by Barry Miles
Brion wanted to make one last great painting, an enormous calligraphic work in gold, called Calligraffiti of Fire, which stretched across ten huge canvases in the style of a Japanese makemono, or folding book. To do this he needed a studio, something he had never had. However, in stepped a benefactor, who agreed to advance him $4,000 a month toward the ownership of the painting. A gallery owner offered to rent him a studio on rue Quincampoix on the other side of Brion’s block, and in July 1985 he started work. It took him six weeks to complete. He considered Calligraffiti of Fire a triumph and told Burroughs it was “THE picture of my lifetime.”28 Brion’s benefactor went by the name of James Kennedy, a loud, excitable Irish wheeler-dealer who claimed to be the head of Sinn Fein and also went by the name of Jim McCann. McCann was just as mysterious as Brion about his famous friends and contacts. He left puzzling messages, the monthly advance arrived irregularly and in a variety of currencies, and he once impressed Brion by picking up the telephone and apparently ordering some assault helicopters, though this may have been a code name for something very different. (In 1988 he was busted in Ibiza with Howard Marks, the very big-time Welsh cannabis dealer. The Times headline ran, “IRA Man Arrested in Spain.”)29 Brion’s friend Terry Wilson described him as a “trickster savant” and “funny.”30 Wherever the money came from, McCann/Kennedy saved Brion’s life financially and took only the painting that he had commissioned and paid for in exchange.
Burroughs always said that Brion showed him how to live, how to be himself in the world; how to be honest and yet protect yourself; how to identify the social forces that were in operation against you: greed, jealousy, puritanism, the forces of religion and conservatism; and how to recognize the influence of the magical world: curses, autosuggestions, possession, and misdirections. Brion exerted more influence on him than anyone else in his life, and provided one of the deepest friendships. Bill’s ideas came from Brion. Brion was always enormously proud of his role in Burroughs’s life: cut-ups, the magical universe, the Ugly Spirit, scrapbook layouts, a style of painting (though he did not live to see that), Scientology. Not all of it was good—in fact, Paul Bowles often said that anyone who encountered Brion had their career set back by ten years—but Burroughs made a considerable amount of money out of painting, which countered any financial setback caused by the Gysin-inspired experimental work. “I could never have competed with him. But now I’ve made more money that he did in his whole life. It’s pulled me out of a financial hole. I can buy flintlock pistols.”31 Burroughs always insisted that “the one who taught me more than anyone else was Brion Gysin.”32 Burroughs said that Brion always claimed that he was Burroughs’s “conscience,” and Bill agreed with him. Years later, Burroughs continued to insist on the importance of his friendship with Gysin. “Meeting Brion Gysin was one of the most significant events of my life. He taught me everything I know about painting, he brought the cut-up method to writing, he introduced me to Moroccan music and the Pipes of Pan—I’d say he was the most important single influence. Brion had integrity and complexity and was the only man I’ve ever respected.”33
Burroughs’s advocates have often blamed Brion for Bill’s misogyny, and it is true that Gysin often raged against women, particularly his mother, whom many people, including Felicity Mason, felt he treated despicably. But Brion always told people what they wanted to hear, and at least some of his antiwomen remarks were for Bill’s benefit. He was the perfect restaurateur—he knew which subjects would please his clientele—and extended that into his personal life. People in the art world found him knowledgeable about twentieth-century art movements and, more importantly, the possessor of lots of juicy gossip about artists and dealers. When discussing European history, he made intrigue at the court of Catherine de’ Medici sound like hot gossip. When on the Paris “princess circuit” he always knew who was sleeping with whom. Some of Burroughs’s conversational style comes from this. In discussing the Virgin Birth with Allen Ginsberg, Bill asserted that the secret was artificial insemination. When asked who would have performed it, he replied, “Oh John, of course, he was a vet.”34 That was pure Brion.
