How William S. Burroughs Used the Lower-Up Approach to Shut Down London’s First Espresso Bar (1972)

As we’ve not­ed before, the Eng­lish cof­price­home has served as a stag­ing floor for rad­i­cal, some­instances rev­o­lu­tion­ary social change. Cer­tain­ly this was the case dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, because it was with the salons in France. And but, by the ear­ly twentieth cen­tu­ry it appears, cof­price outlets in Lon­don had grown scarcer and extra hum­drum. That’s till 1953 when the Moka Bar, the UK’s first Ital­ian espres­so bar, opened in Soho. On his weblog The Great Wen, Peter Watts describes its arrival as “a momen­tous occasion”:

London’s first prop­er cof­price store—one geared up with a Gag­gia cof­price machine—opened at 29 Frith Road. This was a spot the place youngsters too younger for pubs might come and gath­er, and it’s mentioned by some that the intro­duc­tion of this cof­price bar immediate­ed the youth cul­ture explo­sion that quickly modified social life in Britain for­ev­er.

“By 1972,” Watts writes, “cof­price bars have been each­the place and the teenage rev­o­lu­tion was agency­ly estab­lished.” Locations just like the Moka Bar would possibly appear to be the ide­al place for coun­ter­cul­tur­al maven William S. Bur­roughs—a Lon­don res­i­dent from the late six­ties to ear­ly seventies—to hob­nob with younger dis­si­dents and out­siders. Bur­roughs, who so approv­ing­ly refers back to the pos­si­bly apoc­ryphal anar­chist pirate colony of Lib­er­ta­tia in his Cities of the Red Night, would, one would possibly suppose, appre­ci­ate the bud­ding anar­chism of British youth cul­ture, which might flower into punk quickly sufficient.

However fairly than be part of­ing the cof­price bar scene, the can­tan­ker­ous Bur­roughs had tak­en to fre­quent­ing “plush gents’s outlets of the realm, to not males­tion the ‘Dil­ly Boys,’ younger male professionals­ti­tutes who hus­tled for purchasers out­facet the Regent Palace Resort.”

And he had grown increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with Lon­don, fum­ing, writes Ted Mor­gan in Bur­roughs’ biog­ra­phy Lit­er­ary Out­law, “at what he was pay­ing for his hole-in-the-wall aside­ment with a clos­et for a kitchen” and on the ris­ing value of util­i­ties. “Bur­roughs,” Mor­gan tells us, “started to really feel that he was in ene­my ter­ri­to­ry.” And he thought the Moka cof­price bar ought to pay the worth for his indig­ni­ties.

There, “on sev­er­al occa­sions a snarling coun­ter­man had deal with­ed him with out­ra­geous and unpro­voked dis­cour­tesy, and served him poi­so­nous cheese­cake that made him sick.” Bur­roughs “decid­ed to retal­i­ate by placing a curse on the place.” He selected a way of assault that he’d ear­li­er employed in opposition to the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy, “flip­ing up… daily,” writes Watts, “tak­ing pho­tographs and mak­ing sound document­ings.” Then he would play them again a day or so lat­er on the road out­facet the Moka. “The thought,” writes Mor­gan, “was to position the Moka Bar out of time. You performed again a tape that had tak­en place two days in the past and also you tremendous­im­posed it on what was hap­pen­ing now, which pulled them out of their time posi­tion.”

Bur­roughs additionally con­nect­ed the strategy to the Water­gate document­ings, the Gar­den of Eden, and the the­o­ries of Alfred Korzyb­s­ki. The trig­ger for the magazine­i­cal oper­a­tion was, in his phrases, “play­again.” In a really unusual essay known as “Feed­back from Water­gate to the Gar­den of Eden,” from his col­lec­tion Elec­tron­ic Rev­o­lu­tion, Bur­roughs described his oper­a­tion intimately, a dis­rup­tion, he wrote, of a “con­trol sys­tem.”

Now to use the three tape recorder anal­o­gy to this sim­ple oper­a­tion. Tape recorder 1 is the Moka Bar itself it’s in pris­tine con­di­tion. Tape recorder 2 is my document­ings of the Moka Bar vicin­i­ty. These document­ings are entry. Tape recorder 2 within the Gar­den of Eden was Eve made out of Adam. So a document­ing made out of the Moka Bar is a chunk of the Moka Bar. The document­ing as soon as made, this piece turns into autonomous and out of their con­trol. Tape recorder 3 is play­again. Adam expe­ri­ences disgrace when his dis­c­grace­ful behav­ior is performed again to him by tape recorder 3 which is God. By play­ing again my document­ings to the Moka Bar after I need and with any adjustments I want to make within the document­ings, I grow to be God for this native. I impact them. They will­not have an effect on me.

The the­o­ry made per­fect sense to Bur­roughs, who believed in a Mag­i­cal Uni­verse dominated by occult forces and who exper­i­ment­ed heav­i­ly with Sci­en­tol­ogy, Crow­ley-an Mag­ick, and the orgone ener­gy of Wil­helm Reich. The assault on the Moka labored, or a minimum of Bur­roughs believed it did. “They’re seething in there,” he wrote, “I’ve them and so they realize it.” On Octo­ber thirtieth, 1972  the estab­lish­ment closed its doorways—maybe a con­se­quence of these ris­ing rents that so irked the Beat author—and the loca­tion grew to become the Queens Snack Bar.

The audio-visu­al cut-up tech­nique Bur­roughs utilized in his assault in opposition to the Moka Bar was a technique derived by Bur­roughs and Brion Gysin from their exper­i­ments with writ­ten “cut-ups,” and Bur­roughs utilized it to movie as properly. On the prime of the put up, see an inter­pre­tive “med­i­ta­tion” based mostly on Bur­roughs’ use of audio/visible “magazine­i­cal weapons” and incor­po­rat­ing his document­ings. On YouTube, you may watch “The Cut Ups,” a brief movie Bur­roughs him­self made in 1966 with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Antony Balch, a dis­ori­ent­ing illus­tra­tion of the lower up tech­nique.

Not lim­it­ed to assault­ing annoy­ing Lon­don cof­price­home personal­ers, Bur­roughs’ sup­pos­ed­ly magazine­i­cal inter­ven­tions in actual­i­ty have been in reality the fullest expres­sion of his cre­ativ­i­ty. As Ted Mor­gan writes, “the sin­gle most impor­tant factor about Bur­roughs was his perception within the magazine­i­cal uni­verse. The identical impulse that led him to place out curs­es was, as he noticed it, the supply of his writ­ing.” Learn way more about Bur­roughs’ the­o­ry and prac­tice in Matthew Levi Stevens’ essay “The Mag­i­cal Uni­verse of William S. Bur­roughs,” and listen to the creator him­self dis­course on the para­nor­mal, tape cut-ups, and way more within the lec­ture beneath from a writ­ing class he gave in June, 1986.

Word: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our web site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Process with William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC.