Blogging again... The Ticket

So I feel like the YouTube with the weird old guy had a lot to do with my last blog. In the last one, I talked about the concept of “the word” introduced in The Ticket that Exploded. A section in Burroughs’ book says that “the word”, unconscious mental dialogue, is ingrained in humans to the point where we can’t get rid of it even if we consciously try. I expanded on that idea, saying that good music (but only wordless music) enables us to rid ourselves of “the word” for a few seconds. The old man in the YouTube video has an opposite reaction. He says that music for him tells stories, and brings words to mind. But when he hears traffic in the city, it is just noise. He does not hear words, there is no meaning to the random horn and engine sounds. The old man seems to like the sounds of traffic, perhaps for this reason. He expressed that city noise relieves him of “the word”, and it maybe gives him peace and mental rest. This really follows along with my proposal in my last blog, that humans enjoy a temporary freedom from “the word.” It seems that this is the reason why some thrill seekers search for a rush of adrenaline, for in that time they are free from any mental dialogue and their minds revert into a primal survival mentality.
Later in The Ticket, we come upon a scene where two fish men explore the concept of time travel (after sex of course). They refer back to the concept that I have dubbed “the word” in their talk.
“Well time is getting dressed and undressed eating sleeping not the actions but the words… what we say about what we do. Would there be any time if we didn’t say anything?”
“Maybe not. Maybe that would be the first step… yes if we could learn to listen and not talk.”
This notion can explain why people seek to escape “the word.” Maybe we feel that when we are constrained by “the word” then we are also constrained by time. To break free of “the word” could have the feeling of conquering time. If I remember times when I have been I precarious situations where I have broken free of “the word,” those moments seem to have a small distortion of time. Animals don’t have the power of “the word”; do they have the same sense of time as we do? Do they think in grunts and squeaks, as opposed to words? It’s irrelevant, yet an interesting thought.
In parts of The Ticket, Burroughs compares “the word” to a virus or an addiction (is this why we watched the vaccination cartoon?). This idea is radical, yet it is somewhat possible. Humans never sat down one day and decided to think. Our thinking came to us through emotions, and then we assigned the emotions words to communicate them. But we had no say in the matter. We can’t decide to not talk. “The word” invaded us just like a virus, ever to remain in our conscious and unconscious minds.
Burroughs takes it one step further. The plot (at least what I could find between the mess of unrelated scenes) of The Ticket is that the Nova Mob is going to destroy the world by using “the word.” They travel through people with addictions and they use “the word” like a plague to try to overload the world and “grey goo” the planet out of existence. I think it’s something like that, maybe not. It’s a cool thought though. Could the virus of “the word” be the end of mankind? Weird. Maybe Burroughs’ style of writing is an example of what happens when the Nova Mob gets their goal and corrupts the world with an overload of “the word.”
Strange thoughts here, my own ideas make no sense, but this book really doesn’t either. I think that the reason this book is hard to read is that we can find no purpose, no moral lesson that the book is striving to teach. Every book that I’ve read before has had a reason, some hidden message. I feel that Burroughs must have some message hidden in all the gibberish, but besides these wacky ideas I can’t really find one.