textfiles/drugs/bohos

                              A Couple of Bohos
                             Shooting the Breeze

            William S. Burroughs and Timothy Leary in Conversation

      [Reprinted without permission from Mondo 2000, Issue No. 4 (1991)]

Both in their seventies now, they are starting to resemble each other.  And 
not just in looks and dress, but in personal style.  Tim's humor gets blacker 
and more corrosive as Burroughs grows more mellow and compassionate.
    We got the two of them together briefly at William's place in Lawrence, 
Kansas.  Tim was in town to debate G. Gordon Liddy.  He came supplied with a 
list of "weighty topics", supplied by Yours Truly.  But the questions went 
out the window, and what we have here is a couple of old friends talking.
    Hey!  Read the books.  Read 'The Western Lands'.  Read 'Flashbacks'.  
They've already done as much as any other pair in the Western world to map 
out how to mutate in freedom -- enough for the next several decades.  So kick 
back and relax...
R. U. Sirius

LIFE'S A BITCH AND THEN THEY FREEZE YOUR HEAD

WB: Well, let's have a look at this thing. [William looks at topic list -- 
such weighty subjects as "immortality; post-biological possibilities e.g. 
Drexler, Moravek; Wm's visit to Biosphere; comments on language and Foucault; 
opinions about VR; Kronenberg's plans for 'Naked Lunch', etc.]

TL: Do you want to do this, William?

WB: Why not?

TL: The first topic is immortality.  You know, I signed up for cryonics.  
Have you thought about cryonics?

WB: Ah... I thought about it but no, no, no.  I feel that any sort of 
physical immortality is going in the wrong direction.  It's a question of 
separating whatever you choose to call it -- the soul -- from the body, not 
perpetuating the body in any way.  I think any perpetuation of the body is a 
step in the wrong direction.  The Egyptians made their mummies, and 
preservation of the mummy was essential to their immortality.  I think you 
want to get away from the body, not get into it.

TL: Why not have the option of readily jumping consciousness back into the 
body?  You know, the Egyptians are really interesting.  I see the tombs 
basically as re-animation capsules.

WB: That's exactly...

TL: They used the highest science at the time.  I've been working with some 
scientists in this new field called bioanthropology.  During twenty-five 
centuries there were four waves of tomb robbers.  The first wave took the 
gold, the second wave took the art and then came the British and the French.  
All these looters threw the wrappings -- which were clotted with dried blood 
-- into the corner.  But now microbiologists can get DNA from the 
bio-remains.  So the Egyptian plan has actually worked.  Within ten years 
we'll be able to clone the pharoahs!  Of course, the problem is, there would 
be no memories.  But that's why they included their software in the form of 
the jewels and artifacts.  I admire that.  Your book on 'The Western Lands' 
fascinated me.  I read it over and over again, and I quote you quite a bit in 
the stuff I write about cryonics. How about post-biologic possibilities?  
Moravek -- all of that.  He says you can download the human brain and fit it 
in computers and build a new body with brush-like antenna software...

WB: Certainly, certainly.

TL: How about language as a virus, Michel Foucault?

WB: Language is obviously a virus, as it depends on replication.  What other 
weighty topics do we have?

LIDDY, GUNS AND MONEY

TL: William's paintings, shotgun and otherwise... of course, Brion Gyson was 
always the one doing the painting.

WB: You see, I could never have started painting *really* until after Brion 
was dead.  I could never have competed with him.  But now I've made more 
money than he did his whole life.

TL: You've made probably more money from your paintings than from your books, 
huh?

WB: It's pulled me out of a financial hole.  I can buy flintlock pistols.

TL: Good for you.  It's an easier way to make money than running around 
giving lectures and debating G. Gordon Liddy.

WB: Flintlock pistols are great.  I got a flintlock and a replica of the old 
gun, 7 1/2-inch barrel, .45 caliber.  And I'm getting another...

TL: And what do you think about Liddy?  You know Liddy's a big gun man.

WB: Yes, I know.  I know as much about guns as he does.

WORKS-A-MATIC

WB: Oh, now listen.  Just a couple of tips.  In the first place, something 
that nobody has gone into, in this whole drug debate, is the simple fact that 
before the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914, these drugs were sold across the 
counter.

TL: Opium, cocaine?

WB: Opium, cocaine, morphine, heroin.  Sold over the counter.  Well, these 
were in the days that the conservatives evoke as "the good old days".  Was 
America floundering?  Of course it wasn't.  And how well the English system 
worked, until the American Brain commission came over there and talked them 
out of it.  When I was there in 1967 and took the apomorphine cure with Dr. 
Dent, there were about six hundred addicts in the U.K., all registered and 
all known because they could obtain their heroin quite legally -- cocaine 
too.  Now that they've made it impossible, and the doctors won't prescribe to 
addicts, God knows how many addicts we have.  God knows how many narcotics 
*agents*.

TL:  First time I ever took heroin was in London with R. D. Laing.  Ronnie 
sent out to the chemist.  Ronnie Laing shot me up in the house of Alex 
Trocchi.  Remember Alex Trocchi?

James Grauerholtz: Sure.

WB: Knew him well.

TL: I thought that was an elegant way to get introduced to heroin.

JG: Very elegant.  Alex Trocchi... one of the *great* junkies.

TL: Switzerland is interesting.  They have parks in Zurich and other places 
where junkies can go.  The attitude is humanistic.  "We're one family, we're 
all Swiss.  And if our junkies want to shoot up, we'll provide clean 
needles." There's no criminality involved.

WB: I remember at one point I was at one of these Dutch places where they had 
needles and works -- you put a coin in a thing and out came the needle.

