Letter from Brion Gysin to Roger Knoebber, 12 March, 1984
Paris, France: Brion Gysin (letter), 1984
letter: 11.75" x 8.25", single sheet, both sides, typed.
envelope: 4.5" x 6.375".
RK19840312_LBG1_1
A letter from Brion Gysin at 135 rue St. Martin, Paris, France to Roger Knoebber (San Francisco, California).
This reads:
135 rue St. Martin
Paris 4
12 March 84
Dear Roger
How nice to hear you, even at seven a.m. Why do you want to come to Paris? I thought San Francisco was the earthly paradise. I intend to stay here because I am locked into the Soc. Sec. and the Museum system. I cannot think how I could ever get the same back in the States. As I told an interviewer the other day, we live slightly in the past over here and the past is more comfortable than the present. If the States be the present, it is presumably more comfortable than the future which is Russo-Chinese. So I stay. I was foolish enough to say in 1973 that I had come back to Paris to die because I was tired of being taken for a tourist. Ten years later and I'm still here with a colostomy and a punctured lung, apparently. I've got my shit together, more or less but what I need is a widow to see that it doesn't all go into the garbage when I do. Sometimes I wonder why I worry but I do, a bit.
My friends complain that I complain too much and they've got something there. These last years have been full of wonders. I have no gallery for my pictures but I do have the French museum system as my main customer. At the moment, I have no publisher for my new book THE BEAT MUSEUM or to reissue THE PROCESS but I do have fans here and there. The greatest gift has been my jazz association with Steve Lacy and the my crossover to rock with Ramuntcho Matta. Have you hear [sic] my cut of JUNK on the Giorno record "Life Is a Killer"? Glenn O'Brien in Warhol's Interview called it 'an all-time great'. For the moment we still don't have a record out but I am the oldest rock singer in the world now that Mae West is dead. I'm going to perform with Wm. & Co. next month.
On the sentimental side, I refused to take my clothes off for any but doctors and nurse until a likely lad insisted so much, well, it was three years between heaven and hell for both of us and now is done. My night man from Morocco of 8 years standing came on holiday for three weeks recently and that just about finishes it up but that old demon still has me playing with paper dolls out of old numbers of Honcho. What a mess.
If you really wanted to stay over here you'd have to begin by getting a permanent visa from the French, then run around for papers from banks to justify your means, certificates of professionality if you are going to be an artist etc. When I was young before the war there were only a hundred or so artists and no health services for them. Now, I am told there are 60,000 and a whole ministry to service us. What fun.
What would your plans be, to come over here with wives and kiddies? I don't really know what it costs to live here. I just spend the money as it comes in since I have no income and notice that my bank account is minimal. My rent for two rooms here opposite the museum is about 400 dollars a month and perhaps 200 more for services. I am invited out a lot but that is both a pleasure and a chore as I can hardly get around the block any better than you say you do. However I pick up miraculously at the sight of a microphone in a studio or an elegant party or nightclub full of elegant youths. I drink too much but then I always did. My cynical doctor and good friend says that there is not time to save myself for my old age as I am already well into it. He leaves it up to me to decide if I want any more x-rays of my lung as there is nothing to be done about it in any case. Being English, he swears he has a Brompton cocktail for my last party of all.
I was amused by your mention of Felicity [Mason]. Over all these years, she never did leave a trick of mine unturned. She's a dear girl but too old to be my widow even if it might help her get a Green Card. After Texas with Wm. [Burroughs] last November I stayed with her in NY. She still hustles around and gives lavish English teas for a weird assortment of people. She still dabbles in real estate and has a couple of cottages in Newport in exchange for her pads in Italy. her grandchildren are growing up. Did you read her LOVE HABIT? It's a gas but now she is onto sex after seventy while I am writing about sex after death. Faber & Faber finds this hard to swallow partly because I make it so funny apparently. Everyone has a twenty-one centimetre penis or clitoris. How much does that make in inches?
I must leave you here & go rest up for a party with a patron who says he is bringing the Dreamachines I was showing at the Modern Art Museum recently.
Love
Brion
Brion
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