Brion Gysin is one of my favorite painters and his writing is an undervalued commodity. A counterculture fixture, Gysin is best known for his cut-up collaborations with William S. Burroughs and his role in creating the Dream Machine. Here is Gysin live in London in 1982, lecturing on the possibilities of teaching creativity. Gysin dives headlong into an existential rant here, evoking his adventures in the Sahara, Islamic assassins, smoking weed, the magician as an outlaw, Jean Genet as a dependable friend, purity through depravity, friends versus enemies, English food and the Beat Hotel. Gysin reads from both his novel The Process as well as his posthumously published novel, The Last Museum, which recalls the Beat Generation’s heyday in Paris. The lecture is accompanied by an edit of William S. Burroughs’ cut-up film experiments.

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