Recorded Ourselvesfucking
Backstage with Genesis P - Orridge of Psychic Television set
Nov 9, 2014
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Going live
With Coum Transmissions, due south/he challenged social boundaries with fine art; with Throbbing Gristle, south/he played a part in fundamentally redefining music; every bit the core of Psychic TV, s/he brought this challenge to the mainstream, ultimately becoming a seminal influence on the trip the light fantastic music sub-culture in the Great britain. South/he courted controversy with pictures of h/er piercings in the RE:Search book "Modern Primitives", experimental video projects led to h/er viii-twelvemonth exile from the UK, a near-expiry experience led to h/er engaging in farthermost trunk modification, forth with h/er past wife Lady Jaye, to become the pandrogyne. For over 30 years, Genesis has washed the unexpected, challenged everything and southward/he continues to do so.
We had the gamble to see Genesis in the backstage of Control Club - Bucharest, while she was touring around Europe with the other members of Psychic TV, in order to promote the new album called ''Snakes''. Initially, nosotros were scheduled to do the interview before the concert, but somewhen we made information technology afterwards. And it was then much better. This is a transcript.
Dragoș: So how was for you the concert this night?
Genesis: Is it on? Are y'all recording information technology?
Dragoș: Yeah
Genesis: Shall I come closer? Helloooo, how are you? This is Genesis P – Orridge, I'k in Bucharest, Romania! Well, yes, it was really nice, everybody was smiling, we were smiling and laughing, my chugalug kept coming down and my trousers nearly cruel down similar 16 times.
Dragoș: Y'all created a very positive energy on the show, right from the very commencement.
Genesis: Adept. That'south what we attempt. Y'all can probably come across, what I was talking about as references of seeing pretty things. I saw the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park, I saw the first gigs by Male monarch Crimson, I saw Syd Barrett, all that stuff, live, over and over and over. And so these are my roots, yous know? To me, that'south what a concert is meant to be about. It is about pleasure in psychedelic, about bringing people to a common consciousness raising feel. It'southward not nearly how clever you are, or how perfect it is. I hateful, the terminal thing you want to practise is sound but like your record. You could buy a fucking record, why you desire to hear it? If you go live, it's not just even the band; it'due south the people that are effectually you, the sweat, the noises, and all that energy is part of the gig.
photo credits: Sarah Sitkin
"I want new things, I want to exist confused and amazed. I don't want to know what's going on, I want to find out more and more and more. And the more than nosotros find out, the more astonishing it really gets. Consciousness is the key."
No rehearsals
Mădălina: This is what I wanted to ask you about, the artistic procedure. Do you experience that the words and the visuals accept an impact in it?
Genesis: Definitely. I mean, that'southward why there'south TV. We've always had visuals. And that comes from the '60s as well. My experience was so much more powerful when in that location were visuals as well, because you lot just don't want to lookout man people doing the usual movements. Guitarists move like that, because they're into the music, they listen to information technology and they loose themselves in information technology. It'due south because they are and then deep into the sound. To me, if you want to practice a show, you give every bit much equally possible; everything y'all tin can give, you know? Jokes, if y'all need to, visuals, interesting ideas; everything; not merely one thing, but a sculpture. You sculpture emotions and information technology'southward like shooting fish in a barrel, if you lot call back almost your ain emotions.
All the songs and bad things I felt, therefore I sympathize that they're all emotions. And everybody feels emotions, so it's not that is special, information technology'south that something people recognize; fifty-fifty in some of the tones, they recognize information technology. Even if they don't know what I'm saying. Because we play all over the earth, they can't perhaps empathise everything we're proverb. But they feel what nosotros're proverb. When I requite poetry reading, it'due south the same. I gave a poesy reading in Russian federation and they can't perchance know everything that I'grand maxim. Considering even for English people information technology'due south complicated sometimes. Like the long one, Grey easily of the Future, it was all political; that'southward a really… 6 pages of… notes. And the hard stuff as well, because we never rehearse.
Dragoș: Never.
