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Adventures in cut ups

I’ve long been fascinated by techniques for finding inspiration through randomness, or at least pseudo random. In this excerpt from an old doco on Burroughs he describes a really simple technique for kick starting a narrative.

With too much time on my hands on a lonely Friday night, I played around with cutting pages down the middle and re-arranging them and sort of filling in the gaps to make it slightly more sensical. Drawing upon two trashy books that infiltrated my flat and a copy of the Financial Times (sadly paid for) I came up with the following in not many minutes:

The skinny colonel of sector 7 with his blue jeans and crossword ability picked out and examined mutiny, such was the situation. Military over spending and a drumhead court martial ahead, he really had nothing, he mused. No slack safety line of escape. He pauses, blows away some smoke and listens for a moment as dub music slyly enters the room.

Snakes are about the igloo in which the wounded lie and tour their most intimate regions in this obscene terrestrial variation. Upon the postcard nearby he makes decisions that rise up from the pigheaded award of the new contract to Airbus or the and the good folks of peace and plenty Industries. Over the gazes given to Boeing after the paper exposed how the industry has suffered due to the top layer of cheap eyes hidden by seemingly attractive eyelashes.

Upstairs, Richard's drawings punctuate life and his friend. For city stations and tabloids went licking the sand of patience to know of the foam advancing and to know and assume it's gulps of tastefulness. Set around a Honolulu bar that, witness the furore. I guess it's not the returned gaze of Ma who was once asked if not the power of her son, the light of Manila would fade.

Meanwhile, the lorry bumps and changed direction amid burned out ruins that grin up at the transition from thunder, still smoking from the electro farce of the Columbian elections. Orders, orders; he must have orders. Protests are considered but they were in a hurry god dammit! They find themselves putting up with blows and a frogmarch down to Alexander Platz. Police HQ, they knew they were set for immediate execution. They had but several more moments to squeeze the southern air into their lungs and marvel on the cinematic subject of their lives. They were so superbly shot as the life an moving pictures drained out.

OK, so not a classic but it was fun. Plus it filled in the time until Match of the Day started. By the way I recommend drone rock if you’re going to try this at home.

Tags: cut up, experimental, nonsense, writing

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However I’m far too cold and destitute to take advantage so cutting up pieces of paper is my Friday night.

Tags: art, cut up, photo, yellow