The Ticket That Exploded (Burroughs, William S.) (18 page)

Now let’s play some poker — Why not take over both halves of a body so you don’t need any mooching “Other Half” — Why not rewrite the message on “the soft typewriter”? — Why not take the board books and rewrite all message? — Why not take over the human body right down the middle line? — Under distant fingers move in and take it all — All right, watch what is covering the two halves with so-called human body — Flesh sheets on which is written: “The spines rubbed and merged” — Written
before
on “the Soft Typewriter” — transparent quivering substance the body is two halves stuck together around him — a shadowy figure melting to sperm — a
silver cord of tendril fingers rubbing erogenous zones along the divide line — contractions in the tumescent sponge pulse future organism — shoot out body dies falling into water — Play some poker — Why not take over underwater sleep? — You don’t need any “Other Half” — Why not take the middle line? You see it is composed from birth to death — A cold deck under his gills dealt the softening spine — In that game? — Now look again — He sank into other flesh mold — Siamese twin substance in spine lives along the shocks of electric cocaine pleasure — The Other Half will be born inside feeling both halves of the body —

Now
look
son, when you move in a new angle — These Eager Beavers jump right into a dime — That way Birth & Death cycle action — You want out? Con cop — It’s an old vaudeville act — Just walk in and throw the tin on the board —

Learn to sit back and watch — Just take both parts — Watch what you walk into — So called human body? Long ride on the White Sheets — Slide in cool and casual — I’ll play your cards — You want to sit in on the local line? — Look down look down along that line before you travel there — If there the body is two halves stuck together form you can score for —

Why I’m here — To play some poker — Why not flash the marks soft typewriter? Why not call? — When you call write all message — Why not take over ticket? You want out? — Con cop — It’s an old vaudeville act — Just walk in and throw the tin on the Board — Cover Sammy and the boys — Take the board books and rewrite the cold deck — Any board member want to play some
straight five card stud? I didn’t think so — Now cut up the board books, son — Minutes to go —

The Subliminal Kid is a charter defector from the nova mob —

“Just a technical sergeant is all — Just Time — Just Time — Just Time —” So he moved in with the Rewrite Department and set up his headquarters to put out the Rewrite Bulletins on subliminal level — It’s all done with tape recorders. Go out and buy three fine machines on credit and put your name down for an in-television unit. Find a boy with blue eyes and gentle precise fingers . . (He was a ham radio operator at twelve at the age of eight he released weather balloons which he fabricated from plastic suit covers . .) The boy will wire your machines for you. You need a switchboard so you can control the machines: Tape Recorder 1 playback five seconds Tape Recorder 2 and 3 record and so forth. Take an everyday situation you are arguing with your boy friend or girl friend remembering what was said last time and thinking of things to say next time the whole stupid argument going going round and round like the music in your head until it bores you just silly to hear it but you are aggrieved and playing back self-pity and you just can’t shut up. Take your arguments and complaints and put them on T.R.I and call that machine Tom or Dick or Harry you name it it’s yours. On T.R.2 put all the things he or she said to you or might say. Now make the two machines talk: T.R.I playback five seconds T.R.2 record. T.R.2 playback three seconds T.R.I record. Run it through fifteen minutes half an hour now switch intervals. Run the interval switch you used on T.R.I back on T.R.2. — (You will find that the
intervals are as important as the so-called context) — listen to the two machines mixing it around and around. Now for T.R.3 — (Who is the third that walks beside you?) — With T.R.3 you can introduce the factor of “irrelevant response” so put just any old thing on T.R.3 a sad old tune a sad old joke a piece of the street TV radio and cut T.R.3 into the argument T.R.I: “I waited up for you last night till two o’clock” . . T.R.3: “And now if you will excuse me . . The soccer scores are coming in from the capitol. . One must pretend an interest.”

