Listen or read - the choice is yours…..
They say talent borrows and genius steals, so I’ll make no apology for stealing an idea directly from the artist Brion Gysin who, alongside William Burroughs used the cut up technique to create new and sometimes surprisingly coherent prose from existing texts.
The starting point for my latest Bandcamp offering is a single phrase repeated in all possible permutations of the words, resulting in the track “Is That All?” - the title being a shortened version of the line “Is All That I Am All That I Am” which could either be a deep philosophical question, or just a random word play, depending on your own interpretation.
NB. Click the cover image to listen to the track, or go to: https://music.colinedwin.co.uk/track/is-that-all
Brion Gysin’s source material for cut ups was mainly newspapers, which he rearranged to create new texts from unrelated prose. I’ve been doing a similar thing on my fridge for years using a set of magnetised “fridge poetry” words that I received many Christmases ago, and almost every day there’s a random phrase generated by someone in the house. Sometimes it does make me stop and think, or not. Equally, when listening to all the permutations of the words in “Is That All?”, it’s interesting how the perceived meaning, or meaninglessness, changes as the words shift around, at least I hope that’s the effect.
David Bowie famously used the cut up technique to write a lot of his lyrics, which isn’t surprising when you think about it - for example “Pictures of Jap girls in synthesis” from Ashes to Ashes, I’ll wager came from a randomisation. There’s an extensive article on Bowie’s use of cut ups that’s well worth checking out here:
Bowie apparently also went further and used a computer program called verbasizer to automate the text rearrangement process. It’s true that using a computer, rather than newspaper, scissors and glue and so forth, makes the generation of new text a much quicker and less messy process, and less time consuming even than fridge magnets, so I’ll unashamedly do a bit of self-aggrandizing and claim that bit of genius too, the text and voice on “Is That All?” both benefitted from automization, saving me the tedious job of cutting and pasting and reading the words myself.
It’s fair to say this idea is one developed from my “rough corner” - a space where I allow myself to create without any expectation of a result, I talked a little bit more about this is a recent interview which you can read here.
I’ll be sharing a few more of these “rough corner” ideas in the coming weeks…..
Further reading - I’ve long been fascinated by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, whom I find to be incredible sources of creative ideas, and you can read more about Cut Ups here and here