Creativity on the radio

Woke up this morning to an especially interesting To The Best of Our Knowledge show on Creativity. There are segments on David Lynch's reliance on Transcendental Meditation for inspiration and Gunther Schuller talking about working with the jazz and classical giants. But the really interesting piece to me is the one about Brion Gysin, who directly or indireectly influenced anyone who dared consider themselves avante garde in the second half of the 20th Century. A painter, poet, conceptual artist, he had so many big ideas and he shared them with anyone within earshot, which included William Burroughs, Alice B Toklas, David Bowie and others, but he never quite got it together to create his own magnum opus.

He submitted a recipe for pot brownies to Alice B Toklas' cookbook and it was printed by accident. The book was subsequently banned for promoting drug use, and sales surged.

Perhaps most importantly, he's the guy behind the cut-up technique that Burroughs is famous for. I love his permutation poems, too. Hilarious stuff.

As is so usual for autodidacts like him, he died penniless, sick and depressed.

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