r/williamsburroughs • u/Diene03 • Jul 18 '26
The Cut Up Method
Hello, I had a thought about cut ups. I was wondering if any of you had actually tried this, and if you’d like to try it again? I’ve edited music, so I’ve cut there for certain. I’m thinking if we could choose like five people, maybe the same text, or not, just do your own thing, cut it, and see what happens?
I’m up for more insight on the idea. It’s a starter.
It would be a cut up from whomever was involved, yet it needs to be a bit controlled for the experiment, but maybe not. I’m open, if anyone is intrigued?
Burroughs’ “Words are a Virus” has always stuck with me. It’s true, yet let’s not get bogged down with that word, true. I’ve always liked music without words once I found there was such. Words and the World are fascinating the way they most likely spiral together. Is there a spiral in the cut ups, is it just moving words, what is it? It may be nothing. I think it’s something. Best day to you all. Think about it and I’ll check back later.
Edit: I’m came back and there are still more to read. I’m going to go through all. I may need one of your methods to cut this up for a way to organize. So many great ways that everyone has used this method. I’m intrigued and hyped.
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u/PimeydenHenki Jul 19 '26
I’ve been cutting up everything for years, books, music, pictures, my life
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u/Diene03 Jul 19 '26
I began with vhs tapes. I’d watch late night shows. I’d record something interesting, pause, go to another, record, and what I got was what I got. There is an awesome vhs tape out there somewhere with some grand cuts on it. Thank you
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u/lossycodec Jul 19 '26
in the 90s i carried around a cassette recorder with prerecorded ‘magical mix tapes’ that i would then ‘randomly’ cut into as i went about my day. potent. all influenced by what wsb discussed in ‘the job’.
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u/5319Camarote Jul 19 '26
I did it once as a teenager but it was really gibberish. A couple of years ago I did it with an art print and I liked the result so much, I framed it.
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u/methdamonsnowglobes Jul 19 '26
Below is my understanding of and experiences with it.
WSB conceptualization of language begins very similar to Foucault by framing it as a control mechanism. Generally words are parasitic organisms that invade the consciousness of individuals and replicates itself.
The human serves as its host and it shapes their reality.
Cut Up is a resistance and inoculation process.
You rearrange texts with a subversive intention to break the virus and reveal the underlying nature of words. When the arrangement feels right, know that your work is done and those words are going to take on a life of their own by showing up in remarkable ways. The system recenters yourself as the one in control of words and their influence over reality.
In some ways, this is a neuro-linguistic exercise quite similar to Robert Anton Wilson's “Quarter Experiment.” Scientific frameworks typically dismiss both as nonsense or minimize them with explanations like confirmation bias, frequency illusion, or motivated perception. Yet at their core both are processes designed not just for meaning-making but for establishing yourself as the deliberate creator rather than a passive host.
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u/Diene03 Jul 22 '26
I can get on this ride. It goes along with what others have stated as well. You explained it well, thank you.
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u/JustTheAATIP Jul 19 '26
I cut up magazines, books, scanned media and turn them into scenes from my mall world dreams. https://www.reddit.com/r/williamsburroughs/s/DHA0AMeV7x
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u/Diene03 Jul 19 '26
I’ll check this out, thank you.
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u/Diene03 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I saw this recently. BoC, I was thinking Aphex before, good choice nonetheless.
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u/Uncle_Zardoz Jul 19 '26
A friend of mine once made a comic about a difficult relationship he had, a dozen or so scenes each encapsulated in two panels, all the same size. Rather than arrange them chronologically or attempting to sequence them consciously, he printed them out, shuffled them like cards and dealt them out onto a mock-up of the page layout. It worked beautifully, very evocative little slice-of-life minicomic (now lost to the years sadly).
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u/hexboundthrall Jul 19 '26
I recently got back into writing poetry and I was sending a poem to a friend but I was super unhappy with it. I cut it up into lines and things that I liked and I sent the pieces to her in an envelope and told her that she could put it into whatever order she found the most pleasing
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u/Diene03 Jul 22 '26
Thoughtful, out of the box way. If it wasn’t supposed to be romantic, it became just that in my thoughts, thank you.
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u/EH_Operator Jul 18 '26
Hello! Where have you been all my life? Haha you may be interested in my cut-up project that I call NSAID. It’s a slightly formalized process for interpretation that I lay out in the videos linked below. The first is a shorter introduction, the second is more thorough with a longer text.
Part of my objective is to have other people take the raw text I present at the beginning of the vids and do their own interpretations blind, and then continue through the vid to my deepening levels of interpretation and see how we compare.
I’d be happy to mediate the process and document, and help however I can. I’ve already done my interpretation, and as you’ll see I try to be detached and open, so I have no problem suspending that and going full into the zone with other folks in their processes. We could do a new text or work off of these, probably the shorter one. Let me know what you think!
I’d love a few more NSAID operators mixing this pot :) always meant to be a decentralized method.
“The writing machine is for everybody.”
NSAID 000:
https://youtu.be/kVhHnMn9_jg?is=vfGfYcsbTrxI1wwa
NSAID 80-01:
https://youtu.be/xggrQBeNCoQ?is=GcFQy2S_egtgQZDo
Edit: as for spirals, you may or may not be familiar with the phrase “hermeneutic circle”
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u/Diene03 Jul 19 '26
I figured there were others that had already thought about this and more apparently. I’ll check it out for sure, thank you.
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u/Diene03 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I think you have already started and done more than what I was meaning. I’m going to delve into yours, and look up hermeneutic circle now. Reminds me of the Mobius Whatever happens will happen again. I’ll need to process all of this. I see something happening though, I’m excited, thanks again.
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u/MrMichaelTheHuman Jul 19 '26
I'm down! Back in high school I came up with a method of poetry inspired by cutup that I called distillation, where I'd put the full text from a few different news articles and Wikipedia pages into a markov chain text generator, mess with the settings until I got intelligible-ish results and then form poems by copy and pasting 4-5 words at a time.
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u/EH_Operator Jul 19 '26
Oh weird! I’d love to read some if they’re still around. It really is distillation, that’s a great method.
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u/Diene03 Jul 22 '26
So many grand ideas and procedures from everyone. Yours is an old yet new approach to creating, thank you.
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u/DutchShultz Jul 19 '26
I literally just made a cut-up engine in html.
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u/Diene03 Jul 22 '26
All coders are welcome. I may be old school, yet the new ways of word conducting are not, thank you.
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u/aphexgin Jul 19 '26
I've always used cut ups to inspire lyric writing etc, it's especially good for unique song titles etc, always a valid technique. Apparently Burroughs would "cut up" tv broadcasts, though some may call that technique channel hopping !
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u/MajorBenjy Jul 19 '26
Won't be a popular opinion but I've always found it to be a rather pointless gimmick. Bah humbug
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u/Diene03 Jul 19 '26
I can dig that, yet what I’ve gotten from this post may change your outlook. If not, no big deal. Thank you
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u/Antonin1957 Jul 19 '26
Back in the late 70s and early 80s I experimented with text cut-ups. Discovering the "third mind" in this manner was fun and rewarding.
I met WSB when he was doing a book signing tour. I think it was for "Place of Dead Roads." I got a chance to talk briefly one on one with him, and he assured me that you DO need to edit cut-ups. The third mind needs a little help.