100 YEARS OF WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS ! ! !

100 years ago today, William S. Burroughs was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Times have changed but his ideas and influence continue to shape our world. In a talk last weekend, James Grauerholz described William's message as "having a verrry long fuse". As we experience government espionage, environmental destruction, the fight for media control, a very real Nova Mob and those who OCCUPY the streets in protest, Burroughs' work gives myriad insight. So let's celebrate the man and his legacy by reading/viewing/listening to his works. Here's a few to get started. Happy birthday, William!

Photo of William as in infant in St.Louis, 1914, Courtesy of the Estate of William S. Burroughs

What do I have to say?
You have been lied to, exploited, cut off from your birthright.
"Sons of shame and sorrow,
will you cheer tomorrow?
Sons of toil and danger,
--and bow down to the Alien Grays? 
(who don't know emotion, we'll help them to know it.)
Can we ever look each other in the face?
I am willing.  Are you?
Give me the answer to a question, I tell what the question was.
Nobody but a fool wants to know what the secret of the universe is.  
Or thinks that he could understand it
One thing: It is not out there, dead, to be discovered--but out there alive, to be created.
  ...
So many minds I can look into.  Sample, feel, experience.
I want to know the all, from conception to death.  The final Comedie Humaine.
"Counsellors and all that shit."
"You crazy or something, walk around alone?"
"It ain't bothering you is it?"
...

William S. Burroughs
Journal Entry, May 26, 1997
Last Words, Grove Press 2000

  "I am attempting to create a new mythology for the space age.  I feel that old mythologies are definitely broken down and not adequate at the present time.  In this mythology, I have Nova conspiracies, Nova police, Nova criminals.  I do definitely have heroes and villains with respect to overall intentions with regard to this planet."
-WSB in a 1964 interview

'All God's Children Got Time' & 'All God's Children Got Space', pages from the Green Scrapbook, 1971-73, © Estate of William S. Burroughs

From unpublished manuscript, circa 1995. © Estate of William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs, Radiant Cat, Ink & Spray Paint on Paper, 1992

"I tell you nothing could get through that blockade. . . nothing
 . . . but here it is . . . the White Cat."
A radiant cat glowing with a pitiless white light, 
light on secret files and ops, 
light on directives and memos, light everywhere.  
No corner of darkness left.  
Power shrivels and turns to dust in the light.
excerpt from The Western Lands, Viking Penguin 1987

Willam S. Burroughs, Ghost Escape, Paint and Shotgun Blasts on Plywood, 1982
Image Copyright Estate of William S. Burroughs

     He was drifting throughs space, wafted by currents of glowing gases -- Myriads of floating forms passed in front of him some familiar and others alien -- For a moment he was back in the brown canals of Mars in the grip of a giant clam, which takes a week to satisfy its consuming sex habit and spits out its unfortunate victim covered with its discharge like a gelatinous pearl on the dry red sands --
     
     Thousands of voices muttered out of the darkness, twittering creatures pulling and tugging at him and dancing their way leaping from soaring black heights into deep blue chasms trailing the neon ghost writing of Saturn through vast wells of empty space -- From an enormous distance he heard the golden hunting horns of the Aeons and he was free of a body traveling in the echoing shell of sound as herds of mystic animals galloped through dripping primeval forests, pursued by the silver hunters in chariots of bone and vine --

from The Ticket That Exploded, new edition coming in March from Grove Press