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PROPAGANDA Genesis P-Orridge & Misstress Jackie Breyer He’s a groovy guru, a sexual prophet. She’s a cool witch, a princess of pleasure. Combined into a single consciousness, mind-melded into orgasmic oblivion, they think and feel in sultry synchronicity. A true binary singularity! One bitch, two bodies: MISTRESS JACKIE BREYER and GENESIS P-ORRIDGE rule the universe. That’s BREYER P-ORRIDGE to you. Together they make fabulous art. Consider their bodies: Genesis recently got breast implants that look an awful lot like Jackie’s beautiful bosom. “In fact, they were designed to match Jackie’s,” he says. Heavenly! A living work of art. Sitting together, the space-age couple appear fused, a sensuous aura enveloping their collective chest as they kiss and coo like lysergic lovebirds. One wants to touch them, embrace them, fuck them. Genesis in his patriarchal splendor, he who saw it all, and Mistress Jackie the psychic prism focusing attention on her soul mate—he in return illuminating her like the proud discoverer of some secret treasure. It’s nothing short of Pandrogeny!!! What would sex with such creatures bring? Which first? Both, of course! Which one would or wouldn’t, or might, or if only… Possibilities like layers of an onion, peeling always unto newer, fresher fun. Who knows how hermaphroditic a human can get??? Gen: “Just like Burroughs and Gysin created a third mind, what Jackie and I want to do is create a third person that encapsulates both of us, whether its a separate entity or the two of us combined intellectually and physically.” Jackie, in the tone of an expectant mother, “That’s what we’re hoping for.” Don’t you hate it when couples say, “We’re like one person,” or “We have the same thoughts at the same time!”??? And don’t you hate couples where the guy’s the art bigshot or rock star, and his wife/girlfriend is also an artist or musician, albeit of far lesser standing, elevated hype-wise to equal partner in some band or project??? Not the case w/ Gen & Jackie. They’re the real deal. Jackie: “The whole boy-girl dynamic doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not interested in it.” Do you second that, Gen? “Absolutely. I’ve always felt trapped in a body.” Jackie: “Here here! I also feel trapped in a body. Sometimes I’m comfortable in a masculine role, and sometimes in a feminine role, and sometimes neither.” Would you like to be a hermaphrodite? Gen: “Absolutely.” Would you undergo surgery to become one? Jackie: “Surgery has its limits. I can do a lot in my own mind.” Gen confirms our suspicions: “Psychedelic drugs had a role in the realization.” For a peaceful kinda guy, Genesis is a motherfucker who knows how to handle his shit. In his own words, here’s a casually-delivered anecdote exemplifying his notoriety: “According to Scotland Yard, somebody said I was a satanist. It was during the era of Thatcherism. One of the government’s strategies was to accuse anybody representing an alternative lifestyle with something or other. The first thing they do is take away your children, with no evidence other than an anonymous phone call” “I was out of the country, in Katmandu in Nepal. I couldn’t go back to England. They raided my house with a SWAT team, helicopters—they took everything. Two tons of archives! I was very open, doing a lot of benefits and speaking, so I was an easy target. I was pro-piercing and pro-tattooing, both of which were illegal at that time. Grievous Bodily Harm, they called it. One guy got four years for piercing his own foreskin.” “I was pierced—which was illegal—and tattooed—illegal—and I was pro-everything. Section 29 was a law mandating that men could not kiss in public, so I was throwing kiss-ins—and I was a heterosexual married man with children! There was also the pro-sexual slant of Psychic TV, who said, ‘There’s something in the universe, that seems to be friendly if you recognize it, that increases the chances of what you want to happen, happening. And that involves an orgasm.’ “Those were the excuses to go to my house and take everything. Three days later they said, ‘We know you didn’t do anything.’ They never charged me, nor did they return my archives. Responsibility for that has gone round and round to this day. The stuff’s either hidden in a warehouse or destroyed. Very Kalfka-esque. I was symbolic of everything they didn’t like.” However, he’s symbolic of everything we like. Androgynous, in-charge, trans-human et cetera, Gen is the real deal. And Jackie is something else! Hanging around the rock cognoscenti since she was a kid, her mystical mark beacons from just below the veneer of pop culture. She infected legions of the influential in a myriad of ways. Together they make history, right? Gen: “History is what’s recorded, not what happened.” Somehow Bowie’s name comes up in conversation. Always one to amaze, Gen says, “I was never interested in David Bowie but I did have sex with one of his boyfriends.” Who, we ask? “Nicholas.” No further information ensues, so the conversation drifts to musical influences. Referring to a spread in his Soft Skull book Painful But Fabulous, he wonders, “How many people would do a book about their own art and devote two pages to a picture of themselves at Brian Jones’s grave? It’s important to confess the influences of your art. Nobody is simply unique. “I met Brian Jones when I was fifteen. I saw this fabulous creature with gorgeous hair and feminine clothing—he was totally androgynous, and I thought, ‘God, it is possible to be like that. It totally inspired me. I knew it was possible to be androgynous.’” You brought that sensibility into industrial culture. How far are you prepared to go with it? Gen: “I’m not prepared to sacrifice pleasure for symbolism. Identity is an illusion. Ultimately what we’re dealing with isn’t gender, it’s identity. The fiction of identity—one can rewrite it many ways.” Jackie: “Symbolism is powerful, but my genitals are even more powerful.” Nothing can top that statement. So, all that’s left to ask is, What’s the most annoying question? Gen: “Why do you want to be a woman?” Jackie: “Are you taking testosterone?” Breyer P-Orridge update: The collective being resides in New York with two mutually exclusive cats, Distance and Lucy, who must be physically separated at all times. They’ll kill each other! Apparently Gen & Jackie soaked up all the household’s cosmic vibes, leaving the cats with seething animosity. Oh well. There’s a wonderful new Soft Skull book out, Painful But Fabulous, chronicling Gen’s incredible art career. James Birch curated a show of Bryer P-Orridge’s work at the A22 Gallery in London. Check out Gen & Jackie’s website at www.genesisp-orridge.com |
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