William Burroughs

I read, I teach New Media. I read books, I read on my iPad. Is it the object or is it the story? Burroughs taught me that I can take a text and snip it, cut it and reshape it. Gyotat taught me that text is sound, it vibrates, it shimmers, moves around the page and confounds, obfuscates, illuminates; en bref, it moves.

I have always thought that a book was an object, I played with a nephew building houses with my collection of Stephen King hardcovers in the hope that he would realize that books were things to be played with and explored and seen from different angles. Not just the words on the page, after all they are a result of the process, not the process itself.

Proust taught me that memory lingers, stains our bedsheets with contrivance and conspiracy. He also taught me that it is important to remember… nothing in particular and everything specific. Joyce taught me that looking at an object is a doorway to a long lost universe. Acker taught me that I need to shout, be confident (despite my insecurity), and live with the pirates of the Articles.

Intertexuality, Intertext, text, ex, and so on.

“In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained one of the mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was flesh we are told. In the beginning of what exactly was this beginning word? In the beginning of WRITTEN history. It is generally assumed that spoken word came before the written word. I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came after the written word. In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was flesh … human flesh … In the beginning of WRITING.”

– Burroughs, William S., Electronic Revolution, Expanded Media Editions, 4th edition 1986, Bonn, Germany

Die electronische Revolution, William S. Burroughs

And still I wonder what exactly a “thing” is.