Life
1916-1986; inventor of ‘cut up’ and music sampling technique adopted by William Burroughs; b. England,
son of Swiss father and Irish mother; ed. Canada; studied at Sorbonne;
drawings included in the Surrealist Exhibition with Picasso, Duchamp,
Magritte and Man Ray; American conscript during WWII; studied Japanese
calligraphy; wrote study of slavery as To Master a Long Goodnight (q.d.); awarded Fulbright to Europe; travelled to Rif Mts. in Morrocoo
to hear Master Musicians of Jajouka; brought them to his restaurant “1001
Nights”, in Tangiers; introduced Brian Jones to Jajouka, 1968, leading
to Jones Presents the Pan Pipes of Jajouka; adopted the epigram
of Hassan is-Sabbah (“The Old Man of the Mountain”, fndr. of
10th c. Hashisheen): ‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted’;
followed Burroughs to Paris, 1958; settled at Beat Hotel, 9 rue Git le
Coeur; practiced mirror-gazing; sliced a pile of newspapers with a Stanley
blade and produced his First Cut-ups, eliciting the remarks from
Burroughs, ‘You’ve got something big here, Brion’; joined
by Ian Sommerville and produced Nothing Left Here But the Recordings,
and Break Through in Grey Room; films incl. Towers Open Fire!, The Cut-Ups, Bill and Tony; induced drugfree ‘high’ using his Dreammachine, a strobescope within a holed cylinder emitting
light at the same rate as the alpha rhythms of the brain; his attempts
to secure patents for same backfired and led to acrimonious differences
with others in the avant garde; issued his last book The Bardo Hotel;
operated for colonic cancer, 1975; died of cancer in Paris (‘I am
but a Gruyère cheese’); left the painting Calligraffiti.
[ top ]
Works
Jason Weiss, ed., The Brion Gyson Reader (Wesleyan UP 2002),
354pp.; The Process [1969] (Woodstock, NY: Overlook 2002), 320pp.;
also The Last Museum (1986); To Master - A Long Goodnight (1946) [Gyson’s biography of the real Uncle Tom]; Terry Wilson, ed., Here to Go, with add. texts by William Burroughs (London: Creation Books 2001) [taped
interviews].
[ top ]
Criticism
Joseph G. Ambrose, with Terry Wilson, Frank Rynn, Man from Nowhere: Storming the Citadels of Enlightenment with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin (The Gap: Subliminal Books 1992), n.p.; review of Here to Go, in Independent [UK] (12 Sept. 2001), p.9.
[ top ]