tape recorder 1 i waited up for you until two o’clock last night
tape recorder 3 what we want to know is who put the sand in the spinach
the use of irrelevant response will be found effective in breaking obsessional association tracks all association tracks are obsessional get it out of your head and into the machines stop arguing stop complaining stop talking let the machines argue complain and talk 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 reactions by using the tape recorder than you could find out sitting twenty years in the lotus posture or wasting your time on the analytic couch
listen to your present time tapes and you will begin to see who you are and what you are doing here mix yesterday in with today and hear tomorrow your future rising out of old recordings you are a programmed tape recorder set to record and play back
who programs you
who decides what tapes play back in present time
who plays back your old humiliations and defeats holding you in prerecorded preset time
you don’t have to listen to that sound you can program your own playback you can decide what tapes you want played back in present time study your associational patterns and find out what cases in what pre-recordings for playback program those old tapes out it’s all done with tape recorders there are many things you can do with programmed tape recorders stage performances programmed at arbitrary intervals so each performance is unpredictable and unique allowing any degree of audience participation readings concerts programmed tape recorders can create a happening anywhere programmed tape recorders are of course essential to any party and no modern host would bore his guests with a straight present time party in a modern house every room is bugged recorders record and play back from hidden mikes and loudspeakers phantom voices mutter through corridors and rooms word visible as a haze tape recorders in the gardens answer each other like barking dogs sound track brings the studio on set you can change the look of a city by putting your own sound track into the streets here are some experiments filming a sound track operations on set find a neighborhood with slate roofs and red brick chimneys cool grey sound track fog horns distant train whistles frogs croaking music across the golf course cool blue recordings in a cobblestone market with blue shutters all the sad old showmen stand there in blue twilight a rustle of darkness and wires when several thousand people working with tape recorders and filming subsequent action select their best sound tracks and film footage and splice together you will see something interesting now consider the harm that can be done and has been done when recording and playback is expertly carried out in such a way that the people effected do not know what is happening thought feeling and apparent sensory impressions can be precisely manipulated and controlled riots and demonstrations to order for example they use old anti-semitic recordings against the chinese in indonesia run shop and get rich and always give the business to another tiddly wink pretty familiar suppose you want to bring down the area go in and record all the ugliest stupidest dialogue the most discordant sound track you can find and keep playing it back which will occasion more ugly stupid dialogue recorded and played back on and on always selecting the ugliest material possibilities are unlimited you want to start a riot put your machines in the street with riot recordings move fast enough you can stay just ahead of the riot surf boarding we call it no margin for error recollect poor old burns caught out in a persian market riot recordings hid under his jellaba and they skinned him alive raw peeled thing writhing there in the noon sun and we got the picture
do you get the picture
the techniques and experiments described here have been used and are being used by agencies official and non official without your awareness and very much to your disadvantage any number can play Wittgenstein said no proposition can contain itself as an argument the only thing not prerecorded on a prerecorded set is the prerecording itself that is any recording in which a random factor operates any street recording you can prerecord your future you can hear and see what you want to hear and see the experiments described here were explained and demonstrated to me by ian sommerville of london in this article i am writing as his ghost
look around you look at a control machine programmed to select the ugliest stupidest most vulgar and degraded sounds for recording and playback which provokes uglier stupider more vulgar and degraded sounds to be recorded and play back inexorable degradation look forward to dead end look forward to ugly vulgar playback tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow what are newspapers doing but selecting the ugliest sounds for playback by and large if its ugly its news and if that isn’t enough i quote from the editorial page of the new york daily news we can take care of china and if russia intervenes we can take care of that nation too the only good communist is a dead communist lets take care of slave driver castro next what are we waiting for let’s bomb china now and let’s stay armed to the teeth for centuries this ugly vulgar bray put out for mass playback you want to spread hysteria record and play back the most stupid and hysterical reactions
marijuana marijuana why that’s deadlier than cocaine
it will turn a man into a homicidal maniac he said steadily his eyes cold as he thought of the vampires who suck riches from the vile traffic in pot quite literally swollen with human blood he reflected grimly and his jaw set pushers should be pushed into the electric chair
strip the bastards naked
all right let’s see your arms
or in the mortal words of harry j anslinger the laws must reflect society’s disapproval of the addict
an uglier reflection than society’s disapproval would be hard to find the mean cold eyes of decent american women tight lips and no thank you from the shop keeper snarling cops pale nigger killing eyes reflecting society’s disapproval fucking queers i say shoot them if on the other hand you select calm sensible reactions for recordings and playback you will spread calmness and good sense
is this being done
obviously it is not only way to break the inexorable down spiral of ugly uglier ugliest recording and playback is with counterrecording and playback the first step is to isolate and cut association lines of the control machine carry a tape recorder with you and record all the ugliest stupidest things cut your ugly tapes in together speed up slow down play backwards inch the tape you will hear one ugly voice and see one ugly spirit is made of ugly old prerecordings the more you run the tapes through and cut them up the less power they will have cut the prerecordings into air into thin air
* Reference to the orgone accumulators of Doctor Wilhelm Reich — Doctor Reich claims that the basic charge of life is this blue orgone-like electrical charge — Orgones form a sphere around the earth and charge the human machine — He discovered that orgones pass readily through iron but are stopped and absorbed by organic matter — So he constructed metal-lined cubicles with layers of organic material behind the metal — Subjects sit in the cubicles lined with iron and accumulate orgones according to the law of increased returns on which life functions — The orgones produce a prickling sensation frequently associated with erotic stimulation and spontaneous orgasm — Reich insists that orgasm is an electrical discharge — He has attached electrodes to the appropriate connections and charted the orgasm — In consequence of these experiments he was of course expelled from various countries before he took refuge in America and died in a federal penitentiary for suggesting the orgone accumulator be used in treating cancer — It has occurred to this investigator that orgone energy can be concentrated to disperse the miasma of idiotic prurience and anxiety that blocks any scientific investigation of sexual phenomenon — Preliminary experiments indicate that certain paintings — like Brion Gysin’s — when projected on a subject produced some of the effects observed in orgone accumulators —
* The most successful method of sense withdrawal is the immersion tank where the subject floats in water at blood temperature, sound and light wit
hdrawn — Loss of body outline, awareness and location of the limbs occurs quickly, giving rise to panic in many American subjects — Subjects frequently report feeling that another body is floating half-in and half-out of the body in the first part — Experiments in sense withdrawal using the immersion tanks have been performed by Doctor Lily in Florida — There is another experimental station in Oklahoma — So after fifteen minutes in the tank these Marines scream they are losing outlines and have to be removed — I say put two marines in the tank and see who comes out — Science — Pure science — So put a marine and his girl friend in the tank and see who or what emerges —
The Ticket That Exploded (Burroughs, William S.) Page 19