Genesis: Never. No. We accept a riff and an idea. We did the new album, 'Snakes', in 2 nights. No rehearsals, no discussions. We went in the studio, the band ready in one room, we went into the other room, with a microphone, with some poems and little notes I've written. And when they started playing, I was like, oh, that feels like information technology would go with this though. And I just make information technology up. And and then we play it back and at that place'south the album. Iv overdubs on the album. Ii nights – the whole affair was washed. Ane take every vocal.
Dragoș: I suppose you have to know each other actually well.
Genesis: That'southward how it works, yes. You can tell that, you tin experience it. A very potent connection. And of grade, Jane was with us all this years, and so everybody feels her presence. NPR (National Public Radio) contacted us a few years ago, request united states of america to play, a few months subsequently Lady Jaye died (she died October ix, 2007). Nosotros idea, tin can we mayhap play without Jaye? Then we idea, nosotros tin can play for her. Simply we were all ambivalent. And it really went really well. They put all of us in headphones, and we all played in the same fourth dimension, so mix, and nosotros just played, and it went out perfectly.
Alice: In that location'due south a recording of that, I believe.
Genesis: Yes, I believe so. So, what I'k saying is that practicing and practicing doesn't necessarily improve anything. In fact, they could kill it, because you end feeling anything, it becomes but the same every bit the recording. And that'southward not life. Life is e'er…surprising. It changes. Everyday is a bit different, no matter what you lot expect, is not the aforementioned. And so, that's how we play, isn't it? (smile to Alice) How often do we rehearse?
Alice: It'due south never the same.
Genesis: Nosotros also play other bands and practice other things. Alice has her own solo album.
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Learn to change
Dragoș: If you expect back into your life, what do you wish you knew before?
Genesis: My only wishes… I wish I could save Jaye'due south life. Merely then again, things take inverse in a positive way, equally a result of that. Information technology's almost like she knew that was the best manner to go. And she never wanted to become onetime. She didn't. She hated that idea. She said her only ambition was to be effectually for a bang-up dearest thing, and that seems to be what happened. And then you accept to take what comes, and explore it. You can't really have regrets.
Dragoș: Do you have any regrets?
Genesis: Like I said, I sometimes think that perhaps if I accept told her she has to see a physician or something, she would accept gone, but I don't think so. She hated doctors. She was a nurse, so she hated doctors because she knew they're stupid. And it was incommunicable to get her to practice what she didn't want. And then, at the same time, we run into in that location's really been an incredible positive thing in terms of how the world perceives us. It changed the mode people thought about me. Yep, they saw me differently, because of that love affair. And that makes people mind more than, which is actually helpful. We tin go people more data, and they mind. So you lot have to go with the state of affairs.
Subsequently the experiences from Africa, I figured it out that there'due south and then much more going on that I've been told in the West. In that location's so much more notwithstanding going on, in terms of what life is. Are we really here? Or are we only going through some strange sort of hallucination of a loop, or something that happened before? And if nosotros are, why are we going through once again. To larn. To learn to change… So, everything is almost learning to change. And then everything that happens is to try getting to learn to change. That's how it seems…
Mădălina: So this is the message of your music?
Genesis: I don't know if in that location's a message except loving each other, giving good energy and trying to encourage everyone else to have a moment where they experience they can relax. Beloved each other and not be afraid of looking silly if they dance funny. We don't really think of having a bulletin; except something mystical and spiritual. What makes the world so screwed up is the either-or. Good, bad, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, e'er either-or. Male person, female person, gay, straight…all these things are ever a fiction of fear. Something is unlike, something is other than you are, so you're suppose to be afraid. Why? So many differences is fantastic! Novelty is dandy!
So, if there's a bulletin, is celebrate difference and learn to await for unity, for things that give unity with everyone else. Because the human species is not a finished project at all. We're still primitive, you know? The way nosotros behave. They called it chimpanzee behavior, aye? It's true. And fifty-fifty if we are and then amazingly brilliant and nosotros are inventing things, imagining things, we're also really stupid. And someone has to speak upwardly about it, you lot know? And with my lyrics, that's what we're trying to do. Talk about stupidities that people play into; and it doesn't make them happy, we all know that. It doesn't make anybody happy, to be stupid. People still keep doing it, considering they've been told that it'south OK to be stupid. You can't guess, yous have to give more information; information technology doesn't have to exist that manner. You lot don't have to be scared, you know? Just relax for a minute. Cheque it out. Everyone is having a good fourth dimension. Y'all don't have to be scared. And no one's quite similar you.
