Hello Yes Hello – 30 Dialogues. A book of conversations about Gysin and Burroughs
Ciarán Ryan, Dec 2025
Hello Yes Hello – 30 Dialogues is a new book about Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs, based on conversations between Kathelin Gray and Ramuntcho Matta. Barry Miles has provided the introduction.
Pictured: The cover of the book Hello Yes Hello – 30 Dialogues
Kathelin Gray, from the marketing copy: “This book is based on conversations with Ramuntcho Matta in Chateau Thierry and London, 2023-2024. We discuss our friendships with visual artist and raconteur, Brion Gysin, and his best friend, William S. Burroughs. Ramuntcho and I met in the 1970’s through Gysin.
“We reflect on the creative process, magic and science, transmission, the nature of friendship, and the experience of aging. At the time of these conversations, we are the same ages as Gysin and Burroughs were when we met them.
“My own encounters with characters of the movement popularly defined as the Beats began as a child, when I encountered Kerouac and Neal Cassady, then Ferlinghetti. In 1981, I lived with Burroughs at the notorious Bunker, 222 Bowery.
“Ramuntcho is a musician, visual artist and producer. Matta’s experience with artists, philosophers and psychiatrists is lifelong. His father was the Surrealist painter Roberto Matta; his brother was artist Gordon Matta-Clark. He studied with psychoanalyst and political philosopher, Felix Guattari. Our intimate familiarity with the characters, and their creative processes and aims, informs the conversations.
“In these dialogues, we hope to convey this gift of direct experience.”
Barry Miles: “It is only through recorded conversations like these about Brion that we learn of previously unknown friendships and connections, sometimes unexpected – high level gossip really but of lasting historical and literary interest.
“Brion is not just revealed as a multi-dimensional figure but, in the asides and anecdotes, we also catch glimpses of other sides of his personality including some that still remain obscure.”
Find out more about the book at Moloko Plus.
About the authors
Kathelin Gray
Earlier this year I spoke to the American director, writer, curator and ecologist Kathelin Gray at the October Gallery in London.
Because of her part in the Theater of All Possibilities“, Gray toured Europe often. “We got to be good friends, I would stay with him when I was in Paris, in his flat opposite the Pompidou Centre”, she said of Gysin. “I also met Ramuntcho Matta in the ’70s through Brion.”
Read about the recent Burroughs exhibition she curated here. Read about her memory of saving the Antony Balch Gysin collection here.
Ramuntcho Matta
French producer, sound designer and visual artist. Ramuntcho Matta has collaborated with Brion Gysin, jazz musician Don Cherry, sound poet Henri Chopin, Laurie Anderson, Elli Medeiros, Rhys Chatham and others.
Watch a clip of Brion Gysin performing “Stop Smoking” live in 1983, with Ramuntcho Matta and Fred Cousseaua. They’re on stage at Theatre de la Bastille in Paris.
Listen to All Those Years, another collaboration with Gysin:
Ramuntcho Matta is the son of the surrealist painter Roberto Matta. Gysin shared studio space with Roberto in the 1940s.
& introduction by Barry Miles.
The author Barry Miles, has written many books about the counterculture, including an (as far as I know) unpublished manuscript: “Brion Gysin: The Inventive Mind.” He knew Burroughs and Gysin in the 1960s. His extensive involvement with the duo included organising a performance art event in London that featured Gysin.