“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.” – William S. Burroughs, The Job Interviews With William S. Burroughs

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In all his phases and evolutions, William S. Burroughs was perhaps more radical than most of the Beat Generation. He ushered in postmodern fiction and post-structural philosophy and play an imminent role in the countercultural movements beginning in the 1950s. Sex, drugs, and conspiracies that the Left were okay with once. Most of this work, like The Naked Lunch, dealt with the marginalized. The rumor has it he was always in a quest for freedom.

Somehow he missed that he was over verbalizing and should have spent more time in the quiet and finding that only God can set a person free through His truth. In the above quote, Burroughs spoke to the discomfort some feel when confronted with silence. I wonder if that included himself. To find peace, a body need to learn how to be still. It’s in this stillness that one finds God. Only in God does one find true peace.