Brion Gysin - The Process

The Word, Hassan! All you have to say is the Word … when you know it … and you can be Emperor of Africa! Emperor Hassan the First! You do understand … don’t you, the move Thay has made … was obliged to make only today at noon? You must , after all, because Thay laid his last words on you , my dear … not on me . That transfer of the Saharan Seal to you could make you the Master of Words when you know what to do with it … and no one on earth can tell you but you , you know. Thay calls it the Roller, rolling out all the words in the world over and over, again and again, since the first Word was spoken. What you hold in your hand is the emerald Beginning and Ending of Words, Hassan … as a woman, naturally I fear you! As a woman, too, all I can tell you is what not to do. … That’s my nature. Don’t … for example … don’t press the Seal into wax or putty or anything soft … you haven’t tried doing that, have you? Don’t do anything silly and artistic like inking the Seal and running it onto paper. Just don’t , that’s all … don’t! That’s printing, you see … rolling out replicas. We’ll go into that later. In Present Time, down on Cape Noon, we’re fed up with replica Foulbas, you see. They’ve bred true-blue for so long that they’re all practically identically beautiful! The one perfect specimen multiplied to infinity … and why not? … in some sort of biological barbershop mirror. Dr. Francis-X. Fard has produced a little prose-poem pamphlet praising the Foulba for being the one people we know in the world who have come up with not one single object of culture in all their lone history … not even a knot, let alone the cord to tie one in … not even a pot! They boil things by dropping a red-hot rock in a leather sack of water or milk. The Foulba have known exactly how not to let them themselves be tied down by things! They’re innocent … beautiful … pure! Until I laid hands on them, they’d always been as free as the wind. Long, long ago they gave up their writing … except just for fun and to teach the young ones … they write in the dust where the wind will be sure to erase it. So much for the Word. The one big problem with them is the one you can guess … over-weening vanity! That’s how I was able to grab them up cheap … the whole lot. When I buy, it’s always in lots … things come so much cheaper … and the cheapest one can get something for in this life, after all, is for nothing , don’t you think? That’s what I like to pay, really … nothing at all. You see, I have my own little ways of getting what I want in life. I have a trick or six I picked up right here in Africa.

This particular, ah, product … I owe to Dr. Pio Labesse, an Old African Hand who was … well, really … my second husband and not the sixth as the newspapers always say. I’m his widow … or was . I’m sure Thay has painted you the worst possible picture of Pio but, truly, I owe him a lot … poor Pio. He had all the lore of North Africa at his fingertips, literally … but he lost it. He left it where he is, now … in the Past. This one, ah, product … is something I’ve gone into scientifically … chemically … and refined it out of all recognition, you see, but … perhaps, essentially … it is the same thing the original Calypso brewed up when that other Ulysses dropped in. What I’ve done is bring the whole thing up the time-scale to bring it in line with Present Time, so … Hassan-Ulysses … in Present Time … Look!

The lady who owns this cave is a nymph … a very wise nymph who knows not just a thing or two but … at least … a thing or sixteen! There are also thirty-second degree nymphs and she may well be one of these … or she might be of even higher rank, who knows? For the moment, that doesn’t matter because she’s … well, how shall I put it? … a fairly simple provincial nymph, in her own way. She doesn’t have a villa with a swimming pool on Capri, like Circe, but she’s doing all right … right here in Africa. There’s a full moon … it is night. Straight down there … right down where those Arabs are night-fishing … there, you see it? … a boat. She sits here, perfectly still on this rock, interviewing the moon as it crawls on its knees across the floor of her cave to her feet. Down there … rooting around in the brush under this cliff, she hears what might be a boar … a wild boar or an even more dangerous animal … Man! Nothing happens for quite a while and then … abruptly … there is a real man peering over that ledge!

“I am the nymph Calypso,” she says, drawing herself up. “ Who are you? ” The intruder is somewhat taken aback. He gulps and gives her what sounds like a phony title: “The king of Ithaca,” he mumbles … taking a good look around. When he spies all the edible goodies she has stored up in the back of her cave, he calls up his men to share in a good hot supper at her expense … with champagne! Charles Heidsieck champagne, as a matter of fact. Here, Hassan … just let me pour some more of my wine. … So! She takes out a vial and pulls out the stopper with her teeth … like this … and drops three drops of a magical elixir into his glass. “Here, drink this up, my Lord Emperor of Africa!” she says. Here, Hassan … cheers … drink up!

Nothing happens for quite a while, of course … the stuff doesn’t take effect immediately, naturally. He wipes his lips and hands his half-empty cup on to his second-in-command, who drinks deep and passes it on around the circle of men, who finish it up. Calypso looks wise. I don’t suppose we could get your magicians … I mean, your musicians to share this champagne with us right now, could we? … or I’d show you what I can do with this stuff. This is Borbor , Hassan … and you’ve just taken a dose. No, don’t worry … so have I , so I’ll be along on the trip with you. Wait! Nothing at all happens to Ulysses, Hassan … that is the trick! Borbor makes him more than ever what he really is … every inch a king! His followers, now … well, that’s something else again. My sister Circe used to turn them into what they are … into pigs, for example. My caretaker … Calypso, here … might have more mangy dogs to feed and fend off if we gave your musicians some Borbor , tonight. On that other occasion … or so I am told by my potty professor from Oxford … Ulysses threw back his big black burnous and, under it, he was wearing … not a UHER tape recorder … my dear … but a breastplate looted from Troy, made of purest soft-solid gold. In Present Time, I propose you hang this Order of the Golden Fleece over the microphone around your neck. This chain was made by Benvenuto Cellini for the Habsburg Emperor Charles whose Spanish grandmother, Queen Isabella, had been far-sighted enough to pick up the Americas for him … quite cheap … he lost them, of course. This valuable bauble once belonged, too, to the Rothschilds, who wore it to fancy-dress parties in Paris. You might attach the Emerald Seal to it with a thread or a fine thong. Don’t use a gold chain … it would cut into the stone.

What happens … Now? why … in his case, that first Ulysses took seven long years … so the story goes … to find out who he really was … not the lady’s husband at all! Now, Thay Himmer the Seventh, last White Rajah-Bishop of the Farout Isles, and I … although we’ve known each other for seven years … have been married just seven weeks! That leaves me an American Ranee … if I want to be! But, shucks, that ain’t nuttin’, no more! Ranee of a long-lost kingdom the size of a coral atoll on the other side of the world, lost in the middle of the Pacific? Thanks very much but no thanks! I mean, I simply adore Thay … who wouldn’t? … He is such a child … besides, it’s very handy in Present Time to be a U.S. citizen BUT … I have my eye on much bigger game right here in Africa. Africa, today, is where it really can happen. … Watch me! On the other hand, I wouldn’t dream of divorcing poor Thay … he’s an absolute elf! And , he’s quite right: It’s going to suit me to have a husband who never talks. … Poor Thay, he’s so helpless. …