And then you get somewhere like Africa where information technology's the aforementioned. People accept nothing, about. You can learn so much from people with so lilliputian. And information technology seems the more nosotros have, as human beings, the more stupid we go. Because we get greedy, we go scared of loosing what nosotros take. What if information technology goes wrong? What if they leave? What if this? What if that? The number of people nosotros meet when nosotros give talks…And later on they all the same say: 'have e'er been afraid of truly committing to a human relationship, in case it didn't work'. Well, information technology'due south non going to work, if y'all don't give yourself 100%. And fifty-fifty if information technology doesn't work, at least yous have the astonishing part. So, why are you lot afraid of it?
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Between life and death
Dragoș: What are you lot afraid of?
Genesis: Now? Nothing. I used to be frightened of decease, for a while. That was a long time ago…
Dragoș: And at present?
Genesis: Now, I'm looking forwards to being with Jaye over again. Now I know there's more…
Dragoș: Practise you see life as a stage?
Genesis: Yeah. Myself and Jaye say information technology'southward life loops. That is every bit information technology if we really felt like we had been before, and that nosotros are here once more considering we hadn't figured things out. There were sure things we fucked up. And the whole point is to find the figured stuff out. Jaye was the virtually fearless person nosotros ever met. Nothing to be agape of. She inspired me to think very differently about everything. Nosotros had a deal; that whenever one of u.s. died or dropped our body, that we would come across if information technology's possible to communicate from beyond. Mainly considering we spent a lot of time with Tibetan Buddhists and we were convinced some of us exercise reincarnate, and if they do, that means it is possible to maintain a sense of self without a torso, that your consciousness can retain its sense of being someone. Information technology's not like shooting fish in a barrel, evidently. But it tin can. And then, we said how could we try and communicate, and know information technology was real? Y'all tin can't say, 'I think I've heard someone talking to me' or 'I Recollect I saw Jaye in the crowd'. What could we have? So we came upwardly with three conditions: it has to be something that happens physically; there have to exist witnesses (and then you tin can't only go like 'I saw this' or 'I heard', you know?); and it must have special meaning to you. Both. That's what nosotros came up with.
Three days after her torso was cached, we were all seating in a room at my flat; Jaye's flat too. Alice was there; Edley was there, my two daughters. There were seven people. And my daughters were maxim 'y'all should come back to California with us, papa. We're worried about you. We're worry you're gonna' kill yourself.' And so we were thinking about it, and of a sudden, from nowhere, we thought 'if we become to California, we need a photo of me and Jaye, together, to take'. Then we wandered of to the bedroom, and on Jaye's side of our bed she had most 20 photographs of united states kissing all over the globe. And right in the middle information technology was a picture of u.s.a. in Kathmandu, in the Himalayas. Both wearing red robes on a chair cuddling, so it was 2 heads kissing. Perfect. That'south the pandrogyne. That's Jaye and me as one being, you know? And so that's the 1 I took information technology back in the other room, put it down on about 7 feet from where we were sitting. The other people were on a semi-circle, and children were 'so, what are y'all going to do? Are you lot going to come up with us in California?' As they said information technology, the motion-picture show rose upwards, it was faced out, it flowed to the cross 7 feet, in forepart of me, turned the right and gently dropped the floor, in forepart of me. Everybody saw it. And we looked downwardly and nosotros said 'I think Jaye wants me to stay here, with her'. Then physically happened, at that place were witnesses and information technology had special meaning. How fucking strong is she to do that in three days? I mean, really?
And in that location's been other affair equally as specific sense. Even though there'southward e'er been a bit of me that was an existentialist, there's just no style. Something else is going on.
Mădălina: The symbol of the Psychic cantankerous.