Get it out of your head and into the machines. Stop talking stop arguing. Let the machines talk and argue. A tape recorder is an externalized section of the human nervous system. You can find out more about the nervous system and gain more control over your reaction by using a tape recorder than you could find out sitting twenty years in the lotus posture. Whatever your problem is just throw it into the machines and let them chew it around a while. There is of course the initial problem: programming tape recorders is an expensive deal any way you wire it.

The spliced-tape experiment to which I have already referred can be performed by anyone equipped with two tape recorders connected by extension lead so he can record directly from one machine to the other. Since the experiment may give rise to a marked erotic reaction it is more interesting to select as your partner for this experiment some one with whom you are on intimate terms. We have two subjects designated as S and W. Now take a text any text. S records the text on Tape Recorder 1. W records the same text on Tape Recorder 2. Now play back T.R.I three seconds recording on T.R.2. Play back T.R.2
three seconds recording on T.R.I and so forth
alternating
the two recorded voices. This is the simplest form of the spliced-tape experiment. The same results can be obtained by splicing two street recordings made separately by S and W. In order to obtain any degree of precision the tapes must be cut with a scissors and spliced together with tape. This is a laborious process that can be appreciably expedited if you have access to a cutting room and use film tape which is larger and much easier to handle. You can carry the experiment further by taking a talking film of S and a talking film of W and splicing sound and image track alternating 24 times per second.

S and W carry in their respective and presumed separate nervous systems the equipment to record and playback sound to take images, equipment of which recorder and camera are the externalized abstraction. The equipment contained in the nervous systems of our two subjects is capable of
total recording
that is of recording and storing sound image smell tactile sensations and the affective reactions associated with this material. The total recording is activated by the playback of sound and image track by precise association with it, so that when we cut the film and sound record made on recorder and camera by our two subjects in together we are splicing the total record of S in with the total record of W. A flu virus is able to take over a healthy lung cell by giving the same signals as a healthy lung cell. The virus can give the same signals as a healthy lung cell because
it was a healthy lung cell at one time
. Spliced tape and film may or may not give rise to virus forms—
(Warning: experiments with spliced tape and film are dangerous
parenthetically)—In any
case a unit of sound track recorded and film taken by S spliced in with W is now able to give the same signals as a W unit because it
was that unit by the fact of being recorded on W’s sound and image track
and replacing the sound and image unit recorded and filmed by W. We may say that S can give the same signals as W
because he retroactively was W
when an S unit of sound and image is cut into W’s sound and image track replacing W with S. Of course the same replacements are occurring in the sound and image track of S.
If
S
is spliced into the total record of W and W is not spliced into the total record of
S
this unilateral splicing may result in W contracting an
S
virus to his considerable disadvantage
.

Many applications of the spliced-tape principle will suggest themselves to the alert reader. Suppose you are some creep in a grey flannel suit. You want to present a new concept of advertising to the Old Man . .
creative advertising:
“I mean advertisements that tell a story and create characters Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police smokes Players — (flashes his dirty rotten hunka tin). Agent K 9 uses a Bradly laser gun. Aurelius would have approved your favorite smoke. Advertisements should provide the same entertainment value as the content of a magazine. Call in the best writers to write the continuity the best painters and photographers on the layout.
Your
product
deserves
the best.” So before he goes up against the Old Man he records the Old Man’s voice and splices his own voice in explaining his new concept and puts it out on the office air-conditioning system. Or suppose you are a singer. Well splice your singing in with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals. Splice yourself in with
newscasters, prime ministers, presidents. Why stop there? Why stop anywhere? Everybody splice himself in with everybody else. Communication must be made total, only way to stop it.

Wittgenstein said: “No proposition can contain itself as an argument” = The only thing
not
prerecorded in a prerecorded universe is the prerecording itself which is to say
any
recording that contains a random factor.