JG: Works-o-matic.

WB: Works-o-matic!

TL: A friend of mine is a former football star who has always been a hippy 
and a druggy and all that.  He had terrible problems with his ankle about a 
year ago.  He was in the hospital for a horrendous operation.  I drove about 
two hours to get down to visit him in the hospital.  He had something that 
made me think of you, William.  He had a thing in his arm and anytime he felt 
pain, anytime he wanted, he would hit a thing and it'd go >bink<.

WB: Do what?

TL: He had a needle thing, with morphine.

JG: A permanent IV?

TL: Yeah.  You know what they call that?

JG: PCA.  Patient-Controlled Analgesic.

TL: Yeah, that's it!

JG: Yes.  I had it.  I had like a porter's bell, and I'd just reach over and 
push the button, and a minute later I'd feel it.

TL: So I noticed it as I was talking to him.  He told me a story.  He said, 
"You see my blonde nurse there, she comes over and says, 'I'm a fan of yours 
and I want to give you a real good massage.' I said, 'Is the door locked?' 
and she said 'I already locked it.'"  And as he told me the story there'd be 
a pause and >bink<!
    I met him about two weeks later and said "You know, it was a good time, 
visiting you in the hospital."  He said, "You didn't visit me in the 
hospital." [laughs]  I said "Fuck off.  It took me four hours driving through 
traffic."  He forgot he told me all those lies about fucking the nurse, 
sitting there going >bink< >bink< >bink<

THE IMMACULATE INFECTION

WB: So what is this debate about?

TL: Well, Liddy and I disagree about everything.  He's a total authoritatian, 
militant person.

WB: Look at the history, the fact that for years there was *no* British 
heroin problem -- don't know how many addicts there were -- and that the 
English system worked very well.

TL: Well the problem is the Puritan, Cromwellian, New England moralists who 
have imposed their fucking neuroses on America for the last hundred years.  
Any sort of pleasrue, or sort of idea that the individual has a right to 
pursue happiness and they're after you.  It's basically Inquisitional... 
religious.  I blame the Puritans.

WB: Well, perhaps, yes.  But the thing is... I don't quite agree with that: 
the basic thing is how that creates a desire, a necessity in their minds to 
control the whole population.  And the extent to which the general public has 
been stupidized is appalling.
    Have you heard these statistics?  The polls show that one-half of the 
high school graduates could not locate Vietnam on the map and did not know 
that we had fought and lost a war there?  When you take WWII, forget it!  
They never heard of Churchill, couldn't locate France.  The only one they 
knew about was Hitler.

TL: Costumes!  He had the best wardrobe, that's why.

WB: And 8% couldn't locate the United States on a map.  It's absolutely 
appalling.  Now listen to this one.  One-half the people -- this is a sex 
survey -- thought anal intercourse could result in AIDS even though neither 
one of the participants was infected with the AIDS virus.  The Immaculate 
Conception!

TL: The Immaculate Infection!

WB: Can you imagine such nonsense?  Such a complete lack of logic.  One half!

ALIENS AMONGST US

WB: I was talking with Whitley Strieber -- you know, he's the one who wrote 
the book 'Communion', about the alien visitors...

TL: Oh yeah, right.  Is he the guy you went to visit?

WB: Yes.  He's been down to Washington and he says they all know about this 
and are scared to death of it.  They're following the tried-and-true 
bureaucratic dictum that if you don't know what to do, then don't do 
anything.  They're terrified of the whole subject.  But they were saying to 
him, "Well, good God -- with such a stupid population, such a mentality, if 
we let this out, what's going to happen?  Aliens amongst us?!  Why, they 
could take the form of your mother!"

TL: Oh, my God! [laughs]... your lover!

WB: "...With this mentality, we'd have a massacre."  But there's no question 
in my mind of the reality of these phenomena.  He's telling the truth.

JG: William, tell Timothy about Bill Lyon and the sweatlodge.

WB: Well, the shamans really *can* just call up the spirits.  So I was very 
anxious to contact them.  I did sit in on one sweatlodge ceremony.  It was 
too much for me.  The combination of heat and confinement.  Fortunately I was 
right by the door.  I had to leave.

TL: You became uncomfortable?

WB: More than uncomfortable.  It was like an oven.

JG: But you'll do it again.

WB: I will do it again, but I want it toned down.  That was a very hot one.  
If they would tone it down about 30%...

TL: ...Or slow it down.  You'll adapt and get used to it.

WB: Depends on how many stones.  These big white-hot stones are put in the 
middle, and they pour water over them.  Yes, I want to have a full ceremony 
for the banishment of all my evil spirits.

"THE OLD WRITER LIVED IN A BOXCAR"

JG: Coming to the Liddy-Leary debate with us, Bill?

WB: I'm not going.

JG: Afterwards they'll take Tim to the hotel.  I'll bring you to your car and 
immediately to the hotel for the party.  And you'll hear all about the 
shaman, because the host of the party is the guy that brought the shaman to 
William.

TL: This is a party that I'm going to?

JG: Yeah.  Yeah.  Very nice guy.

WB: I used to live out where he lives now when I first came to town... in the 
stone house.

JG: You'll find it in 'The Western Lands': "The old writer..."

TL: I remember that.  Sure.

JG: "The old writer lived in a boxcar..."

TL: I remember that so well.  I put it in a book.

JG: That's right.  William, it tears me up to break up this party.

TL: I want to say one more thing, WIlliam.  You're with me every day.  I talk 
about you all the time.  I've learned so much from you, with you.  And I'll 
be back.

WB: And I think about you.