on the tao of do easy
The Peripheral, television series and book by William Gibson
19 Nov 22 | Issue 42
Hey, you know those posts where you spuriously connect a bunch of disparate people together? How about Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, occultist Aleister Crowley, film auteur Gus Van Sant, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg?
Easy.
William Burroughs.
Or rather, doing easy.
For a while now I've been meaning to write a post on chaos magick. This isn't that post, still figuring out exactly what to say. Double bubble, boil and broth.
Magick is a form of arrogance. Believing you can bend reality to your desire through will power. This strikes me as a metaphor or simile or analogy or pointing-at-and-name-calling to philosophy. There's two sorts, aren't there. Good advice like your gran might mete out in the kitchen... 'a stitch in time saves nine', 'don't butter the edge of your bread', 'weevils never sleep in rows', that kind of thing. Then there’s the stuff old white men do. Which it turns out is exactly the same, but because it doesn't show how important they are, or allow them to speak for hours at length mansplaining, they have to write a whole book about the system they invented to prove that casual weevil sleeping arrangements are valid.
I've been talking with my friend Isabella about when a project seems insurmountable, treating it as simple right-now achievable tasks. I've been annoying Anne for years with talk of effortless action, doing without doing, irritating without irritating. I've been reading up on the découpé tradition, the cut-up, for a forthcoming issue interviewing Nicholas Royle.
Then, as if by... well, magick, I read a webpage about William Burroughs — who claimed that the cut-up was actually powerful divination and should not be used for mere literary games — enthusing about something called 'do easy' as a magical technique.
Occultist Genesis P-Orridge is on record saying without being a practitioner they (correct pronoun) would never have recorded over 300 albums. Far be it from me to suggest having no self-critical filter could produce the same result. After all, Genesis did write the immortal couplet "I've got a biscuit tin, to keep your panties in". Which, due to an unfortunate taste in music, my children hum to this day.
William Burroughs wrote about something he called 'The Discipline of DE' as part of a short story in the collection 'Exterminator!'. You can read it here www.mrflamm.com/uploads/2/2/0/0/2200902/exterminator_-_burroughs.pdf
Here's the opening line of the instruction within the story —
DE is a way of doing. It is a way of doing everything you do. DE simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest most relaxed way you can manage which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in DE.
Every story should start at the beginning, so I'll start this one here —
The text "Zhuangzi" is a collection of anecdotes attributed to ancient and wise philosopher Zhuang Zhou. We can call him ancient because he anecdoted around 4 BCE. Which, along with the I Ching forms the central tenants of Taoism. 4 BCE seems early enough to start our story. We'll do that by quoting this parable from it.
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox. As every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee – zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing music. Cook Ting said, ‘When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now – now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup. A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years.
This is wu-wei (無爲, wúwéi), commonly translated and understood as effortless action.
When auteur Gus Van Sant was still a film student, he wanted to make a 16mm film of 'The Discipline of DE'. Being a man after my own heart (in a non magic sort of way, my heart is staying in my chest and not going in anyone's cauldron) he rang up Burroughs and asked. Burroughs being Burroughs had him over for tea (and possibly opium, this is undisclosed). Of particular interest is this snippet told to Van Sant.
"Of course, when anyone knocks something over, or trips over something or breaks anything, they are at that moment thinking of someone they don’t like."
This I think is powerful magic. Forget bending the universe to your desire, far more potent is the power of negative thinking. Heed well, young wizard.
You may be thinking that my link to Aleister Crowley by way of mentioning Genesis P-Orridge was as tenuous as fuck. Not so. Do what thou wikipedia being the whole of the law. Burroughs was a magick believer and lo! behold! the Aleister Crowley noticeboard — "What strange spell is this Oh Ankh-f-n-khonsu?", "Tis signals and words you conjured from another plane, Great Perabduro!", "Strange light and emanations radiate from the portal, Grand Master. Witness!, the forum spirit user @ignant666 speaks of 'doing easy'!" — indeed, it is there, foretold, in the runes of www.lashtal.com/forums/stuff/doing-easy-william-burroughs-eassay-on-wu-wei.
Buddhist and beat poet Allen Ginsberg invited Burroughs to speak about do easy at the Jack Kerouac School Of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. DE being in line with the 'crazy wisdom' of Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa.
The sharp eyed will have spotted Ginsberg was Buddhist, not Taoist. There is an (extremely) apocryphal story about the birth of Buddhism. Lao Tzu travels to India, meets Siddhartha and explains Taoism. Asked on his return how it went, Lao Tzu replies that Siddhartha was a lovely chap but didn't really understand the tao. Here's the wonderful Ginsberg doing easy allenginsberg.org/2015/07/william-burroughs-proclamation-do-easy.
Aleister Crowley said Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, which always makes me think of lettuce. Burroughs said Do easy. To be honest I find his instruction a little too methodical. Not vague enough. The power of effortless action is it's all a little fuzzy. There is no right way. Only the way. I say Do what comes natural.
The Eagles of course say Take It Easy
Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy
Do what comes natural. Or better still —
Don't sweat it.
When faced with a long journey, remember — this is a metaphor for any stress-inducing project, where one gets entangled in how much to do there is, rather than the doing — you’re going cross country.
The aim is to reach the border on the far side in six months.
There are many routes you can take.
Take little steps, just looking a few feet ahead. Not caring about the specific direction you’re going in.
The important thing is walking. Covering what ground you can, each day. Not spending it stressing over map reading, pontificating on where to head next.
Just set out on the easiest path immediately in front of you. What can you do now? Straight away, without any more preparation, without further ado.
Each day you’ll make reasonable ground as your pace produces miles. Until, looking back, you realise just how much ground you’ve covered, instead of worrying about how far you have to go.
And if we really want to push our metaphor, perhaps seeing how far we've come, making some adjustments to the general direction of the next leg.
This to me is Do Easy. Doing without doing.
Last week I liked ending not on my own words, so let's revisit Gus Van Sant being told that every time Burroughs tripped over, he was thinking of someone he didn't like. Van Sant reflects
...every time I knocked something over or tripped over anything I stopped to think, and I was always thinking of someone or something that I didn’t like. This was illuminating. Time and again, when I fumbled and broke something, there it was, I was thinking about some unfortunate incident in my past where I had been misjudged, ridiculed, or caught red-handed by someone, or when I stubbed my toe, I realized that I was thinking of a meeting in the future with someone about something that I didn’t want anything to do with. So, the answer was possibly to not do too much moving around when things appear in your mind that could lead to someone or something that you don’t like. 1
Here’s Billie Ray Martin, singer of 90s house giants Electrotribe 101, covering Genesis P-Orridge’s Persuasion. All together now…
Billie Ray Martin & Spooky - Persuasion (Original Mix) (Throbbing Gristle cover)
Did you sing along?
And here’s Fred Again covering Billie Ray Martin’s “Your Loving Arms”
Apropos of nothing, with that pairing of dystopian and hopeful, I’d like to proffer the dramatisation of William Gibson’s “The Peripheral” currently being shown on Amazon. With Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy executive producing, it does full justice to the book, giving Chloé Grace Moretz the part she deserves. If you like your sci-fi smart, fast and slick I can not recommend this enough. Also notable for Charlotte Riley’s turned up to eleven cockney accent.
Agency: Sequel to The Peripheral by William Gibson | Buy here
This week featured
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_P-Orridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Ray_Martin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Van_Sant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou
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References
Muttering "go easy, go easy, go easy..." under my breath all day so I do, in fact, remember to take it easy
I don't know if it's Do Easy but i have always believed that laziness breeds efficiency..