Genesis: Yes, that was me in .. nigh.. 1980. I draw it one twenty-four hour period. The vertical is iii, the two longer crosses is 2, and the one in the eye is two thirds of that, so there's always 2 and iii. But if you arrange psychic cross in a detail design, and so, the negative space is a swastika. So the psychic cross is the opposite of swastika and its meaning it'due south the positive of that negative. I didn't fifty-fifty know when I designed it. 8 years later on, somebody sent me this drawer of this design and I was like 'oh fuck'. So Jaye would say 'well, of course'. She had this other same, the of class factor, 'of course you did it that way'. Instinctively, you know?
Dragoș: Somebody said that decease doesn't be because you tin't live information technology.
Genesis: Yeah. Where is that line? Where's the line betwixt awake and asleep. Where's the line between life and death? There isn't one.
Dragoș: Do you think information technology has anything to exercise with assertive? If you believe, it might happen, if you don't, it won't happen?
Genesis: We have a say, modify the way to perceive and change former memories. The body can die. Jaye said the body is a cheap suitcase. But the body isn't who you lot are. Consciousness is. And then what matters is consciousness. So yes, that can continue. Obviously.
When you allow go the obsession that Western specially has on the human body, medicine wants to preserve the body and all this stuff about physical material reality, it's the greatest mistake of western thinking. If you go somewhere similar Africa, or India, or Nepal, or Thailand, they're all 'well, patently at that place'south more than that!' They don't fifty-fifty have a question! It's in the West, where nosotros get more and more materialist and we forget the spiritual and make ourselves fucking miserable considering we forgotten how of import thinking is. How important emotions and experiences are. The obsession with physical things is a tragedy in the west. We would disagree with someone like the Cosmic Church building who says the body is non sacred. The listen is sacred. Thinking is sacred. The body is just a cheap suitcase that carries the mind, equally Kaye would say. Timothy Leary used to say 'we only have a body to move the mind and so we tin move our mind around.' Information technology'southward merely a machine. Material life it's a very brutal environment. In guild to feel physical life, you accept to take a torso. Just it goes out fast, considering it's hard being hither.
Dragoș: Practice you think consciousness is forever?
Genesis: Yep. I practise at present. I retrieve everybody finds that out, sometime. Everything is recording all the time. The planet is recording. Recollect most it, nosotros could still go to New Guinea and see people living in the Stone age, or even before the Stone age. And every era of human being history is nonetheless going on somewhere on the planet. Yous get to Dubai and is a sort of mixture of the medieval and the modern. It'due south all recorded. Fossils and everything else…it's all beingness recorded. When somebody has a child, information technology starts with 2 single cells, which is how they say life began. And it goes with mutation into multi cells and it becomes like a tiny fish, and information technology becomes an amphibian and then a reptile, and so it becomes a monkey, and so it becomes a human. And first it's non male person or female. The Tibetans have said for ages that there's nobody in there for at least 39 days.
The original story
Dragoș: Pandrogyne, first.
Genesis: Exactly. We get-go equally a pandrogyne. Adam and Eva were pandrogyne because she came from his trunk. So it's one body creating two. When two people accept an orgasm together, they are pandrogyne while having an orgasm. That's why I was and so fascinated for looking to the original story. It'south why I went dorsum to Africa and I'm going again. My question to all the loftier priests every time was 'what your creation story? What's the female parent story? The earliest story?' They wouldn't tell me for the beginning two weeks, they kept ignoring me. And then they finally got to trust me 'cause I was doing ceremonies with them. And in the terminate, a high priest gave me a volume, that he printed, it was non available, it was but notes.
The divine original beingness is chosen Mawu-Lisa. Mauw is a python and Lisa is a chameleon. Mawu is female and Lisa is male, but it's one. It's a pandrogyne. 'Of course!' every bit Jaye would say. And on the last night, he invited us all to his business firm for dinner. And afterwards, that song about snakes is a true story. Nosotros went into his special room, for his audition, and he sabbatum into his large chair, his disciple was lying on the floor, prostrated like this, and then it looked to me. The disciple went off and came back with a big glass filled with dead pythons and chameleons. And he got a shot glass, it poured i for the disciple, another one that he drank it and then everybody in the crew drank 1.
Dragoș: How did it gustation?
