William S. Burroughs on Dreams
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- Excerpts from a lecture by William S. Burroughs on public discourse, recorded at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics on August 11, 1980. The complete 90 minute sound file can be downloaded at the Naropa Poetics Audio Archives: www.archive.org.... . (Other topics discussed include nuclear weapons, disarmament, aliens, function of the artist, writing, cut-up method, mind-altering drugs, reincarnation, television, and economics.)
Timelapse photography by Martin Setvak: www.setvak.cz/t... . Selected clips are from the 2008 and 2007 galleries. Music by Biosphere ("As the Sun Kissed the Horizon" and "Poa Alpina" from "Substrata," Origo Sound 1997). www.biosphere.no www.myspace.com... . Elmer KunstFabrikk 2009.
Dreams are one of my favorite things about being a human. I’ve experienced so many indescribable feelings while dreaming.
Me too. I love that I dream. They feel so real sometimes that I wake up confused that it supposedly didn’t mean anything. A really intense dream will mess me up for a few days
@@Natatattatification Especially the dreams of midday.
Challenger part one? Anyone?
Yes, yes, yes
We Lost The Sea
But its kind of not the same without the background music from the song...
You're right m8 :D
one of the greatest album ever
Burroughs has one of the most memorable voices I've ever heard. It's a welcome coincidence that what he is saying has substance.
not a coincidence, that's a skill and of substance is what you become by educating yourself
I have PTSD from rape that happened many years back when I was barely 14. I've had terrible nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, all that. Terrifying.
Then, one night, I dreamt that I was being cornered and threatened by a man. It was dark and nobody was around. I didn't scream, I didn't attempt to fight him, I didn't try to run. I turned him into a little girl. He could then be no threat to me and after that dream, my rape nightmares changed quite a bit. It was empowering, bizarre and therapeutic.
First, I’m terribly sorry for you having to endure that heinous act. It’s good to hear the progress you made. I had horrific Night Terrors as a child and would completely be able to get up and navigate any room I was in with full awareness. However, there would be insane hallucinatory figures within the actual room I constantly would run from. They were as real as anything while I’m awake. They went on for years and finally stopped around 12-13. I’ve never had anymore occurrences Thankfully because they were terrifying. It’s odd how what we dream can be terrifying and or therapeutic. I’ve never had the ability to choose what I dream but I still dream very vivid scenarios and simply don’t have the sleep walking/night terrors anymore.
@@ryanj7517 I can relate. Those figures? Insanely terrifying. My childhood I had a lot of night terrors too. But the paralysis and hypnogogic stuff didn't begin till a bit later. I remember one in particular. I dreamt that there was this white wolf in my room. The house was totally dark, in real life. I was dreaming but the thing was in my room. And it had this glow to it. Kinda beautiful. I screamed for my parents. They came in and I could still see the wolf. Then later in the night it had gone under my dresser. Very weird.
Have you had an precognitive dreams? I've had a lot of them. A lot of things either came true or I knew things I wouldn't otherwise know.
@@tristezzalamentoluciano265 I have actually on several events had Precognitive Dreaming. It’s usually associated with rather major events in my personal life oddly enough. I by no means am claiming to have any sort of physic abilities, but, they tend to be eerily spot on. I dream extremely vivid to this day and it’s very comparable when I did Ayahuasca to be honest. All I know is the further I try to research the topic the more I tend to not even tell anyone about it because it’s so abstract to most peoples dreams in comparison they would just kind of , “uh huh” me I’m sure. When I had the night terrors it was always a reoccurring theme which was odd. So much so that my parents figured out how to deal with it because they were completely mind blown when it began. Luckily I grew out of it exactly as the doctor said would happen. I’ve been fortunate to sleep very soundly and at a set routine. I have no need for an alarm. I wake up every day in the same 5 minute window.
Sounds like you had an alchemist moment.
@@tristezzalamentoluciano265
Share youre story, albeit a painful experience, such has the capability to not only help heal, but inspire others whove suffered same in silence w/o that voice...~You HELP to assist in giving them their VOICE on the matter....;)
Spirit-REAL/Energetic Wolf/BORZ* visitation, significance: Intuition &/or Spiritual Guidance & more importantly: >PROTECTION<
*BORZ being the Caucasian-Chechen/Ichkerian word for WOLF, the universal animal, symbolic representative totem of the North Caucasus Chechen /Ichkerian people. Cultural/Mythic Chechen hero: Turpalo Noxchuo, having been born & raised by a 'Wolf Mother'(Noxchuo/Vainahk/Nahk meaning: "The People")
-White wolves in Chechen society represent >Wisdom Courage & Tenacity< (A 'White Wolf, or LongFang" used in, or as, respectful due deference to male elders of the familial clan, or "TEIP").....
