Memorial Day Memorialization

Think it --a "Cut-Up"

https://realitystudio.org/criticism/predicting-a-pandemic-william-burroughs-and-covid-19/

‘When you cut into the present, the future leaks out,’ Burroughs wrote in the essay ‘Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups,’ which he read at Boulder’s Naropa University in 1976. Much has already been made of this quote, both as a signifier of the ‘prophetic’ nature of Burroughs’ writing, and as a key theory about the cut-ups. In the same talk, he explained, ‘When you experiment with cut-ups over a period of time, some of the cut and rearranged texts seem to refer to future events’.

For the purpose of this discussion, I will specifically focus on the details that connect the cut-ups to Burroughs’ wide-ranging theories around virus. I have no intention of stretching so far forward to suggest Burroughs predicted the COVID-19 pandemic, but shall instead draw out parallels that exist between the time when Burroughs was most deeply immersed in his cut-up practices and evolving his ‘word virus’ theory and the present. My aim is simply to address the speculation that fills so much dead air on social media. Perhaps there is no need to speculate as to what Burroughs would have made of the current situation, and perhaps many of his ideas and theories can be found within his texts: in much the same way as Nostradamus’ works foretold the future, so we can scrutinise Burroughs’ work for the leaked futures he believed were embedded there.

“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”
-Voltaire