Letter from Brion Gysin to Roger Knoebber, 18 April, 1982
Paris, France: Brion Gysin (letter), 1982.
letter: 11.75" x 8.25", single sheet, recto only.
envelope: 4.5" x 6.375".
RK19820418_LBG1_1
A letter from Brion Gysin at 135 rue St. Martin, Paris, France to Roger Knoebber in Berkeley, California.
This reads:
135 Rue St. Martin
Paris 4
18 April 82
Tel: 271-87.17
My dear Roger
You [sic] phone call just now set me reeling off down Memory Lane, naturally. I hate to tell you but I don’t think I’ve improved a bit in these 23 years, if that’s what it is. 21 surely. Some of it seems just like last week and I haven’t learned anything useful about myself in all that time. I am ashamed. Lots of things are still right where they were then, like the Dreamachine and paintings I am just shipping off to Basel where I am having a show. It’s a treadmill and I’ve just been dancing along on it and never “working”, whatever you mean by that about Nick Smart who seems to have been working quite a lot to get to a farm in VA. I still haven’t got a pot of my own to piss in but I can run to the Palace and dance all night to reel home alone at 4 or 5 in the morning. Not exactly serious at my age or any age, maybe.
David may have told you about my infatuation with Fafa de Palaminy but only I can tell you that my pseudo-sister Felicity Mason snapped me out of my delirium when I insisted that this was the one and only time in my life I had behaved so stupidly badly. All she said was “Remember Roger.” Dear Roger, how wonderful of you to remember me at all! And kindly! It’s too much. I still love you madly. What a gas.
Paris is still the city for me. I was in San Francisco only one time and for a minute during the war on leave from my Japanese Language School in Vancouver. If it was already the gay capital of the world, I missed that by going around with a Japanese girl and me in a kilt and a little Scotch bonnet. I wish I had a picture. What a dunce.
Your letter and then your phone call cheered me up greatly. I fell down stairs three months ago and am still suffering from it. Broken ribs fucked up my lungs by I’ve got a therapist coming to teach them to work again properly. A hole in my head leaked out a lot of short memory and let in a fog of depression but the spring will take care of that, I hope.
My show in Basel is through August and before that I hope to get to Tangier for Ramadan June 23 to July 29. Back to Tangier and up to Jajouka for the Feast of the Sheep in mid-September. Then, Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle is supposed to be getting together an English gig for Wm. and me but I don’t know. Anything in California would be great after that. Wm. is the drawing card and it all hangs on him to draw in the crowds. Hope it happens.
See you soonest.
With love,
Brion
Notes:
"Nick Smart": Fellow Beat Hotel, Paris resident and friend of both Roger Knoebber and Brion Gysin.
"run to the Palace and dance all night": A popular nightclub of the time in Paris.
"David may have told you": Possibly the arts patron and Key West, Florida resident David Wolkowski, to whom Roger Knoebber’s Hysteresis: A Profile of Brion Gysin is dedicated.
"my infatuation with Fafa de Palaminy": “Fafa” is the nickname of François de Palaminy, a photographer and the final known lover to Brion Gysin.
"pseudo-sister Felicity Mason": Felicity Mason (pen name: Anne Cummings) was an author, a libertine, and a dear friend of Brion Gysin, who often referred to her as his “pseudo psister.”
"All she said was 'Remember Roger'": This refers to the incident after Charles Henri Ford’s party in Rome in which Brion Gysin, who loved and desired Roger Knoebber, became jealous and physically harmed Roger, causing a temporary rift in friendship between them.
"My show in Basel is through August": At Galerie zem Specht.
"supposed to be getting together an English gig": This was “The Final Academy”, September 29 through October 2, 1982, London.
"Wm.": William S. Burroughs
Comments
Post a Comment