Brion could discourse at length on Arab music, religion, and culture; he made occult and magical practices sound even more mysterious and secret than they probably needed to be because it was more fun that way; having gone to Downside, the Catholic Eton, he knew all the gay scandals around the church. And when he was around men who disliked women, he was the arch-misogynist. As he said, there was no point whatsoever in telling Burroughs about his efforts to get a black woman elected as a union boss in the East Coast Shipyard in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1942, where he worked for eighteen months as a welder. He was then a member of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party and ran her election campaign. Instead he told Bill about his long friendship with Eileen Garrett, whom he regarded as having genuine magical powers.
Despite his frequent diatribes against women, Brion had a number of women friends whom he would call up and dine with, something Burroughs never did. Bill always surrounded himself with an all-male friendship circle and often said that he would be happy never to see a woman again. When Bill and Brion got together properly in 1958, Brion had been staying with Princess Martha Ruspoli but had outstayed his welcome. She was only one of the many society women whom he saw on a regular basis. His so-called sister, Felicity Mason, was one of his closest friends, and they saw each other whenever she was in Paris or Tangier. If anything it was Burroughs, and his friends Ian Sommerville and Mikey Portman, who encouraged Brion’s misogyny; they all encouraged each other. It was with Ian and Mikey that Burroughs evolved the bizarre idea that women came from another galaxy, an idea that later transmogrified into his concept that women were “the Other Half” who were preventing humans from leaving the planet. It was Burroughs who wrote, “I think love is a con put down by the female sex,”35 and, quoting Conrad, “Women are a perfect curse,” which he followed with, “I think they were a basic mistake, and the whole dualistic universe evolved from this error. Women are no longer essential to reproduction.”36 When Sommerville was apart from Burroughs he had a number of girlfriends, including Panna Grady in London and various other women in Paris and Tangier right up until his death. Burroughs had a few one-night stands, but the last time he had sex with a woman appears to be in 1963, just as the Beat Hotel was closing, which is also when he propositioned Felicity Mason.
With the onset of winter, Brion’s health took a turn for the worse, and on December 9, 1985, he drew up a will leaving his literary estate to Burroughs, his pictures to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and his music rights to Steve Lacy. He also made two cash bequests to close friends Udo Breger and Terry Wilson.
Radio Bremen, in Germany, had organized a three-day celebration of the work of John Giorno and his Giorno Poetry Systems for May 1986. John had agreed to the festival only if he was not required to ask Burroughs to appear, as he knew that Bill no longer liked to travel. In April, he was talking on the phone with Bill and told him how pleased he was to be going to Bremen because it would give him a chance to visit Brion, who was now very sick. He described the festival as “a gift from the Gods.” Bill did not reply. “William, do you want to be invited?” he asked. “I didn’t ask you because you endlessly complain about travelling.” Bill said, “Well, John, I wouldn’t mind going, if it got me to see Brion.”37
Bill and John gave extremely successful readings to overflow crowds in both Bremen and Berlin before continuing on to Paris to see Brion. They spent four days at the Hôtel du Séjour, at 36 rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare, one block from 135 rue Saint-Martin where Brion lived directly across the street from the Beaubourg. Brion’s emphysema was now so bad that he could scarcely walk the half block around the corner to his studio anymore, but he had completed his masterwork. He had an oxygen tank and wore oxygen tubes up his nostrils most of the time. Even the smallest effort sent him gasping for them. He was weak and in great pain from a tumor in his side, not yet diagnosed but
that turned out, as expected, to be cancer. Brion was terrified of dying and wept before them, tears coursing down his translucent parchment cheeks. He had some suicide pills but admitted that he did not have the courage to take them. Bill was horrified to see his old friend in such a terrible state and became deeply depressed. Every day Brion told them, “I won’t be around much longer.”
Brion was surrounded by his devoted support group: David Wells, his assistant who had made the cat collages; Jean-Emil Gaubier, his day nurse; the art expert and curator Rosine Buhler; Terry Wilson visiting from London; and Udo Breger, who had come from Basel to help in any way he could. Brion’s Moroccan friends Yaya and Fafa—François de Palaminy, Brion’s last boyfriend—were there much of the time, as were many other old friends. Some of Brion’s old feistiness remained; he was very rude to John Giorno. As usual with Brion there was much court intrigue; rumors that McCann/Kennedy was controlling Brion in some mysterious way divided the camp into warring factions.
