Editing Brion Gysin (section)

===Morocco and the Beat Hotel===
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|image1=P1210673 Paris VI rue Git-le-Coeur n9 ancien Beat hotel rwk.jpg|caption1=[[Rue Gît-le-Cœur]], Paris; site of [[Beat Hotel]]
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In 1954 in Tangier, Gysin opened a restaurant called The 1001 Nights, with his friend [[Mohamed Hamri]], who was the cook.<ref>Shoemake, J., ''Tangier: A Literary Guide For Travellers'' (London: [[I.B. Tauris]], 2013), [https://books.google.com/books?id=S7iKDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PT140&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 140].</ref>{{rp|140}} Gysin hired the [[Master Musicians of Jajouka]] from the village of Jajouka to perform alongside entertainment that included acrobats, a dancing boy and fire eaters.<ref>Greene, Michelle, ''The Dream at the End of the World'', (New York, 1991), p. 123, p. 201</ref><ref>Geiger, John, ''Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted: the Life of Brion Gysin'', (New York, 2005), p. 103</ref> The musicians performed there for an international clientele that included William S. Burroughs. Gysin lost the business in 1958,<ref>In his essay "Cut-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success," Gysin explains that "on January 5, 1958, I lost the business over a signature given to a friendly American couple who 'wanted to help me out.' I was out with the shirt on my back." in ''A Williams Burroughs Reader'', ed. John Calder (London: Picador, 1982), p. 276.</ref> and the restaurant closed permanently. That same year, Gysin returned to Paris, taking lodgings in a flophouse located at 9 [[rue Gît-le-Cœur]] that would become famous as the [[Beat Hotel]]. Working on a drawing, he discovered a [[Dada]] technique by accident:

<blockquote>
William Burroughs and I first went into techniques of writing, together, back in room No. 15 of the Beat Hotel during the cold Paris spring of 1958... Burroughs was more intent on Scotch-taping his photos together into one great continuum on the wall, where scenes faded and slipped into one another, than occupied with editing the monster manuscript... ''[[Naked Lunch]]'' appeared and Burroughs disappeared. He kicked his habit with [[Apomorphine]] and flew off to London to see Dr Dent, who had first turned him on to the cure. While cutting a mount for a drawing in room No. 15, I sliced through a pile of newspapers with my [[Stanley knife|Stanley blade]] and thought of what I had said to Burroughs some six months earlier about the necessity for turning painters' techniques directly into writing. I picked up the raw words and began to piece together texts that later appeared as "First Cut-Ups" in  ''Minutes to Go'' (Two Cities, Paris 1960).<ref>Brion Gysin: ''Cut-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success'', published in ''Evergreen Review'' and much later in ''[Brion Gysin] Let the Mice In'', Something Else Press, West Clover 1973; also in the ''A Williams Burroughs Reader'', John Calder (editor), Picador, London 1982, p. 272.</ref></blockquote>

When Burroughs returned from London in September 1959, Gysin not only shared his discovery with his friend but the new techniques he had developed for it. Burroughs then put the techniques to use while completing ''[[Naked Lunch]]'' and the experiment dramatically changed the landscape of [[American literature]]. Gysin helped Burroughs with the editing of several of his novels including ''[[Interzone (book)|Interzone]]'', and wrote a script for a film version of ''Naked Lunch'', which was never produced. The pair collaborated on a large manuscript for [[Grove Press]] titled ''[[The Third Mind]]'', but it was determined that it would be impractical to publish it as originally envisioned. The book later published under that title incorporates little of this material. Interviewed for ''[[The Guardian]]'' in 1997, Burroughs explained that Gysin was "the only man that I've ever respected in my life. I've admired people, I've liked them, but he's the only man I've ever respected."<ref>''The Guardian'', 18 January 1997.</ref> In 1969, Gysin completed his finest novel, ''[[The Process (novel)|The Process]]'', a work judged by critic [[Robert Palmer (American writer)|Robert Palmer]] as "a classic of 20th century modernism".<ref>From [[Robert Palmer (American writer)|Palmer]]'s forward to the novel published by [[The Overlook Press]] in 1987.</ref>

A consummate innovator, Gysin altered the cut-up technique to produce what he called permutation poems in which a single phrase was repeated several times with the words rearranged in a different order with each reiteration. An example of this is "I don't dig work, man / Man, work I don't dig."  Many of these permutations were derived using a random sequence generator in an early computer program written by Ian Sommerville. Commissioned by the [[BBC]] in 1960 to produce material for broadcast, Gysin's results included "Pistol Poem", which was created by recording a gun firing at different distances and then splicing the sounds. That year, the piece was subsequently used as a theme for the Paris performance of [[Le Domaine Poetique]], a showcase for experimental works by people like Gysin, [[François Dufrêne]], [[Bernard Heidsieck]], and [[Henri Chopin]].

With Sommerville, he built the Dreamachine in 1961. Described as "the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed",<ref>Quoted on coverflap of ''Tuning in to the Multimedia Age''.</ref> the flicker device uses [[alpha waves]] in the 8–16 [[Hertz|Hz]] range to produce a change of consciousness in receptive viewers.
[[File:D. Woodard and W. S. Burroughs with Dreamachine, 1997.jpg|thumb|[[David Woodard]] and William S. Burroughs stand behind Dreamachine, circa 1997<ref>[[Raj Chandarlapaty|Chandarlapaty, R.]], "Woodard and Renewed Intellectual Possibilities", in ''Seeing the Beat Generation'' ([[Jefferson, North Carolina|Jefferson, NC]]: [[McFarland & Company]], 2019), [https://books.google.com/books?id=bzOXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT142&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 142–146].</ref>{{rp|142–146}}]]