http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MsO1FLYee8
FZ: Hiya. How you doin' tonight? Alright, um, as you know, I'm not the kind of a person that reads books, I've said this before many times, I'm not fond of reading. But, I do, I have in the past made exceptions, and uh, one of these exceptions was this part of the, the book that, I'm sure you know, called Naked Lunch, and I've received permission to read the part about the talking asshole. So . . .
Before I do, uh, I've discussed with Mr. Burroughs before we came out here some of the details that led to the construction of this section of the book. I asked him where he got the idea for this part, and he said that it was derived from the ventriloquist scene in The Dead Of Night, if you know that film. And I had a little bit of trouble following that, for a moment there, until he made it all very clear to me by saying that uh, it was like uh, when you have a ventriloquist dummy and suddenly the dummy starts talking for you. And so, with that introduction, I start on page 132, and it goes like this (ahem.):
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig, farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This "ass-talk" had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you hafta do is "turn loose"? Well, this talking hit you right down there. A bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. A sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival, you dig, and tos tart with, it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better Oh", that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it, but it was clever, like, "Oh, I say, are you still down there, old thing? 'Nah, I had to go relieve myself!'"
After a while, the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib, and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy incurving hooks, and started eating. He thought this was cute at first, and built an act around it. But the asshole would eat its way through his pants, and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags, nobody loved it, an'- and wanted.. and it wanted to be kissed, same as any other mouth. Finally, it talked all the time, day and night. You could hear him for blocks, screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it. But nothing did any good, and the asshole said to him, "It's you who will shut up in the end, not me. Because, we don't need you around here any more. I can talk, and eat, AND shit".
After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call "un D.T.", undifferentiated tissue, (herr) which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly, and grow there. Grow anywhere . . . on him . . . grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell.
So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous.. did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa, and only among negros, where the little toe amputates spontaneously?
Except for the eyes, you dig? That's the one thing the asshole couldn't do, was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophed, so the brain couldn't give orders any more. it was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For awhile, you could see the silent helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk.
Giorno Poetry Systems GPS 014-015
Released 06/18/79
Recorded December 1-2, 1978 [Zappa's appearance was 12-2-78]
Side One
Terry Southern: Vignette of Idealistic Life In South Texas
William S. Burroughs: Keynote Commentary/Roosevelt After Inauguration
John Giorno: Entering The Sky
Patti Smith: Poem For Jim Morrison/Bumblebee
Side Two
William S. Burroughs: Benway
Philip Glass: Building
Brion Gysin: Kick That Habit/Junk Is No Good Baby/Somebody Special/Blue Baboon
Frank Zappa: The Talking Asshole
William S. Burroughs: from The Gay Gun: "This Is Kim Carson" & "Just Like The Collapse Of Any Currnency"/The Whole Tamale
Side Three
William S. Burroughs: What The Nova Convention Is About
Ed Sanders: Hymn To Aphrodite From Sappho
John Cage: Writing For The Second Time Through Finnegans Wake
Anne Waldman: Plutonium Ode/Skin Meat Bones
Side Four
Laurie Anderson & Julia Heyward: Song From America On The Move
Allen Ginsburg & Peter Orlovsky: Punk Rock/Old Pond/Feeding Them Raspberries To Grow/Nurses Song
William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine & Robert Anton Wilson: Conversations
BTW, it's an extremely long double LP at almost 131 minutes.
(Thanks to Biffyshrew for information on the Nova Convention LP.)
From "SwinginPig" (February 20, 2002):
Hello there, you can download the FZ lecture at the Nova Convention (1978) at : http://www.ubu.com/sound/nova.html
This is a lecture entitled "The Talking Asshole" (5:25), an excerpt from the book "The Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs. There are also other lecture by artists such as William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, John Cage and many others.
From Little Stevie Blunder (February 21, 2002):
Ohh My Gawd!
I was at that show at the iNtermedia Theatre in Greenwich Village in 1978 - I think Patty Smith was playing clarinet while Frank read it? It was fabulous; Laurie Anderson, Bill Burroughs, Patty Smith, Timothy Leary...
fuente:
(http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/related/The_Nova_Convention.html)
