Report of July 21st 1998
Hi all,
JIn some days, on August the 2nd, will be the first birthday of Burroughs' death and of Interzone's birth. I'm very impressed and moved thinking about this incredible year. If somebody had told us a year ago that we were gonna be part of an international Burroughsian group, we would would have hardly beleived it. Though it has happenned. The first most astonishing thing to me is that we have succeeded to make our dream happen, and now know how to make it. We have succeeded to apply Burroughs' teachings on functions of writing (see :
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Academy.html ) , which is rather astonishing at a collective scale, and a good demonstration of Burroughs abilities as a teacher.But even more important according to me, at another level, are the consequences of it concerning nature of reality , as we have demonstrated that reality is not something beyond us, existing independently of us, but something which depends on our mental structure and which we can create. In other words, reality depends on us, and not us, on reality.
This puts in question the whole Newtonian vision of the world, which still stands in the West, and the whole vision of man himself, as hence we become able not to undergo reality anymore, but to make it happen.
Rick wrote a text which is now in his new site and which expresses in a more simple way than I am able to formulate it.
"We have decided, individually and collectively, that social "reality," as it exists at the end of the 2nd millennium, does not satisfy our aesthetic or practical needs. We hereby intend to write a future that will accommodate the liberation of our desires.
We seek an art with teeth. And we seek a society that will not only accommodate our desires but support us in their expression.
This medium will not concern itself with commerce except as a means of survival.
We live only one life. Must we live it bound against ourselves, impotent against the forces of conformity?"
-Dick Shea, Bureau Chief, Interzone Psychic Hygiene
We have been trained to consider reality as opposed to dream : reality being supposed to be something existing by itself out of ourselves and once for all, opposed to the dreams, which are supposed to be "unreal", fiction, "not true".
The new vision which comes out of it is a new function of dream as a base to create reality : we can create reality in making our dreams happen, which we did during this year, and the relsults of which you can state. Burroughs said one of the functions of the dream consists in taking us on our future time-track. Personally I have experimented some dreams concerning the work I was going to make the next day in Interzone, with elements I did not have at the time of the dream and could not know about, and which happenned then the next day before I did it. Quite impressive !!!
Concerning the dreams themselves, this first year collective experience (see the page Dreams : http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Dreams.html ) reavealed itself successful and suprising as well, as we have stated that our respective dreams could have some common elements between each other and also with Burroughs' dreams he describes in "My Education". This was quite striking I must say, and Foe emited the hypothesis that we all meet in the dimension of the dream.
The exceptional side of Interzone is the incredible gathering of different knowledges, due to our number (about 380 now), and the multiplicity of our cultures. So we gather as well western domains of knowledges as traditional ones of our respective cultures.
This allows us to gather data at different levels allowing us to find new angles and answers on the domains we exchange.
2. Interzone Academy and forum :
Following the report on Interzone Academy I sent on July 13th
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Academy.html, Sam and Garrison have began an exchange of ideas about the different questions we have to solve : see the page http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/mails.html , and hope to open it to other members of the group. So if you want to contact them, please do.It seems now it's time to organize precisely our exchanges of datas in our respective domains of interest, through forums. I'll make them in function of your answers as for the Academy. At the moment this chronic has begun in the site Western Lands, but
Foe is prepairing it : see his News page in : http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/foe4foe . So when it's ready, I'll forward him the exchanges.
3.
Foe's commercial site : Hard Drive Production :Foe is preparing a commercial site for Interzone which can host our musics, recordings, forums, news, etc… See :
I am gonne try to have some of my personal writings published out of France. In case some money would come from it, one percentage would go to Interzone for the investment in common projects and help needed.
