Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 07:40 +0930 (CST)
From: "LORD, Robert" <ROBERT.LORD-AT-santos.com.au>
Subject: Burroughs,P. Orridge, ontology



Orpheus wrote:

The Burroughs cut-up
>technique and the fold-in [variants more or less of the permuation system
>he devised along with Brion Gysin] I admire greatly but do not actually
>use myself. I have always found it either not fast enough, or not really
>productive for my purposes

Yes, I also admire the works of Burroughs, but I also recognise your 
difficulty with adopting their technique as they describe it.  I've always 
been a tinge doubtful if Burroughs really did write those books with the 
method of cut-ups used in the way he explicitly describes, ie actually 
having to cut and fold the pages up... for why can't you do it in your head! 
 But they are quite explicit about this, "You cannot cut up in your head any 
more than I can paint in my head.  Whatever you do in your head bears the 
prerecorded pattern of your head" (Third Mind P 44)  It is interesting that 
Burroughs can't actually remember writing the early books, it would also 
seem to me that the influence of psychedelic drugs would be the exact 
conditions which would put your head in a state whereby you could do cut-ups 
in your head.  I don't know, just having read those books I still find it 
difficult conceptualising them being produced in that method as he 
describes, it's just too slow, and if done absolutely randomly would require 
a long process of  filtering out all the good montages/conjugations, it's 
also less fun.

Unleesh wrote,

>Genesis P. Orridge on his albums often puts Instructions for Listening :
>Listen to the album while the T.V. set is on turned to no channel, watching
>the white noise. Take notes on how it affects you. Or better, have three
>television sets so (de)tuned.

"...turn the television to a channel without a programme and the screen will 
be filled with 'snow', as its called.  Turn the brightness and contrast up 
full.  The best time to do this is between 1 am and 6 am, as we are trained 
through social conditioning to be most neutral at this time - therefore the 
most receptive.  Now get close to the screen, switch off all other lights 
sources and stare at the screen.  First try and focus on the tiny dots that 
will be careering about the screen like micro-organisms.  You'll find it 
very hard to focus - just keep on trying.  Suddenly time will alter along 
with your perceptions and you will hit a period of trance where the 
conscious and subconscious mind are triggered in unison by the mantic 
vibrations of the myriad dots." ("Tape Delay" ed C Neal, 31-31)  It is 
interesting in that it bears some similarity to Gysin's Dream Machine, in 
its pulsating and flickering light, desiring machines, modern magik ritual 
machine techniques...

Stephen Arnott wrote:

>In his review of 'Logique et Existence' Deleuze makes this claim:
>"Philosophy must be ontology, it cannot be anything else; but there is no
>ontology of essence, there is only ontology of sense."
>What does anyone make of this?

I've not come across it before but its a fantastic little nutshell.  It 
seems clear to me that Deleuze never went down the Foucaultian path in a 
denial of any kind of ontology, but while Maintaining an ontology, he also 
desires to distance himself form any essentialised ontology which the 
Foucaultians were right in attacking.  It is an ontology of sense, in the 
sense that ontology is constructed, connected to, plugged into, moved 
over... An ontology of sense is not a singular ontology, but a 
multi-ontology, not an invariant static essence but an ontology of flux, 
that functions according to becomings and degrees of intensity.  We move 
back and forth between the plane of organisation and the plane of 
consistency.  The plane of organisation somewhat stratifies us, whereas the 
plane of consistency enables us to encounter more destratified rhizomatic 
segments of ontology.  But we will only suffer if we obliterate our plane of 
organisation, for we always need a body and some firm ground to come back 
to.  An ontology of sense elicits an indiscernibility, a space of molecular 
imperceptibility, that is not a bounded system with limits, but opens out 
onto a cosmos.  It is where thought and expression are inseparable from an 
ontological milieu, in this way it is not an ontology of what it is, but in 
what it does, it's sense and its performativity.

Robert.