Behavioral Cut-ups

Our civilization prizes linear progress and development, in which an individual

sets
goals and pursues them; but there is another kind of growth, another kind of
learning,
in which an individual broadens her frame of reference. Focusing only upon
linear
progress, a person might work his whole life and attain all his objectives
without ever expanding his awareness of life's possibilities. Indeed, in this objectiveoriented society, it
is difficult not to develop tunnel vision; and even if you pledge yourself to a
life of exploration, in which every day is to be an adventure, routine is bound to set in
sometimes.
That's where behavioral cut-ups come in. A behavioral cut-up is a method for
making the familiar unfamiliar, and thus jerking yourself out of the grip of
inertia. In contrast to product-oriented activity, the practice of behavioral cut-ups implies
that it could
be important to achieve something you can't anticipate. Unlike most of the
recipes in
this book, behavioral cut-ups are not usefiil for achieving specific ends, but
rather for
establishing perspectives that can indicate new beginnings. Behavioral cut-ups
offer a
way to uncover the adventure and potential hidden within activities that are
normally
shrouded in habit.
Behavioral cut-ups are comparable to literary and artistic cut-ups, in which
existing texts
and materials are disassembled and reconstructed in new ways. Dadaists used to
cut up
newspapers and books of poetry, and generate new poems by drawing the pieces out
of
a hat at random; likewise, the behavioral cut-up artist applies scissors and
glue to personal or social text, reconfiguring commonplace aspects of life in extraordinary
ways.

Instructions

S5

For a new listening experience,

you can play your favorite music
backwards by taking a cassette
apart with a screwdriver and putting
the tape reels in backwards. Better,
record it onto another tape on the
third or fourth channel of a fourtrack recorder, then listen to the

other side of the second tape.

Behai^ioral Cut-ups
86

A behavioral cut-up is not a randomization of life so much as a means of

departure for
unexplored territory; as such, it can require careful deliberation. Choosing the
most
promising adjustments to make is a rigorous science, if not an exact one.
In the most basic form of behavioral cut-up, you attach a stipulation to some
formerly
mundane aspect of life: for example, you decide not to pay for food for a full
month, or
dedicate yourself to climbing every single oak tree in the county, or commit to
sending
your family one postcard every day for a year. Such stipulations focus fresh
attention on
matters you had taken for granted, sharpening your awareness, limbering up your
sense
of self, and revealing new possibilities. Venturing outside the circuit of your
daily life,
you temporarily enter a parallel world in which you are a different person, and
learn all
the things that are banal to that person but brand new to you.
Behavioral cut-ups are not as unusual as their esoteric name makes them sound.
In
traditions stretching back to the davm of civilization, warriors and shamans
have practiced
them as a form of vision quest: mimicry of animals, ritual use of intoxicants,
ecstatic dancing, public nudity and other taboo acts, rituals of exhaustion, deprivation, and
pain these
are time-honored techniques for psychic and social experimentation. Even in our
prosaic
age, people engage in similar activities, to varying degrees: fasting during the
month of
Ramadan, building a fort out of cushions in the living room and refusing to come
out all
evening, going to a Halloween party dressed up as Fidel Castro and spending the
whole
night in character, all these are cut-ups, however unconscious or unoriginal.
Many people
have first-hand experience with simple food cut-ups: becoming vegan, for
example, focuses new attention on food, transforming social interactions and often resulting
in increased
interest in cooking or gardening. It only remains for us to develop a deliberate
practice of
behavioral cut-ups for their own sake, as tools for education, inspiration, and
liberation.
Behavioral cut-ups need not be grandiose; indeed, the most powerful ones rarely
sound good on paper. It may not seem like a big life change to commit to
something

trivial like initiating a conversation with a stranger every morning, but the
cumulative
effects can be startling. More extireme behavioral cut-ups can bring you into
conflict with
your fellow citizens indeed, the other meaning of "cut up" is misbehave but
in the
long run, such conflict serves to keep life interesting for everyone.
Behavioral cut-ups may sound like the province of performance artists and others
of
the privileged class, but it is a mistake to write them off as such. Taken
seriously, the behavioral cut-up is an exercise in self-expansion, a practice as essential for
revolutionaries
as mutual aid or self-defense.