Bill and James returned to Kansas, taking with them the brush and ink drawings that Brion had done to illustrate The Cat Inside. In June Bill and James went to Naropa for his annual stint but Bill caught a bad cold and spent many days in bed. As James put it, “The depression was thick enough to cover the floor, and it was catching.”38 In July Brion was diagnosed with lung cancer and was told he only had a matter of days to live. He contacted his friends, asking them to pay a last visit. John Giorno flew out and saw him. Burroughs booked a ticket for a few days’ time; to fly immediately would have been much more expensive. He left it too late. On the morning of July 13, 1986, Jean-Emil found Brion dead in bed; he had had a heart attack while reaching for the telephone.
Burroughs did not attend the cremation in Paris on July 22, or the scattering of Brion’s ashes at the Pillars of Hercules outside Tangier on January 19, 1987, Brion’s birthday. He remained in a bleak depression for several months until September, when the “unbreathable fog,” as Grauerholz called it, began to lift. Shortly after Brion’s death, Burroughs wrote:
Brion Gysin died of a heart attack on Sunday morning, July 13, 1986. He was the only man I have ever respected. I have admired many others, esteemed and valued others, but respected only him. His presence was regal without a trace of pretension. He was at all times impeccable.39
Brion’s death preoccupied Burroughs, and inevitably it made its way into his writing. Burroughs had a recurring dream, which he called the Land of the Dead dream: “Everyone I see is dead. The only thing that bothers me about the Land of the Dead dream is that I can never get any breakfast. That’s typical of the Land of the Dead.”40 Toward the end of The Western Lands Burroughs visits the Land of the Dead and there is an encounter with Ian Sommerville at Le Grand Hotel des Morts. Bill asks him, “Is Brion here?” Ian replies, “No, he’s not coming.”41 In an earlier reference to Hassan-i-Sabbah, Burroughs identifies the Old Man of the Mountains with Brion: “Oh, yes, I knew him personally, but I never knew him at all. He was a man with many faces and many characters. Literally, he changed unrecognizably from one day to the next. At times his face was possessed by a dazzling radiance of pure spirit. At other times the harsh gray lineaments of fear and despair gave notice of defeat on some battleground of the spirit.”42
Burroughs told writer Legs McNeil, “Some of my dreams are so real—they are realer than my so-called waking life. Much realer. They have no connection with my waking life at all. The idea of waking up here never occurs to me.”43 Burroughs now concentrated his attention upon finishing The Western Lands. And though much of the book features a roll call of people from Burroughs’s own past—Kiki, Ian, Marker, Mikey, his mother, his snake expert friend Dean Ripa, and more obscure acquaintances like Nicholas Guppy, often under their own names—it is worth remembering what Burroughs told an interviewer a decade before: “It is always a mistake for the reader to believe that the first person character is the writer talking. As soon as you put someone in your book, he becomes a character. You become separate from him. I don’t have a particular voice that is mine. I have any number of voices.”44
He described The Western Lands to James Fox: “Chauceresque pilgrims—adolescents almost to a man—travel through the Land of the Dead, the frontier beyond time, learning how to deal with space conditions. […] I compare this to the transition from water to land of the various transitional species.” He said that astronauts hadn’t really gone into space because they went into space in an Aqualung, and said that there had to be a link: the creatures had to have an air-breathing potential before they made the transition. If not it would have been suicide. “I see that dreams are the lifeline to our possible biological and spiritual destiny. Dreams sometimes approximate space conditions. That’s what The Western Lands is about.”45 It is a book about “the possibility of hybridization, the crossing of man and animals.”46
Burroughs, in the book, creates Margaras Unlimited, an independent secret service, loyal to no country, with its own agenda: to provide aid and support for anything that favors or enhances space programs, space exploration, simulation of space conditions, exploration of inner space, or expanding awareness. It is also the job of Margaras to extirpate anything going in the other direction. “The espionage world now has a new frontier.”47
