NONBINARY - GENESIS P-ORRIDGE

Now here is someone who needed to write an autobiography. I’ve known about and been interested in Genesis since I found out about Throbbing Gristle in high school. TG is one of those things that I respect more than I enjoy. Their music is fine, not my favorite but interesting to be sure. In Seattle, I got more acquainted with Noise music, which flows directly from TG and other early industrial stuff so I am perhaps more likely to enjoy them at this point, but I always like the idea of Genesis more than any one piece of art they’ve made. Gen has always pitched themselves (they use plural pronouns, including “we” as their first person pronoun, throughout the book) as a sort of true bohemian. An actual Art Monster who lived a strange and extreme life. This book proves that mostly to be true. At one point Gen even writes that the point of the book is to prove that a) such a life can be lead and b) it could be done again. Gen goes from a relatively poor but normal Boomer British childhood to getting into college and basically pivoting to full-time freak. It’s always amazed me how easy and reasonable it seems to be to squat in England (the police are quick to put guns in faces in the USA) and Gen does it for years while taking part in all of these interesting and important art projects. There’s great stuff about early TG and industrial music, COUM Transmission art happenings, early rave culture and tales about how much ecstasy Gen used to do, Gen’s involvement in body modification culture, the list goes on. Gen also has the quality where so many of the people they interact with go on to do things like found the clothing brand BOY or be Billy Idol, or be early punk pioneers. Sadly, Gen apparently died while writing this thing so while it does cover their whole life, it could easily be double the length and still engaging. Sadly, the only part that’s deeply fleshed out is the beginning of their life, which is always the least interesting part of an autobiography. Sure, it does confirm my theory that everyone who attends British boarding school is horrifically abused and involved in homoerotic escapades (how else could you produce the British empire, I suppose) but I’m much less interested in that stuff than, say, something like being involved with the guy who wrote “Modern Primitive” and pioneered extreme piercings and body modification stuff (think Mandan-inspired the hook suspension thing). We only get fleeting references (Tibetan bells?!) to Gen’s genital piercings and that’s a shame. They deserve a chapter at least. Likewise, the final major project that Gen undertook, called Pandrogyne, where Gen and their partner Lady Jayne underwent tons of plastic surgery (funded by a lawsuit against Rick Rubin, every part of this book is insane) in order to both look like a “half-way in-between” version of one another, could use much more explanation. Very far out stuff. Really ahead of the curve with the current gender rethinking going on. So yeah, very good and a quick read, my only complaint was that I wanted more. Hopefully someone writes a bio of them, they’re one of the few artists who can truly say that the way they lived their life was art itself. 1 Pandrogynous being.