BLAKE BUTLER’S ORIGINAL:
PORTRAITS OF THE DOOR I WASHED OFF OF THE HOUSE
Portraits of the door I washed off of the house would appear for minutes at the dinner table in the peas no one was listening above the rummage of the magnets in the television reordering the fonts of where we shopped and dragging female bodies as long mops across a pudding surface to show skin and sell the gown The image of the door lodged in the mashed potatoes knocked and knocked and shuddered and through the vent inside my mouth I heard me speak I heard me say Come in and bring your surface and set the ledge against my face, it has been a long time since we’ve had this night together and the mashed potatoes moaned and my father in his black suit did not avert his eyes from what was coming through the magnets as he reached across the table parallel and knocked the ranch over on its face and made it leak so much white glorb pouring from the nozzle of the bottle as I tried to keep my own voice out of my mouth these words masked inside me with micecreak and blue shooing where I’d swallowed anybody all of no one and the power and the strum the mashed potatoes black upon the table trying to stand up and go to my room and enter the passcode on my machine to see all the awful things I’d said about me and my life and dad and mother and America and god more words I did not want inside me and so had hid where I could in the gift of some last birthday in my memory all smudged and the ranch now was coming from the bottle so hard it seemed to know more and the table was an island in our gore and above the house the throb was clocking and something landed and in the house the golden sound behind my eyes
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THE REMIX:
WHAT WILD BEAST
Portraits of the wild boy this river of flesh appeared for minutes at the dinner table in the peas no one was listening above the rummage of his cock they call him the Ferret he can snake through a football line like a ferret down a rat hole his body is warm like an animal and I feel a soft tingle in my stomach feeling [his cock] jump in my hand like the magnets in the television reordering the fonts of where we change and take showers and drag female bodies as long mops across a pudding surface to show skin and sell little tins of Vaseline. The image of [the wild boy] lodged in the mashed potatoes licked his fingers and [throbbed] and shuddered and through the vent inside my mouth I heard me speak I heard me say “Yo muy caliented, Johnny. Very hot” and “Muy bueno” and the mashed potatoes moaned and the walking dead catatonic in his black suit did not avert his eyes from what was coming through the magnets as he reached across the table parallel and musk smell from his tight brown nuts and made it leak so much white glorb pouring as I tried to keep my own voice out of my mouth these words masked inside me like vicious little cats slashing with razor blades and pieces of glass and then dart back into their burrows of walking flesh where I’d swallowed anybody all of no one and the power and the strum [the wild boys] black upon the table trying to stand up and go to my shed and enter the passcode on my machine to see some fast machete work all the awful things you don’t tell the next of kin about me and my life and America and god More [glass] and [wild boys] I did not want inside me and so had jammed in like so many sacks of concrete so hard it seemed to know more and the musk smell was an island in our gore and above the house the throb was clocking and something shuffling slowly forward the teeth bared gasping behind my eyes—
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Remixer’s process: This remix contains random language from The Wild Boys by William S. Burroughs.
Mostly the decision to mash Butler’s words with Burroughs’ was born out of my appreciation for an essay about Butler’s long time fondness for William S. Burrough and The Wild Boys in particular.
The process itself was fairly simple. Keeping faithful to Butler’s structure and punctuation decisions (I went back and forth on this, but the periods and commas seemed out of place, adding too much clarity to the dense word fog) I chose phrases from random pages of The Wild Boys and, without too much consideration, typed these into Butler’s writing where the effect seemed most heightened. Not surprisingly, the musky Wild Boys language merged into Butler’s sentences as if they had always belonged there.