Brion Gysin’s permutation poem “I Am That I Am”

Similar to the cut-up videos and Dylan permutation-play recently posted, this video of schizophrenic existentialism pairs one of Brion Gysin’s permutation poems with a “videopoem” by Alex Itin.

http://vimeo.com/90415

“Closely related to the principle of the cut-up, where the intended coherence of a text is interrupted and rearranged, the permutation involves a more mathematical variation of the concept as exercised on a short phrase. Concurrent with his exploration of the cut-up, Gysin discovered the permutation upon seeing in print the Divine Tautology, “I am that I am,” while reading Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. In my 1980s interview, he elaborated: “I saw the phrase on paper and I though, ‘Ah, it looks a bit like the front of a Greek temple,’ only on the condition that I put the biggest word in the middle. So, I’ll just change those others around, ‘am I,’ in the corner of the architrave. Then I realized, as soon as I did this, it asked a question. ‘I am that, am I?’ And I said, ‘Wow, I’ve touched the oracle!’ SO then I turned the next one, and I said, ‘Oh, all the way along is has to do this.’ Thought it was the first of his permutation poems, “I Am That I Am” (1959) was not published till years later (in Brion Gysin Let the Mice In [1973]; a short version appeared in Emmet Williams’ An Anthology of Concrete Poetry [1967]). The Full version, as put through a computer by mathematician Ian Sommerville, was performed for BBC Radio in 1960, as part of a program, ‘The Permutated Poems of Brion Gysin.’ The show, says Gysin, was ‘broadcast to the second lowest rating of audience approval registered by their poll of listeners. Still sorry to think that the lowest rating on record went to an opus by Auden and Britten.'” – Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader

 

– Palmer