It’s all done with tape recorders .. Guess you’ve all seen the Philipp’s Carry Corder a handy machine for street recording and playback you can carry it under your coat for recording important thing to remember is not just recording but
playback in the street
the Carry Corder looks like a transistor radio for street playback city folks don’t notice yesterday voices phantom car holes in time . . fun and games with this gadget . . God’s little toy Paul Bowles calls it . . (Maybe his last toy parenthetically he is gone away through unknown mornings leave a million tape recordings of his voice behind fading into the cold spring air pose a colorless question?) . . Why not give Carry Corder parties? Every guest arrives with his Carry Corder and cartridges of what he intends to say recording what other Carry Corders say to him it is the height of rudeness not to record when directly addressed by another Carry Corder no one can talk
directly
at a Carry Corder party if you want to say something you have to nick off into the little boy’s room and record it first while your genial host mixes the whole party around on a battery of tape recorders . . (“Not infrequently I stripped to the waist and pitched in with the men . . Yes boys that’s me there by the cement mixer.”) . . You can use the recordings
from the last party at the next party funeral meats serving up the wedding feast in the word of the Immortal Bard tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . And think what several hundred people with Carry Corders could do at a political rally . . Carry your Carry Corders down Fleet St. and Madison Avenue . . Subliminate the subliminators . . Carry Corders of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your prerecordings.

“It’s all done with recorders — The sound track evokes the image track — Recollect when i was on the Madison Avenue Lark — So i am giving out with a steady stream of interviews and i soon extracted the interview formulae — I recorded ten alternative answers to any question from the interview framework — And all i had to do was press buttons and out came the answers — I could of course do this from a distance by radio and retired to my Southern plantation strictly from Tin Pan Alley with recorded darkies singing out in the mimosa and Spanish moss projected on view screens — Later the whole operation was automatic and did not need my attention at all and i had answers for the next thousand years all set up — I extended the principle of absent control to other activities — I dictated the necessary orders, counterorders and alternative moves for any operation — I could write all the speeches and ultimatums of one government with answering speeches and ultimatums of another and of course put on the war recordings when the order came through channels — Just a technical sergeant know how things are done — Same method can be applied to sex — As a young man i discovered that i could anticipate the dialogue of any amorous encounter — So i recorded the dialogue and
made an image track to go with it — appropriate background music, lighting, odors the lot — Action — Camera — Compliments of Pavlov i could do quite as well with my recordings as with the so-called “real thing” (The image track can be dispensed with once the appropriate associations are established)—i built up a whorehouse of tapes and rented them out for two notes a night any script any face you want — Spot of bother with the Syndicate and that’s when i moved into the Madison Avenue Territory — Now carry it a bit further — The interviewer can of course apply the same method — That is record his questions and alternative questions — Both governments can record speeches, ultimatums, orders and counterorders — So record the whole war with its battles and sieges, victories and defeats, monumental fuck-ups and corny songs — Lovers exchange tapes — You understand nobody has to be there at all — So why ask questions and why answer? — Why give orders and why make speeches? — Why not leave your tape with her tape and dispense with sexual contact? — And then? — Since no one is there to listen, why keep running the tape? — Why not shut the whole machine off and go home? Exactly what i intend to do — Turn all my tapes over to Rewrite and go home — You can look any place — No good —
No bueno
— Departed have left no address — It’s all done with tape recorders. What we see is dictated by what we hear. You can verify this by a simple experiment. Turn off the sound track on your television set and use an arbitrary recorded sound track from your tape recorder: street sounds . . music . . conversation. . recordings of other TV programs, radio et cetera. You will find that the arbitrary
sound track seems to be appropriate . . people running for a bus in Piccadilly with a sound track of machine-gun fire looks like 1917 Petrograd. You can extend the experiment by using material that is more or less appropriate to the image track. For example take a political speech on TV shut off sound track and substitute another speech you have prerecorded . . hardly tell the difference . . isn’t much . . Record the sound track of one Danger Man spy program and substitute for another . . Try it on your friends and see if they can’t tell the difference.