Make two lists: things that bore you, and things that are terrifying to you. The
former
should be easy to compile, while the latter may be difficult even to admit to
yourself
Randomly select an item from each list. Invent a practice that combines them:
for example, if you picked "commuting" from your boring list, and "public speaking"
from
your frightening list, you might dare yourself to deliver an oration every
morning on the
subway. Keep a journal of your experiences and interactions.
Select an activity that has always struck you as absurd or unjust and refuse to
participate in it, no matter how compHcated this proves. This may sensitize you to
tragedies that were once invisible a few months into veganism, you enter a leather
market and experience it as a grave robbers' bazaar or reveal the excesses of
your society
to your fellow citizens, as in tiie case of the ascetic who carries wdth him all
the trash
he produces.
Give yourself a special relationship with a location by associating it with a
specific
activity. For example, you could decide that whenever you are in Germany, you
are a
runner who gets up at dawn to jog around the city.
If your outward appearance has always provided you with the privilege of passing
as
a "normal" human being, paint or dye your skin, or shave off your hair and
eyebrows, or

A Few Behavioral Cut-Upsfor

Would- Be Beginners

Behavioral Cut-ups
S7

You can get in touch with and

establish power over your fears by
means of a variety of rituals: try being
naked with your friends and then
with less familiar acquaintances,
being intimate with people of the
sex opposite the one you are used to
touching, taking blindfolded tours of
familiar and unfamiliar environments,
starting frank conversations with
strangers, climbing the ladders of
water towers nothing can multiply
your capabilities like confronting the
limitations you have set for yourself.

Behavioral Cut-ups

dress in drag. Don't make any attempt to explain yourself if you want the full
benefit of
learning what life is like for those who attract attention whether they want it
or not.
Go without something you have taken for granted your whole life. For example,
learn
to recognize all the edible and medicinal plants that grow in your region, and
spend a
season living outside, subsisting on them. Refuse to set foot in any buildings
for the
duration of this period.
Take a weU-knoviTi tool^ for this example we'll use a toaster and turn it
back into an
object. Take it far from the kitchen, perhaps to a mountaintop or an abandoned
grain silo.
Say its name continuously for thirty minutes: say it fast, say it slow, spell it
out, sing it to
the tune of your favorite childhood song. Now take it with you to the bank. Wear
it as a
shoe. Run a mile in it. Exhausted, curl up with it for a long nap. Remove one of
its shiny
panels and write a letter upon it to a friend vvdth whom you have lost touch.
Invent a dozen other uses for it, and utilize it thus until these are habitual and toast
seems strange.

Violate unspoken social laws about the application of space. Squat one of those
vast
24-hour super-marts for a few days. Conduct experiments, play games, graze on
food
in your "pantry," find a quiet comer to sleep. Pick a neglected category of
items {green
plastic things, paraphernalia of insecurity, materials not produced by slave
labor) and,
cartload by cartload, establish a new section for it. Use stationery to write
letters to
friends, use the phone to invite them over. Throw a party^ guests need not
bring food or
gifts. Take a disposable camera off the shelf; after taking some unusual photos,
repackage it as a gift to its future owner. Add to this list of things to do as the
days go by and
your derangement intensifies.
Become a guru. Go to a public place where you can set up camp, and establish a
constant presence there. Bring a project. It will have to be a project that
creates ripples
of notoriety rumors should spread about your presence. People will approach
vrith
stories for you: give them time, listen. You, above close friends, will be told
of injuries.

