I’ve always been intrigued by the possibilities of using the “cut-up technique,” an experimental method of composition in which the author:
Although the method originated with Dadaists, I came across it when I was researching my thesis and reading William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
Burroughs claims to have written the Nova Trilogy—which includes The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded—entirely by using a similar technique called "montage technique."
- Selects a piece of print media
- Cuts out each word in the article
- Throws the words in a bag
- Shakes well
- Pulls out one word at a time and copies each down in the order in which they left the bag
Although the method originated with Dadaists, I came across it when I was researching my thesis and reading William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
Burroughs claims to have written the Nova Trilogy—which includes The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded—entirely by using a similar technique called "montage technique."
I thought about using Burroughs's technique to write lyrics on the last FUR record, but never did. I’m finally going to give it a shot. To start, I've selected excerpts from "The Wolf! The Wolf!" a randomly-chosen essay by Jacques Lacan. Here's what happened:
Once everything was cut out, I threw it into a container, mixed them up and started randomly selecting clips without looking at them.
Here's the final product (I've added punctuation):
Reddening of the face, the image he had of himself
During each of the routine moments, take hold of an object without any true contact
Freud: the most important text which he couldn't stand
Spontaneous phenomenon with an adult
In observations, we tried to define
What I've found between a depressive crisis of sleeping problems
Correct the further implications to the heart
It is a text at the level of symbolic--namely love
By transference, exchange, and dialogue, psychic equivalent
Would throw his arm, which separates into something symbolic,
Which seems to dissolve structure of this artificial phenomenon
Activity, convulsive fit, resistance within its own field--movements without aim
All of the emptying without any true dialogue
So far as to say, he was hyper-agitated on the situation of transference
Inflection is so little concerned
I am referring to experience, the function formulated.
As we will see, the text is two
From this full speech we call love
No evading this
As soon as we call the moving rooms
If he didn't reach it
Introduction: He became jerky and disorderly
To give touched observation of his behavior
To arrive at these terms: On the plane of the transference we call love
Not sure how well this works. Thoughts, anyone?
Reddening of the face, the image he had of himself
During each of the routine moments, take hold of an object without any true contact
Freud: the most important text which he couldn't stand
Spontaneous phenomenon with an adult
In observations, we tried to define
What I've found between a depressive crisis of sleeping problems
Correct the further implications to the heart
It is a text at the level of symbolic--namely love
By transference, exchange, and dialogue, psychic equivalent
Would throw his arm, which separates into something symbolic,
Which seems to dissolve structure of this artificial phenomenon
Activity, convulsive fit, resistance within its own field--movements without aim
All of the emptying without any true dialogue
So far as to say, he was hyper-agitated on the situation of transference
Inflection is so little concerned
I am referring to experience, the function formulated.
As we will see, the text is two
From this full speech we call love
No evading this
As soon as we call the moving rooms
If he didn't reach it
Introduction: He became jerky and disorderly
To give touched observation of his behavior
To arrive at these terms: On the plane of the transference we call love
Not sure how well this works. Thoughts, anyone?