Sitting in a café, a fireplace flickers and the rain outside whispers sweet nothings to the six-foot windows. The presence of flesh is evident yet, it’s only sound that matters. I sit listening. Now, this bears no relation to my research-integrated critical analysis of Brion Gysin and the Cut Up. However, it is where I am now reading many books, many pages of words, developing a dialog with them sitting around this little table. Minutes later I’ve realized my mind was digesting photographic memories and everything seemed so familiar, so comfortable. I could just fall asleep.

Picture this. Waking to four or five conversations simultaneously creating chatter, each speaking to each other in the day-to-day whether it’s face-to-face or to-phone. As smoothly as the hazelnut latte made it’s way through my system, I find myself listening with my pen. Jotting down the random happenings/emotions/feelings/objections/subjections/directions/rejections/opinions of the people surrounding me. Sporadic input aligned on the page in a structure that tells the story of not one, but of a culture, thus creating a new story. I called it Panera Café 2008.

This is not the definition of a Cut Up, but it certainly seems to be a fine qualification for nomination for the evolution of the Cut Up, depicting the rawness of the age we live in, 2008. It was 1959 when Brion Gysin discovered the technique of cutting multiple texts and rearranging them back into one space — the Cut Up. don’t blink.