Why the tape recorder?

Well, in Burroughs' own words:

"it's all done with tape recorders consider this machine and what it can do it can record and play back activating a past time set by precise association a recording can be played back any number of times you can study and analyze every pause and inflection of a recorded conversation..."

The tape recorder was one of Burroughs' major obsessions, and rightly so. Considering he was so interested in collage that he wrote a trilogy of "cut-ups," it only makes sense that he might also have been interested in audio collages. Once I actually tried some of the tape recorder experiments he describes in The Ticket That Exploded, with predictably interesting results. I'd say the most interesting ones were when I spliced together bits of Burroughs reading (Doc Benway sticking a scalpel in Hassan i Sabbah, who looked like Uncle Sam on stilts, etc...). Anyway, I heartily recommend the idea. Personally I find his text cutup methods to be beyond my reach. On my WSB site, The Garden of Delights, I do have a cutup machine, which can works well for poetry cutups. And saves all that hassle with scissors.

So anyway, I'm hoping that this ring will grow to include a wide variety of cutup, collage, and Burroughs sites. Thanks for your time!

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