Typhotography (Letra-to): Influenced from The Cut-Ups of William Burroughs

All writing is in fact cut-ups – William S Burroughs (1914-1997)

I first met William Burroughs in a book, not his novel or his poems or his essays but a book on special effects about the making of the movie "Naked Lunch", the 1991 film adaptation of his novel with the same title, directed by David Cronenberg and starred and lead by Peter Weller.

The book is not about the postmodernist author but about props, images and photographs of giant bug creature called "Mugwump" and how special make-up and effects was done in a pre-production of a film. But images of the creature that appeared on the film was from Burroughs imagination or his "hallucinogenic images" being interpreted by the film's special effects and visual artist Chris Walas. That was all of the images that I associated with William Burroughs or of the film "Naked Lunch".

In multimedia world, "old-fashioned" forms refer to (or limited) words on a page, a photographs or painting on a canvas or a music from an instrument - a single media and one form of content (image or text) or audio. Multimedia as being defined is the combination of different content forms: text, audio, animation, video and the word "interactivity".

Meeting again William Burroughs, the poet, novelist, painter and word performer in the field of multimedia is like discovering how Burroughs discovered and experimented with words. And it gives a new meaning and dimension to the words by Burroughs and to Burroughs as a writer and multimedia artist. It was Burroughs who experimented with words and forms, from linear to non-linear, redefining the traditional beginning, middle and end format of presenting words and its story... if there is.

William Burroughs: A Man Who Has Nothing to Do and yet Affected Popular Culture As Well as Literature.

"He has nothing to do", was his reply when asked why he writes. He started to write when he was 35 years old - to put down in a more or less journalistic style, something about his experiences with addiction and addicts. For Burroughs, love can result to addiction and not only limited to drugs and alcohol. There can also be an addiction to politics, family or religion, or to an activity like sports. His friends said that drug taking is somehow a good companion for his writings: "it helps him to consume huge dose of images."

"He has nothing to do", he says. But look at his works: more than 18 novels, 7 short story collections, 4 essay collections, including 6 non-fiction works. Writes and appeared in TV and movie. Collaborated on projects and recordings with different musical performers. Appeared in the cover of Beatles' "Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band" and influence and inspired several 60's and 70's music groups and bands, naming their groups from his literary works and novels. Band names such as: Steely Dan, The Mugwumps, Soft Machine, Dead Fingers Talk and Nova Express to name a few was inspired by his novels. A man with many interest and so varied and yet he has nothing to do.

He discovered the cut-up in 1959 in Paris through his artist friend Brion Gysin, a painter.The cut-up is a mechanical method of juxtaposition in which Burroughs literally cuts up passages of prose by himself and other writers and then paste them back together at random. Cut-up is a mixed media experiment (combining images from TV, movies, visual montage of text and images, and actual footage of events), like technique used by mixed media visual artist.

The irony of it all, where the word "multimedia" is concerned, Burroughs didn't use computers but an old-fashioned scissors to make a new content and form from an existing materials. Man, like William Burroughs, and multimedia technology (modern or not) and man's own imagination help add a new dimension to text and words and redefining its meaning. Words emerge as a new form of content of art.

Interactivity Between the Artist and The Medium

For Burroughs, cut-ups can composed clear classical prose, cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation and shifts, images to sound sight to sound to kinesthetic. 

Burroughs also stated that best artworks are sometimes by accidents.

As in Burroughs own words:

“Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices. Cut- ups often come through as code messages with special meaning for the cutter. Cut Rimbaud's words and you are assured of good poetry at least if not personal appearance”.

Words and Image Interaction: From Burroughs to Lewis

From "Reading Contemporary Picturebooks’ by David Lewis, he explores how words and pictures interact with each other. The words interact with images in the form of symmetry, enhancement, counterpoint and contradiction.  

SYMMETRY, according to Lewis, is when words and image come as close as possible to conveying the same information or tell the same story. ENHANCEMENT is words and image work together to enhance the emotional message of the picture with words. When images and text, according to the author, “provide different kinds of information that the reader must make some effort to reconcile and intergrate”, then we can call that as COUNTERPOINT. And lastly, CONTRADICTION in text-image relationship occurs when the words and pictures “seem to be saying entirely different things”.

