For links to more Burroughs postings (that have featured on The Allen Ginsberg Project) see here and here
Today we’re featuring an illuminating conversation (recorded in the summer of 2020, and noted by us last year), with Burroughs’ “secretary, manager, partner, lover, gate-keeper and friend”, James Grauerholz. It’s a sympathetic and revealing probe by Paul K, who, (along with David Leo Rice) is the creative genius behind the ever-intriguing Wake Island podcast (“a podcast devoted to conversations exploring atmosphere, aesthetics, and escape” – a not-to-be-missed “conversation series about the darkening undercurrents of contemporary society”)
And after that (to round off the day) – why not treat yourself to a deep listen to the man himself – Burroughs reading from his classic, Naked Lunch – here, here, here and here
(the source is the 1995 abridged reading, approved by the author, and released as a 3-cd set – see here)
Just keeping the spirit of this particular American international literary patriot & savant illuminated & alive in a 🌎 🌍 where we as a species are on that borderline of extinction we love to call life is for me one of the most charitably humane gestures & offerings I could ask for…I crossed paths with these individuals in a variety of ways times & places starting at the age of 12 in 1967
In NYC repeatedly
In Amsterdam in 1977 along side Iggy Pop
Facing the Flat Irons above the trees at breakfast on a pass thru of Boulder
Including or rather bringing up the rear the sound of the thudding broadly smiling bare feet of Philip Whalen
Corso on a park bench in San Francisco for no particular reason but such a lovely conversation in spite
Ginsberg on 2nd Ave & 13th st bumming a Camel from me on a warm fall night (the Camel 🐫 you smoke not the 🐫 kind you ride thru the Interzone)
& as with many artists who fit into unorthodox galleries jazz dive & concert halls I fear the possibility of the death of the art with the death of the artist
These days seem to me about getting comfortable with our inevitable demise
To learn how to picnic & dance – fast & slow – to set up camp where we can freely copulate beneath the stars of day & night the trees of music the sand & season of science inviting ALL into this cemetery of life
As the music fades & clever credits roll some knowingly most blindly join in this beautifully unified wave of ambitious good byes 👋