As previously noted, British coffeehouses have served as settings for radical and sometimes revolutionary social change. Indeed, this was true during the Enlightenment as well as in the French salons. However, by the early 20th century, coffee shops in London seemed to be becoming fewer and fewer and more modest. That was until 1953. mokabathe UK’s first Italian espresso bar has opened in Soho. on his blog The Great WenPeter Watts describes its arrival as a “momentous event.”
London’s first full-fledged coffee shop (equipped with a Gaggia coffee machine) has opened at 29 Frith Street. This was a popular gathering place for teenagers who were too young to go to the pub. It is said that the introduction of the coffee bar sparked an explosion of youth culture that soon changed British social life forever.
“By 1972, coffee bars were everywhere and the teenage revolution was firmly established,” Watts writes. A place like Mocha Bar might seem like the ideal location for a counterculture master William S. Burroughs—Living in London in the late 60s and early 70s, he often hung out with young dissidents and outsiders. Burroughs mentions favorably a supposedly false anarchist pirate colony. Libertasia in him red night cityOne might think that would appreciate the up-and-coming anarchism of British youth culture, which would soon blossom into punk.
However, rather than participate in the coffee bar scene, the fastidious Burrows began frequenting “the posh gentlemen’s establishments in the area, not to mention the ‘Dilly Boys’, the young male prostitutes who met outside the Regent Palace Hotel.”
And he became increasingly disillusioned and resentful of London, writes Ted Morgan in his biography of Burroughs. literary outlawwith “the amount he was paying for an apartment with a hole in the wall with a closet for the kitchen” and rising utility bills. “Burroughs began to feel that he was in enemy territory,” Morgan said. And he thought Mocha’s Coffee Bar should pay for his humiliation.
There, “on several occasions, an angry counterman treated him with outrageous and unwarranted rudeness, served him a toxic cheesecake, and made him feel sick.” Burrows “decided to retaliate by placing a curse on the place.” He chose the attack vector he had previously used against the Church of Scientology, “showing up every day,” Watts wrote, “taking photos and recording audio.” Then he played them a day or so later on the streets outside Moka City. “The idea was to place Mokaba outside of time. They played a tape that happened two days ago and superimposed it on what was happening now, which took them out of their position in time,” Morgan writes.
Burroughs also used this method on the Watergate recordings, the Garden of Eden, and Alfred Korzybski. The impetus for magical manipulation was, in his words, “rebirth.” In a very strange essay calledFeedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden” from his collection electronic revolutionBurroughs described his operation in detail, writing that it was the destruction of a “control system.”
Now apply the three tape recorder analogy to this simple operation. Tape recorder 1 is from Moka Bar itself and is in new condition. Tape recorder 2 is my recording near Moka Bar. These recordings are accessible. Tape recorder 2 in the Garden of Eden was Eve created from Adam. Therefore, recordings made from Moka Bar are part of Moka Bar. Once recorded, this work becomes autonomous and beyond their control. Tape recorder 3 is playing. Adam experiences shame as his shameful deeds are played back by God, tape recorder 3. I become this local god by playing my recordings at Moka Bar whenever I want and making whatever changes I want to the recordings. I influence them. They can’t influence me.
This theory made perfect sense to Burroughs. believed in a magical universe The Crowleyans were controlled by occult forces and experimented heavily with Scientology. magic,and orgone energy of wilhelm reich. The attack on the Mocha was a success, or at least Burroughs believed it was. “They’re boiling over there. I have them and they know it too,” he wrote. On October 30, 1972, the store closed, likely as a result of rising rents that frustrated Beat reporters, and its location became Queen’s Snack Bar.
The audiovisual cut-up technique that Burroughs used in his attack on the Mocha Bar was a technique devised by Burroughs and Burroughs. Brion Gyshin Burroughs applied it to movies as well. At the top of the post, you’ll see a “meditation” based on Burroughs’ use of audio/visual “magic weapons” and an interpretation that incorporates his recordings. On YouTube, “the cut up” is a short film that Burroughs himself made in 1966 with cinematographer Anthony Balch, and is a disorienting example of the cut-up technique.
Burroughs’ magical interventions into reality, not limited to attacking annoying London coffee house owners, were actually the highest expression of his creativity. Ted Morgan writes, “What mattered most to Burroughs was his belief in the world of magic. He believed that the same impulse that had driven him to curse was the source of his writing.” Read more about Burroughs’ theory and practice Matthew Levi Stevens’s essay “The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs” Also, listen to the author’s own stories about the paranormal, tape cut-ups, and more in the lecture below, which he gave to a writing class in June 1986.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2014.
Related content:
How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain and Thom Yorke used William Burroughs’ cut-up technique to write songs
When William S. Burroughs joined Scientology (and his 1971 book denouncing it)
How to revitalize your creative process with William S. Burroughs’ cut-up technique
josh jones I’m a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