I tried to integrate what Burroughs and Lewis treatment on words and image, mixing them both (and also the text and image) and called mine as TYPHOTOGRAPHY (or Letra-to in Filipino) - playing with words and images. Well, my words may not be poetic and words and images may not interacts with each other, but I might be going in that direction.

Example of my works, more on symmetry and enhancement (note: some words are in Filipino):

"Sariwang hangin ba? Humingi ka sa dahon": Fresh air? Ask from the leaves 

"Kakambal ng Kalikasan ang Tao": Nature and Man are Twins

"Sarap Kayang Kumain sa Dahon ng Saging": Eating is more Appetizing when food is served on a banana leaf 

"Padaususan: Gawing Palaruan ang Kalikasan"- Slides: Convert Nature as Playground

Sources and links:

William Burroughs Sample Works:

One example of how Burroughs employ the cut-up technique is “Last Words of Hassan Sabbah”

Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGJ7Z6AEzpY

And an Audio file of the same works:

http://editkid.com/play/William-S-Burroughs=Last-Words-Of-Hassan-Sabbah-excerpt.mp3

For the documentary on his Cut-up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NU3dIdqIBw&feature=player_embedded

More work on Cut-Up film

Towers Open Fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxUWfe_PJY

Graphic Dimensions:
https://graphicdimensions.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/exploring-text-image-relationship/

Remembering REINA

The year was 2004.

I prepared early, getting all my things on my backpack, making sure that all I need were there. My friend reminded me that the sacks of relief goods were to be loaded at 2 o’clock in the morning, and I have to catch it on my camera. I have to document the rescue and relief operation for REINA, from start to finish. I checked again my camera equipment before going to bed.  

It was more like a nightmare. The towns of Real, Infanta, and Nakar (REINA), Quezon province almost got wipe out because of the flashflood that almost buried the three communities. Together with floodwater, uprooted tree trunks, cut logs and mud ran down from the eroded slopes of the Sierra Madre mountains during the November monsoon. The tree trunks and logs accumulated through the waterways, forming a wall like dam, blocking the flow of water from the major tributaries of Sierra Madre mountains. Because of the continued heavy rains for days brought by Typhoon Winnie, accumulated rainfall builds up, it broke the wall of logs and overflowed REINA area with millions of cubic meter of floodwater.

The day after, REINA area was completely devastated and isolated from the outside world. Rescue efforts succeeded only after 2 or 3 days, from rescue volunteers from Quezon, from foot soldiers that braved to cross chest-deep mud, trekking more than 8 hours, escaping more than 10 landslide areas as dangers await from rolling rocks and cascading mud from the mountains. But rescue efforts was not enough, the numbers of the army responders were not even enough for 300 or more victims buried in mud, and not even enough for more than 70,000 combined population of the three towns that was widely affected by the calamity. Without food and basic needs for three more days, more lives will perish. For a great scale of disaster like that, national and local emergency operations were badly needed.

REINA, being a part of Quezon, the rescue and relief operations must come first from our province. Initial relief operation attempts to penetrate the area by land were rejected and prevented because roads were blocked brought by numerous landslides. Since travelling by land was impassable and impossible, sailing by the sea was the main option. Sailing by Ro-Ro (Roll-On Roll-Off) ship was the best option to bring six 6X6 trucks of relief goods for the three towns. It was more than a week or so, after the flashflood when the first relief operation from Quezon Province sailed its way to Real, Quezon.

Far ashore, and sail we go. As we sailed, the open sea made the mountainous Sierra Madre range on our west side smaller. With the salt water of Lamon Bay and early sun-gold horizon on our right, our ship as man-made technology was just a tiny pebble compared to the mountain, and a sand compared to the sea. Inside the ship, we were about close to 40 (more or less), comprising of multi-sectoral groups – LGUs, NGOs, POs and some representatives from Media, our team was headed by the Provincial Government, the first and major relief operation coming from the province of Quezon.