~Be Well...;)
The conciously looking at your hands in a dream is something i read about in Carlos Castaneda's book"flight of the eagle""
That's what he is talking about (the character Don Juan from Castaneda's book)
Those Naropa Archives are amazing for Burroughs fanatics.
I have deja vu about once a month; it is a short forseen snippet of my future I had seen recently in a dream. Everytime.
The Joshua Michael Semler Show I get that too but like it’s usually unimportant and a lot less frequent than every month
I think this might be in the realm of synchronicity
As we move closer to end of history synchronicity will flood
happened once to me in my whole life.
God is said to have observed all moments in future and the past. the Deja vu experience could be that you are peeking somehow into a small part of God's consciousness
I stopped having it completely after doing Salvia Divonorum.
He consciously chose to look at his hands in his dreams, which means he was able to lucid dream, even just for those few seconds :)
I always look at my hands when I become lucid in dreams.
@@learntonganwithandrew are you sure that you are actually lucid, and not actually dreaming that you are having a lucid dream and have control?! 🤔💫
@@cuntchops23 yes, I'm sure. I record my dreams every day.
It backfired on him. Maybe there's a reason we dream without seeing our bodies. Do you have a body when you dream?
The part where he was able to transcribe parts of what he read in a Dream once he woke up...that is very cool
In dreams, I walk with you. In dreams, I talk to you. In dreams, you're mine, all the time. Forever. In dreams...
blue velvet
"Don't be a good neighbor to her.."
I'll send you a love letter! Straight from my heart, fucker!
@@Psycho-Complex "you know what a love letter from me is? Its a bullet from a fucking gun!"
In 27 years of life i could count the amount of positive feelings in dreams ive had on one hand
Brilliant! Burroughs had far more depth of vision and understanding than the common misunderstandings of who he was (as stereotyped as a poet-junkie).
Famously too...Paul Mc Cartney tells of having most of the tune for 'Yesterday' come to him in a dream....and the title and idea for 'Let It Be'....whilst dreaming of his mother and the words she used to say to him. Magical.
Townes Van Zantac wrote If I Needed You after it came to him in a dream.
Burroughs opened my eyes to the literary usage for the occult. The way he drifts from science into occult nonsense and his own (often wrong) insights into things is fascinating, it's like there are no boundaries in his mind, everything is possible, including the things which definitely aren't possible. It is important to realise though he is often talking rubbish but states it as fact.
Science -a word that should definitively be precisely defined before using it- doesn´t say much of meaning or coherence about what is called "the mind", much less about experiences outside laboratories, much less dreams, or for example what actually is the imagination, or how does memory actually works, etc.. One should probably know something about the work of Monroe or the book An Experiment in Time, and the rest of the things Burroughs talks about, before foolishly dismissing them as rubbish, that just seem like a dumb way to make oneself feel smart.
"dreams may be training for the afterlife"
wsb
I dreamed of how to play a song on the guitar. When I woke up, I tried it. It was correct.
Dude! Amazing..if only I wrote things down as soon as I work up, some fascinating work. Unfortunately I have a major sleep disorder too so I go straight back to sleep when I awake..all the best.
Yesterday's melody came from Paul Mcartney's dream. Also Satisfaction came from Keith Richard's dream.
maudlin of the well
Thank you for this!!!
look at your hands while you're awake as a habit. when you're dreaming, normally you don't know you are dreaming. but once you notice that you are dreaming, you'll start to wake up. that's when you have to look at your hands. but rub them together in your dream.
GUYS HOW INTELLIGENT WAS BURROUGHS???I THINK OF HIM AS A STREET GENIUS
Most people don't understand philosophy or this kind of depth of conversation or poetry I would say.
It seems like all people want to know is whether their favorite team won last night
reach one, teach one
very accurate and precise
This is the fastest I have ever heard him speak.
He sounds incoherent, rambling with an unintelligible voice and jumping from one thought to another - you're easy to please, intellectually.
@@TAROTAI do you even understand my point? We are in agreement. And no...I'm not easily pleased intellectually. I already know 95% of these topics anyway.
Why are you jumping down my throat, for literally no reason whatsoever?
Does that make you feel better about yourself?
What is the point?
@@TAROTAI you don't understand, Burroughs is normally drugged up and speaks very slow
@@TAROTAI Now after noticing this fact, I think this video is sped up because the uploader didn't like how slow he spoke lol
Not gonna lie Burroughs droppings hard R is funny as hell. Granted he was from another time entirely. He's no Brion Gysin.
1:00 he looked in the mirror, his face was black…he’d turned into a what did he just say???
Keep dream journals. Don't leave any detail out. Record every single time you wake from sleep. I'm 42. at age 26 I had 25 books full of ny dreams. I suffer from ptsd and I have sleep paralysis and hypnogogic phenomena. I have the most insane dream life. Unfortunately I lost all those books a few years ago. I'm trying to get back in the habit.
