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___ DO IT TO LITERATURE PART ONE: THE 40s AND 50s ___
for best improved effect I recommend reading it loud and in pairs - one reads the straight characters, the other reads the italics
any comments - or complaints about my bad english - directly to daniel@systemausfall.de

Antonin Artaud
Letter from Rodez.
The word shit.

Daniel Kulla

Contains samples from the books "Naked Lunch" and "Yage letters" by William S. Burroughs, "Schrödinger's Cat" by Robert Anton Wilson, and “Zwischen Liquid Sounds, Spirituallekt und Zwerchfellatio” by Ulrich Holbein, from the songs "Ugly" by Bubba Sparxxx and “After the eulogy” by Boysetsfire, from the Simpsons comic “Marge vs. Smithers”, and from various websites.


Dear Sir,

I'm writing with a pencil because I do not have ink and cannot get any for the other inmates around me empty the inkpots all over my books and manuscripts.
You have nothing to fear. Look here. Listen to me. I did not go to Mexico in order to have an initiation trip or an enjoyment ride which could be told in a chemin-book afterwards. The purist psychedelic fundamendalist that I am says: Forget it! I went there to find a race that might folllow my ideas. You already follow my trails all the time. You didn't listen - or couldn't.
You can better rely on your Ayahuasca consciousness than on 'common sense'. I feel like when we were drinking Homer's homemade sugar cane christmas glogg. Being a poet or an actor - to me it is not about writing poems or to declaim them - it's about living them.

Reciting a poem is not about getting applauded. And Joselito who wrote bad class-conscious poems started coughing.

Are you listening to me now? Take the attached blueprint of this letter. Cut it into four pieces. Rearrange them. Now read it aloud -  and you will hear my voice. Whose voice? Listen. Cut it again and rearrange it in different ways. Read aloud. I can't help but listen to stuff like this. Don't start theorizing. Do it. Do the same to your own poems. I need poems for living and I want to see them around me. Do it to any kind of poems or prose. I want the poems of Villon, of Baudelaire, of Poe or Nerval to become reality. And the life from the books, from the magazines, the theaters or the masses. Try it. Ignore the repercussions! You want me to help you? Very well. Forget your inner visions, I wanna see you whylin'. Help yourself. And always remember: "Nothing is true. Everything is allowed."

Because that is what I am accused of and that is what I have been arrested for, straightjacketed for, poisoned for and electroshocked for: I wanted to find the essential substance of the soul and release it as a physical fluid. The name of this substance is Shit-tah.

I blame the people of these times for putting me on this earth by the meanest magic maneuvres - on an earth I did not want - and for barring me by similar magic maneuvres from screwing a hole into this world in order to leave it. The breath of the bones has got a centre and this centre is the abyss Shit-tah, the physical breath of shit which is the opium of eternal life.
 
HEAR YE ALL MY LAST WORDS. LISTEN, AUTHORITIES SYNDICATS AND GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD. AND YOU POWERS AND WIREPULLERS BEHIND DIRTY BUSINESS THAT IS DONE IN DIRTY LATRINES AND THAT IS TO SECURE SOMETHING FOR YOU WHICH YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO. BUSINESS THAT SELLS OFF THE GROUND UNDERNEATH THE YET UNBORNS' FEET. LISTEN. This thing has always been done but now it's gettin' ugly. WHAT I HAVE TO SAY CONCERNS EVERYONE EVERYWHERE. I'm up the ass, says the human life. I REPEAT: EVERYONE. WITHOUT EXCEPTION. I DO IT FOR FREE - FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS TO PAY. EVERYONE WHO HAS TO PAY FOR HIS EXISTENCE WITH SUFFERING. Because all mankind wants to live, but it does not wants to pay the price, and this price is the price of fear. In order to be there is a fear to challenge. How many starving millions have to die on our front doorsteps?
WHAT SHOOED YOU INTO TIME? And without forgetting something of itself? WHAT SHOOED YOU ALL INTO YOUR BODIES? INTO THE SHIT, FOREVER?
Um, this century doesn't understand anymore the fecal poetry, the inner misery of Madame Death.
SO, HEAR THE LAST WORDS OF HASSAN SABBAH. HEAR, SEE OR SHIT FOREVER. How many dying millions have to crawl to our front doorsteps? WHAT SHOOED YOU INTO TIME? INTO A BODY? INTO SHIT? I'LL TELL YOU WHAT: THE WORD, written signed off in the obituary. THE WORD THAT YOU ARE. What happened to us? IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE WORD. THAT SHOOED YOU INTO THE SHIT FOREVER. Where's your anger? Where's your fucking rage? COME OUT, FOREVER. All the shit that has climbed out of the amassment of coffins is an opium snatched from the soul. COME OUT OF THE WORD TIME THAT YOU ARE. FOREVER. The poet Artaud wanted to revolutionize life by means of theater.
COME OUT OF THE WORD BODY THAT YOU ARE. FOREVER. Artaud wanted to free art from repetition, lead it into the purity of absolute presence.
COME OUT OF THE WORD SHIT THAT YOU ARE, FOREVER. Susan Sontag describes Artaud as "one of the great daring mapmakers of consciousness in extremis".
OUT OF TIME AND INTO SPACE. FOREVER. I talked to Antonin Artaud about God: You all have nothing to fear. IN SPACE THERE IS NOTHING. THAT IS ALL ALL ALL. After his discharge, 1947, last spectacular public appearance in the Sorbonne of Paris: Artaud accuses the psychiatrists: YOU HAVE NO WORD TO FEAR ANYMORE. THERE IS NO WORD HERE. THERE NO WATCHDOG IN SIGHT  - WHEREVER YOU LOOK.



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