262
ALLEN GINSBERG
Ginsberg:
The virus from Venus (as before a trust of giant insects from
another galaxy) or as in other times the CIA, or the economic control
monopolists, or the antisex forces, are all resumed in terms of Power
Addiction. So Burroughs wants to discover the source, where the orig·
inal imposition of brainwash comes from. He sees his job also as an
explorer and inventor of how-to books, how to combat brainwash,
how to liberate consciousness from the conditions imposed on it by
the Control Forces.
Int:
So if the reader can read his books, he is along the way to violating
that conditioning by virtue of experiencing Burroughs's own tech–
niques, just as the readers who read
The Waste Land
learned a new
kind of perception?
Ginsberg:
Yes. Throughout his books there are all these suggestions on
how to observe your own speech and behavior to see who were the
people who influenced you and to trace your attitudes, gestures,
styles, words, and tones of voice to the original people you were
imitating, your father, teachers, lovers, or whoever was leaving an im–
pression on you. Last time I saw him he told me that "whoever leaves
an impression on you is a vampire." His statement was so impressive
... striking I mean ... curious .. . that I went home that night and
had a dream of William Blake as a vampire because Blake had
in
a
sense invaded my consciousness, left an impression which struck me
and stuck me there revolving around the corpse of that impression for
decades ... which was a violation of the Tantric injunction not to
cling to any impression. So Burroughs is saying that for his own role
he wants to make "himself" obsolete.