Interesting, what did you learn from keeping the journals? I'm surprised no one has asked about it sooner.
@@MychelleSeymourHeyyouremember Well I'm definitely a precognitive dreamer. I know things I'm not supposed to. Other than that, there's a lot of trauma healing
you gotta have a good fucking reason to wake me up before im good and ready. in dreams i can fly, in dreams i dont mind. when im dreaming i can be many things, but always me, i had a female body but still felt like it was me, even tho her life and history was not mine.
Reminds me of The Disentigration Loops.
Who out there struggles with sleep paralysis, hypnogogic phenomena? I have this and over the last couple years have developed narcolepsy symptoms.
0:54 - turned into a what now?
As a NDE survivor, I truly believe that life, death, and dreaming are all tied together. Life is a 3 cycle dream.
Just because you 'survived' does not make you an expert - my brother was dead for 8 minutes & he had brain damage from that experience & his hands shake at various times of the day and wakes him up at night - his short- term memory is gone & he has face-tremors - yes he was a healthy, non-drug, non-drinker, non-smoking individual & was a great athlete - not an expert, by your logic, Chuck
@@TAROTAI Why the hostility? It's not a competition...I am sorry that he suffered from brain damage. What's with the attack?
The astral or dream body facilitated by machine sounds a lot like VR with a neural link or something out of .hack//sign or the matrix. He sounds crazy but being in touch with his human desires to this degree back then basically makes him predictive of art or even technology in the future.
He was indeed ahead of his time as far as creative concepts go. Naked Lunch being the most famous example of this, with it's prediction of liposuction, AIDS and the crack cocaine epidemic of the 80s (and to some extent the opioid epidemic of more modern times).
Why does it need the bloody music?
8:03 why i love him
Amazing!!!!!
You are not dreaming about the moment itself, your dreaming about the moment you become aware of it.
Finally its back up jesus
what's with this background music? can barely hear Burroughs, was that by design?
Can you you hear your friends voices walking in a city? Focus.
You hear what you want to hear.
I think it's excellent
I find it annoying too. I could see if the downloader composed it for the talk but it's obviously not, and just new age music pasted over. Burroughs despised the new age. I think he thought they were wussies...
I can’t find the 90 minute lecture, please share the exact title:)
I appreciate the attempt but Burroughs and this uplifting music + visuals clash pretty badly. Burroughs did have an Alan Watts type of voice that could raise spirits and morale. When Burroughs spoke it was kind of like having a bucket of ice cold water thrown in your face alerting your awareness and revealing your surroundings.
I was thinking the same thing. To each their own though. If the uploader digs it, let em dig it.But I agree wih you. I think the Alan Watts voice with melancholy music thing sorta became a trend and now they just do it with all audio. I have even occasionally done it with my own voice LOL! It tends to work with just about anyone -- but since we associate Burroughs with what your saying "bucketo f ice water" we find it hard to see him aligned with this music he would perhaps find absurd lol
Well plumbed and yet same same so tired. The 5am cold dawn hunger tired.
Junkies and Zombies could take Hollywood heat in another direction (or has it, I don't care but I'd like to know .. you know?)
Poorly done. He could have just read but not as a current Star ... so he melts on terms of worms.
often people put crazy jazz behind Burroughs. The movie Naked Linch had Jazz by Ornette Colman. Appropriate because it was the type of music he liked , I think
When I dream , it is always horrible nightmares so I use cannabis before bed and I haven't dreamed in 20 years.
you are supposed to deal with the nightmares. Cannibas inhibits dreams in some people. Maybe now the nighmares won't happen because you're older
couldn't find the complete file in Naropa's archives. do you have a direct link?
I can not run in my dreams
Were his dream's healthy normal dream's, Or the results of the Opiate's he used? No judgement As I also use opiate analgesic's freely. I can easily see + use my hand's in dream's... While nodding.
Lucid dreaming should be optionally taught in high school
Aehy did purchase a 2nd hand copy of Burroughs book My Education A Book Of Dreams while honeymooning with my now exwife Samantha in 1997 aehy had seen the film version of The Naked Lunch well before aehy met my exwife, the dreams part though aehy've had fools who stole money from church coffers to buy silk suits not know how to make the Delbei Sauce for Lobster Thermidor but they wouldn't listen when their fly companions said they'll eat sheet one day, Burroughs is adult reading and worth something.
🤘💯🤫
Why music?
So it can develop a mood and atmosphere along with the information.
not the mood I'm after (o;
@@laekrits listen to Challenger part 1 by we lost the sea.
dreams are the brains screen saver, as it defrags its wet drive.
