Cirrus@Austlit

'In 1973, I was a post-graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, working on my Master’s degree in music composition. My principle teacher at the time was Kenneth Gaburo, well known for his work in compositional linguistics which crossed boundaries between music, language, writing, performance, and dance. I was also very good friends with two fellow post-graduate students, Peter Gordon, composer, and Kathy Acker, writer, who at the time were partners. Kathy was mainly working with the performance poet David Antin at the time. Many were the late-night trips to VG’s Donut Shop in Carlsbad, California, in which Peter, Kathy and I discussed artistic issues that seemed quite urgent to us at the time. William S Burroughs, with his cut-up method, and the collage poetics of John Cage were both enormously influential on us, and Kathy introduced me to the work of Jackson Mac Low, who, many years later, I became friends with. And, as mentioned, both Gaburo’s and Antin’s experiments with language-based composition were very important to us.' (Introduction)