secrets, dilemmas, desires. Do not try to solve problems or offer advice: your
role is to
hold the stories as if you were a hiding place. Your visitors will return to
sort through
them, to make amendments and new deposits, to revisit old ones. They will offer
you
food. Occasionally they will ask about your Hfe but remember, they do this only
out
of politeness and habit, for they know that you are a magic person, you have a
project.
As your relationships grow, your needs vdll be increasingly met by the offerings
of your
visitors. These gifts carry with them the power to cast spells on their behalf
Heal them,
make them well.
Concoct and carry out your own rites of passage. Invent a series of games to
play with
your friends, and announce a month during which you will change your own lives
in
preparation for the following years of changing the world. You could begin with
elaborate scavenger hunts, and conclude with a sequence of challenges: Starting at
noon Friday at Danielle's house in the placid suburbs, who can get arrested first? {This
particular
example is tailored for the privileged children of the bourgeoisie; there are
other equivalents.) Who can write the most fantastic novel? (This is how Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
was written it was her first.) If the world were to end tomorrow, what would
you do
today? OK, on the count of three, go do it. What do you fear most of all? For
the final
exam, confront it, live through it. The ones who survive will be ready for
anything.

Schwabisch Hall, Germany was a world away, but when we left home we brought
along
our clothes. We packed our language, and friends with whom to speak it; and
since we
brought all that, we couldn't forget our habits, personalities, and histories.
We dragged
along grudges, we smuggled in crushes. On the runway, the airplane fought to
gain
speed, its belly stuffed with our baggage.
As I stared out of the window, the trip began to seem less like an unimaginable
voyage and more like a visit to the ocean floor in a little submarine. It seemed
dear that for

Account

Behauioral Cut-ups
89

Behavioral Cut-ups
go

the ftiU promise of travel to unfold, we needed more than an unimaginable place
like
the small town in Germany for which we were headed; we needed to be unimaginable
ourselves. After some dehberation, it struck me: "In Germany, I am a runner."
Selma
thought it was a good plan and like me, she had the qualification of not being
a runner
anywhere else. So we made a pact to behave as though we were runners from the
day we
arrived until the day we left, a full two weeks.
The next morning, for the first time in our lives, we woke up at a quarter to
eight and
embarked on an hour-long run. Afterwards, exhausted, we sat down with pen and
paper
to make maps. Though our two maps were of the same path, they bore little resemblance, but both showed the waterfall. We had taken a long and overgrown trail
to the
west of town. Just as I was aching to turn around, the air had become
mysteriously cool;
the sound of rushing water pulled my mind from my suffering and my eyes from my
toes. The waterfall was luminous and green, thick with moss that guided the
falling water and made the face of the little cliff look like the bearded face of a gnome.
Too vidnded
to speak, we let the scene wash away the words and the pain. Yes! We had
traveled.
To be in an unknown place is to be disoriented, inspired, exalted by the
unknovrai.
But being receptive to the unknown means becoming unknown. Traveling to Germany

presented an opportunity to be free of inertia, free of the part of myself that

only notices
what I expect to notice and only does the things I know myself to do. What I
searched for
there was a possible me, a version of myself who, in that case, ran every
morning. In that
foreign space I noticed what he noticed and thought his thoughts. I found a
waterfall
on a tangled path, an abandoned tunnel covered with vines and graffiti, the
ruins of a
castle, and a foggy morning on which, at the peak of our run, the mountaintops
looked
like islands. I found my body reinventing itself for new challenges.
In going to Germany, I could have stopped speaking, I could have decided to
dance
in the streets without reservation, I could have confined myself to a
wheelchair, I coxild

have become a poet or a stand-up comic. I can only imagine the places where
those experiments woiold have brought me. I do know that there are people who will live
and die
in Schwabisch Hall without ever seeing the things we've seen. I am also reminded
that
there are just as many waterfalls, sanctuaries, and castles in Pittsburgh I've
simply not
yet been the runner to find them.