Bill’s dreams were full of animals, hybrids, and animals that no longer exist or never did exist. It was good material. “The theme I’m developing now is the zoological garden of extinct species, a zoo that Captain Mission finds in Madagascar with all the extinct species.”48 The book fell into place. As is usual with Burroughs’s work, it is composed of a series of events and tableaux often with no apparent connection. The best definition of this essentially high modernist structure may be found in T. S. Eliot’s 1930 introduction to his translation of Anabasis, one of Burroughs’s favorite books and one that exercised a great influence upon him: “any obscurity of the poem, on first readings, is due to the suppression of ‘links in the chain,’ of explanatory and connecting matter, and not to incoherence. […] The justification of such abbreviation of method is that the sequence of images coincides and concentrates into one intense impression of barbaric civilisation.”49 Burroughs used this “permission” throughout his writing life. “Any writer who hopes to approximate what actually occurs in the mind and body of his characters cannot confine himself to such an arbitrary structure as logical sequence. Joyce was accused of being unintelligible and he was presenting only one level of cerebral events: conscious sub-vocal speech. I think it is possible to create multilevel events and characters that a reader could comprehend with his entire organic being.”50
The Place of Dead Roads closes with the death of William Seward Hall. In The Western Lands we find out who killed him: “Joe the Dead lowered the rifle… Behind him, Kim Carsons and Mike Chase lay dead in the dust of the Boulder Cemetery. The date was September 17, 1899.” The Western Lands attempts to rectify the situation: “So William Seward Hall sets out to write his way out of death.”51 Kim Carsons is sent by the District Supervisor to find the Western Lands and find out where the Egyptians went wrong with mummies and the need to preserve the physical body. The answer turns out to be the final expression of Burroughs’s misogyny: that women have halted evolution and are preventing humankind from mutating into a form where space conditions would not be inimical. The Egyptians, it seems, “had not solved the equation imposed by a parasitic female Other Half who needs a physical body to exist, being parasitic to other bodies. So to maintain the Other Half in the style to which she has for a million years been accustomed, they turn to the reprehensible and ill-advised expedient of vampirism.
“If on the other hand, the Western Lands are reached by the contact of two males, the myth of duality is exploded and the initiates can realize their natural state. The Western Lands is the natural, uncorrupted state of all male humans. We have been seduced from our biologic and spiritual destiny by the Sex Enemy.”52 This is, of course, the exact opposite of the historical notion that it is women w
ho have always been the repository of magical knowledge and secrets, they were the ones at one with the natural universe and with their emotions, whereas men developed the rigid authoritarian structures of the traditional family, church, state, and the military. It is important to remember that this is a novel, and that at other times Burroughs has subscribed to Wilhelm Reich’s views about character armor and the male role in creating the authoritarian, patriarchal world. Joe the Dead sets out to expose the female plot against humanity: “Joe is tracking down the Venusian agents of a conspiracy with very definite M.O. and objectives. It is antimagical, authoritarian, dogmatic, the deadly enemy of those who are committed to the magical universe, spontaneous, unpredictable, alive. The universe they are imposing is controlled, predictable, dead.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the theme, Burroughs’s poor mother gets dragged into it, with a further reiteration of the recurring dream Burroughs had of her that has appeared in a number of his books. Joe goes to Bill’s old house at Pershing Avenue: “His mother is there and a long reptilian neck rises up out of him, curls over his mother’s head and starts eating her from her back with great, ravenous bites, some evil predatory reptile from an ancient tar pit. His mother rushes in from the bedroom screaming, ‘I had a terrible dream! I dreamed you were eating my back!’ ”53 In the book he also recalls the last time he saw her, “Outside a Palm Beach bungalow waiting for a taxi to the airport. My mother’s kind unhappy face, last time I ever saw her. Really a blessing. She had been ill for a long time. My father’s dead face in the crematorium. Too late. Over from Cobblestone Gardens.”54 The lines were culled from Cobble Stone Gardens, a small-press book dedicated to his parents, first published in 1976. Bill’s dream of his mother has provoked a certain amount of amateur Freudian analysis and is clearly a subject for further investigation.
