that whole incident

with him, man,

with him leveling me

with "It's junk,"

was like a laser through me

about everything else

in my life...

that I'm doing or taking

on a whim...

not just pills...

you know,

sex or careerism or cigars...

or whatever that I think

I can get by through,

I can wing this today,

I can hold my breath

through this now,

because it's not the real deal.

And then all of a sudden you

wake up and it is the real deal.

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