The distance from Atimonan to Real, Quezon was more than 80 kilometers (I have checked it in Google map, recently).  We were almost travelling for more than three hours. When I checked on the captain’s deck, we were about 10 kilometers before the Ungos port of Real, our destination. I was on the top deck when our ship was welcomed by scattered logs - long and large, floating and pushed by tides and wind, almost bumping our vessel. And more logs were floating as we approached near the shore. Looking at the more calming tide, all of us noticed how the color of the sea changed, from crystal clear blue sea to dirty and murky light brown, and then to almost muddy brown water. We’re almost there. The sea travel took us more than 5 hours.

From the view of the approaching land, we could see the almost white coastline, serving as a dividing line between the muddy salt water and muddy seashore brought by flashflood and landslides. Little by little, as our vessel sailed ashore, the sight of white shoreline became clearer – there were wall of logs as if arranged in place, as if long kilometers stretch of breakwater to prevent rising tide coming from the sea. More nearer, the white turned out to be the reflection of light from the thousands of debarked logs, exposing its shiny circular trunks. The white pile of logs almost stretching the long coastline of Real town, its height was almost triple the height of human. Juxtaposed logs, vertically and horizontally criss-crossing on top of each other, like a handfuls of matchsticks clumsy constructed to create a long wall. It barricaded the shore, marking the boundary of the land - separating the community from the sea.

From just a stone-throw distance, we could see that the pier was swarming with people, clothed in camouflage military uniforms mixing with different colors of local dress. The dresses were little colors, just like colored dots, compared to brown color of the destroyed vast land.We heard the anchor weighted down the water, the metal sound conducting its way to where we stand, signaling us to prepare. Then a faint sound of slightly shaken ship jolted us a little, as the lower bow of the vessel touched the edge of the dock. From the deck, we rushed down to the cargo bay, waiting for the ramp to be lowered.

As our ship steadily docked and slowly lowered its ramp, a much closer image of the port was revealing its view: the port was surrounded by soldiers in full-battle-gears; the people in colored dress were waiting in line, with their personal belongings, with much that they can carry. Up in the air, helicopters were hovering, landing and taking off.  More soldiers and rescue personnel alighting, air relief packages being released and secured in one place. As we waited for the ramp to be secured to the platform, the feeling was like - we were soldiers from the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, anticipating and preparing to land in the Omaha beach (but we were not waiting for enemy’s bullets to hit us). But yes, there were soldiers, not more than a foe but more than a friend, waiting for our landing. The Philippine Army was there to maintain order and secure what was left in the community. They were the busiest in movements as the whirling sound created by friendly helicopters was almost deafening the conversation between the Military Commander and the heads of our contingent, the first that stepped on the almost battle ground scenario.

And we stepped on the pier, and our soles kissed the ground. We had noticed the concrete platform was awash with mud. Everything concrete was awash with mud, even the metal and wood structures. The height of mud-flood could be measured from the line marked on the wall of the concrete building on the pier. The soldier’s boots were brown and muddy, so were the slippers and feet of the evacuees. The hand signal cleared the thick air between the land and the sea as it waved for the trucks of relief goods to enter the docks. And one by one, the six  6X6 trucks roll- off from the ship.

The evacuees, holding closer their family members, some were too young and being carried by their mothers, some were children, clinging closer to their parents, started to broke the line. After the last truck moved out from the ramp, people rushed and ran to the ship with their families and personal belongings in tow.

I remembered Vietnam war movies. I remembered other war movies where residents were escaping out from the war torn place. I started to focus my SLR camera, the shutter was not working, its battery had run out. I switched to my video camera and shot some footages around. Then I stopped and lowered my camera and just watched.

From the shore, there were human remains lying and being washed ashore, the in and out waves repeatedly kissing lightly and giving their final respect to the sons and daughters of the land. Soldiers were covering the lifeless bodies with lime powder, preserving the onced earthly mortals, preventing infectious diseases to spread and reducing the bad smell. I smelled nothing, maybe the sea breeze spread and washed the decaying odors away. Maybe, the sights and sounds of devastations immune my sense of smell - but not how I feel. I decided not to record those sad moments in my camera. My memory will be enough to make it remain.

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jebel