Good baby!.? is is an interactive remix of the piece "Junk is no good baby"
by Brion Gysin.
Junk is no good baby" (1962) is one of Brion Gysin's
'permutation poems', in which a single phrase is selected and repeated but with
the words rearranged each time.
Good baby!.? translates this piece into an
interactive permutation poem in which the permutations are controlled by the user. Depending on which position the word occurs a different utterance
of each word is selected. The title comes from the observation that the original
piece does not contain the utterance 'good' in the first position of the phrase
nor the utterance 'baby' in the second position.
Instructions:
Once the applet has loaded, press space to start (you may have to click on the applet first). Drag the words to the positions you want them to be. Listen to the results. Continue. Words are ordered according to their midpoint (i.e. a word is to the left of another if its midpoint is to the left of the midpoint of the second word.
At a surrealist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara the man from nowhere
proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot
ensued wrecked the theater. Andre Breton expelled Tristan Tzara from the
movement and grounded the cut-ups on the Freudian couch.
In the summer
of 1959 Brion Gysin painter and writer cut newspaper articles into sections and
rearranged the sections at random. "Minutes to Go" resulted from this initial
cut-up experiment. "Minutes to Go" contains unedited unchanged cut-ups emerging
as quite coherent and meaningful prose.
The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now cut down the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . . one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different-cutting up political speeches is an interesting excercise-in any case you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Here, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many Shakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: "Poetry is for everyone." And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: "Poetry is for everyone." Poetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaud's place. Here is a Rimbaud poem cut up.
"Visit of memories. Only your dance and your voice house. On the suburban air improbable desertions . . . all harmonic pine for strife.
"The great skies are open. Candor of vapor and tent spitting blood laugh and drunken penance.
"Promenade of wine perfume opens slow bottle.
"The great skies are open. Supreme bugle burning flesh children to mist."
--Excerpts from an Interview with Brion Gysin