4. Help presently needed :
Since the report of the 13th, I got no news from
Koulim, who has lost his job and has not got enough money to get connected anymore. But we can join him out of the net, so any help which could be provided would be welcome : Pierre Belouin is in touch with a friend of him in Paris who comes from a work session of several months in the place he was working. So if you want to help him and send him money, you can join Pierre (belouin@ensba.fr) to get Koulin's coordinates and then join him to see with him directly about what he needs.I could talk to
Chaya on the net these latest days, and he is okay. He has been establishing new contacts through the group and feels more comfortable.I want to thank a lot
Snappy and El, two other girls of Interzone, which are really helpful and efficient. Much thanks also to Pierre and his quick response when help needed.Several of us think we should put up a place to welcome people who need it, and when we got money, use it for the whole group : see the exchanges at :
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/mails.html . Pierre's idea to buy the Beat Hotel in Paris (see the report on the Academy) http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Academy.html is appreciated, but at the moment we do not know how to realize it. Future will say.Presently, we can organize the help in several directions :
I never wanted to ask for money in the frame of Interzone; but if some of you have enough to help the people who need it, (like Koulim at the moment), I propose you get in touch with him directly and see with him what he needs, as I do not want to be an intermediary as far as money is concerned (we are not a non-governemental humanitary organization) . So there is no risk this money could be used to other aims, nor by other people it is given to.
You can get in touch with the
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights CommissionFor the moment, you can contact Jim, Interzone doc:
the_doc27@hotmail.comThis year, 3 of you have been asking for help about addiction, 8 have suffered from depression.
The gathering and spreading of the medical infos is not ready yet, but those among you who are interested in getting the work already done can ask for it.
If, for any reason, some of us need help, I suggest we send mails to the common E-mails
sound23@hotmail.com or interzone23@hotmail.com (you can send a mail to get the passwords) so we can all read them, be aware of the situation, and send our support and ideas. Also those mails can be accessed from any computer, and without using the mailbox in case it does not work (I had this problem recently, could not send nor receive mail here).The common mail Interzone 23 is full up presently, and mails have to be deleted. So if you want to keep them, you better record them before.
In February, I proposed we put up a
bureau of solving human problems, which became, following Alan's suggestion, "Ministry of the Persons". We can make a group of resolution of conflicts in the frame of the Academy. Here we can get the help of Jim, Interzone doc, and his assistant, who is specialized in resolution of conflicts.5. Appointment in the chat :
Next time (July 23rd 98, between 9.30pm and 1.30 am at Paris time : see the infos in the chat-page :
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Chat.html) let's try foe4foe CENTRAL Chat Room: Interzone ConferenceI'll be in mIRC #Interzone , ICQ (my # is 3146693) and gay.com as well (Music Art and Books) but if you can access to Foe chat which can gather a respectable number of people, this would be more practicle, because following several people in different chat-rooms is not always easy, and would allow us to exchange our points of view on the different subject we got to discuss at the moment.
6. CD Last words 1999 :
I am sending to Pierre and Foe copies of the tapes of recordings you sent of your musics, so they can include them in the CD and the multimedia site.
Pierre has gathered the musics you have sent to him. He says that including all the integral translations of the recordings would be too long, as the text is quite long, so he proposes to put only extracts of them.
But all the integral translations would appear in a written version in each language in a song book included in the CD, so the whole text of the Last Words would be available in all those languages.
7. The Time of Naguals :
You keep on sending texts : see the new pages :
http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/sam-cutup.html, http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Garrison.html, http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/J-Gluck.html, http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Miko.html .No news from the French publisher I began to send the two first tomes. But as most of our writings are now in English, it would be more realistic to find someone in US, as I doubt anybody here would be interested in publishing English writing no yet published in US or United Kingdom. I wrote yesterday about it to John Gehner, who had contacted us several month ago (see the
report of October 97) at the beginning of the group, and shall let you know about what comes next.
8. Last points :
Hope to talk to you in the chat in two days.
Thanks a lot for your involvement, cheerings, and dumbfounding work during this year. Spending it with you has been a wonderful adventure until now, and I hope we keep on in the same line and spirit. Let's drink a special toast to
Bill and Brion on August the 2nd, thanking them for their teachings which made us able to go on their work.Have a lot of fun and take care.
Love
Iz
Go to Report of August 21st 98
Or to the