Mesrop Mashtots said the hand of God drew the letters which became the Armenian alphabet to him in a dream
Did he say the "N word" at the start of that?? I know he used a lot of racial epithets in his books---and it doesn't bother me that much, but to hear him in non-fiction form say that had me doing a mental "double-take". I reckon it's a generational thing, that he didn't mean in a hateful way. I know Sarah Silverman used "blackface" in one of her comedy shows. I guess 'cuz she's Jewish she can get away with it. If Burroughs tried that stunt in 2018....WOW.
He grew up in a different time, and you have to give him a break. If you notice the calm and matter of fact way in which he said it, it was obviously not MEANT to hurt anyone's feelings, but rather as a description.
" I guess 'cuz she's Jewish she can get away with it"? What the hell does that mean? Jews are no longer oppressed, so she and others have no right to ride the "Holocaust Train" as protection from any criticism.
He said "negro", that was the accepted term at that time.
@JohnBelz fanaticism is the ahem "new normal" unfortunately.....
@@nicholasfaith8999 Pretty sure he said "nigger" though it might have been with a midwest twang and sounded like "nigra". Either way, he knew what the term meant, that generational excuse doesn't cut it. Why couldn't William Burroughs have been a run of the mill racist. Almost everyone was at the time, most still are.
They are going to move the human artifact, in its environment.
Bioshpeeeeeere
I don't accept anything as gospel.
The Land of the Dead
Did he casually use the n word…? Wtf lmao
Bro he murdered his wife. The racial slur was your last straw? 😂
@@dealman6237 I literally didnt know that lol
For (by all presumptions), an avid “tea head” 🤤 which when used habitually obliterates most peoples ability to sleep deeply which makes null n void the necessary REM dream state , I’m wondering if he is a great source of information regarding this, nonetheless I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because of his redeeming qualities and give this a view and make no further comment.
Incorrect, *No One* - Cannabis is known to induce a state of relaxation and drowsiness that could help to induce sleep.
Research on the possible sleep effects of cannabis date back to the 1970s, but high-quality studies are scarce because of the drug’s legal status.
"I turned into a nigga"
Teddy Rocspin I wasn't sure if heard right, since I don't much about Burroughs, it's hard for me to get into him now....
@@Torusbreathflow Burroughs wasn't a racist. He despised political correctness. He had to fight censors in court. He was a homosexual that hated the very word gay. He thought it was propaganda to take the word for happy and make it mean homosexual. He preferred to call himself queer.
his usage of the word was to troll the language nazis.
@@Torusbreathflow Bro he murdered his wife. The racial slur was your last straw? 😂
I spent most of my life on Heroin - if you like Burroughs, you might like my writing which you can see here: chrisdangerfield.substack.com/p/whatever-happened-to-hunting
0:58: “I turned into a N***** but my hands were still white.” I have been a fan of Burroughs’ writing for nearly 40 years now. I am sure that he had no racial bias in him but, as we can hear, he employed the language of the day very carelessly at times. He fucked up on the day he recorded this and I don’t know what the best action is now. Edit the offending sentence out? Introduce a disclaimer? Incorporate a link to his more revealing 'Thanksgiving Prayer’? I dunno. As it is, it ruins a possible introduction to a flawed genius.
Patricia Garfield was a Ph.D academic specialising in dream studies. She wrote several books, including her most popular publication,, ‘Creative Dreaming.’ It describes (and discusses) various techniques. She suggested that best way to start is to target the basic instincts first - focus as
Yeah I wonder whose feelings are hurt more? You hearing N*** or his wife being shot in the face?
Slightly mystified as to how you managed to post without your username or profile pic coming up but, technical
wizardry aside, I completely agree with your reservations. It makes me cringe everytime I hear it, which isn't often, but here the pejorative term is used without any character or narrative context. He just blurts out the word as part of his description. One would expect better from a proponent of language as a social control mechanism.
I don't know what to do either and I agree that it has the potential to discourage new readers from going further. I've read Patricia Garfield and vividly remember her suggestion to focus on basic instincts first (sexual fantasies) to carry one into the dream state & learn to control. She was right, it worked for me. I'd be less inclined to follow Burroughs's suggestions, based on that one dreadful sentence alone. There was a strong Black Rights protest movement at the time of writing so any plea of ignorance would be use quite useless. As you said, he fucked up on the day. Unfortunately, in this instance, we are left with the recordings.
@@johnsrome8459 fair enough. I just take umbrage with him shooting his wife in the face. While back in the day it may have been socially acceptable to do. I feel that weve come very far and no longer tolerate such treatment of women
Um, doubt it will ever matter or even be noticed but, just for the record, I didn't write the opening comment. I wholeheartedly agree with the points raised but somehow my username & profile pic have been used, replacing the original authors'. It's a bit weird...