Genesis: Horrible! Dead python and dead chameleon? Yeah! Information technology's fucking horrible. We were all thinking secretly, 'nosotros're going to be really sick tomorrow!' Just you tin't say no. And so he said something else, and the guy went off and came back with a jar of blackness powder. And information technology poured black powder on the floor and the disciple liked it and on the flooring. And and then it poured some more than and everybody licked it of the floor, one past one. And so it came dorsum with some white pulverisation. And we had to lick white powder of the flooring. Nobody got sick.
We got dorsum to America. We went to my apartment in New York and the side by side morn I got upwards and I thought I was in Africa again. And I was in New York and I was request myself 'am I here or am I in Africa, 'cause I can't tell right now.' Dorsum and forth, between Africa and New York. I had to stay in the apartment for 3 days, 'cause I didn't know where I was. Wasn't horrible, it was only weird, you lot know? They were equal. I gauge that was what information technology was instruction the states. A few days later, they all had weird experiences, not exactly the aforementioned, but everybody had a weird feel that was relative to that. And then, whatever it was, it wasn't really specific, it was only a trigger for you to learn something, you lot know? And Benin, where we were, is the only state in the world where voodoo is a state organized religion, and has been for over x 000 years. Information technology is the oldest continuous religion on the planet. That's why I kept saying 'what'southward the original story? What's the mother story?' If anyone knows it, they do.
And so, they started talking about the twins. This, y'all know? ( Genesis looks at her mini forest doll hanged on h/er cervix). We discovered that when nosotros were walking around, people would come up, children, mothers, all kinds of people come up and osculation it or bear on it or pray to information technology. Nosotros gradually realize there'due south a whole sub story about twins. Adam and Eve are twins, Mawu and Lisa are twins. During the one-half year that's gone on before nosotros go back, Hazel Hill Mc Carthy Iii), would kickoff getting emails from professors of anthropology in America and England. One of them had done a study of the incident of twins. In the entire world except Benin, there are four pairs of twins per one thousand births. In Republic of benin there's 25 to 40 pairs per 1000 births. Nobody knows why. They can't see a genetic reason. And so that ways the original story is all about twins.
Then nosotros establish out, in September, at the cease of the month, they have a big festival every year, for twins. The first weekend is dead twins; the second weekend is living twins. Then we thought that we have to get back and find out some more. They're gradually teaching the states some kind of story, but they're doing it in their own way. It'due south fascinating. Considering I'k 65 and I say 'O, I've done all this stuff, been to jungles, and all over Himalayas', and so I get to Africa and I'm 'oh my God, I know aught! Shit…here we become again.'
But that's what so peachy! I dearest novelty. I desire new things, I want to exist dislocated and amazed. I don't want to know what's going on, I want to discover out more and more than and more. And the more we find out, the more astonishing it really gets. So…yeah…who fucking knows….merely consciousness is the key. Definitely. 'Cause we have been working with Native American shamans, we worked with Shiva Sadhus (religious austere or holy person), Naga Babas, Tibetans, it's been a lifetime search for me. What's the original story? What is fucking going on? Am I even here? I don't really know. Especially if you lot do psychedelics too, which I did, because I grew up in the '60s. In those days information technology wasn't for fun, it was a try to find out stuff, you know? We had to learn and detect out, meet new dimensions, worlds. And information technology never stops. It'south fabulous. This is dandy. Who knows what'southward side by side?
A colleague enters the room.
Genesis: Oh, come in. Nosotros were simply discussing the nature of reality. What else is in that location to talk almost? Dear and reality, that's it. And honey, love is always here with me.
Ian Curtis
Dragoș: Love will tear united states apart.
Genesis: Aha… You lot know I was the last person whom he spoke to before he committed suicide? That was awful. Information technology was the days before cellphones.
Dragoș: Why do you think he did it?
Genesis: He was in love with his Belgian girlfriend, and he felt really guilty about growing beyond his wife and child. He hated existence in Joy Division, he didn't desire to be in information technology anymore. He wanted to do something more interesting. He was a large fan of Throbbing Gristle.
Dragoș: He was 23 or something…
Genesis: Aye…very young. He was a big fan of TG, I was sick of being in TG, so nosotros really had a plan and we started to really practise the plan, which was we'd arrange to have a gig in Paris, at La Palace, which would be Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle. And at the end of both set, he would say 'I'yard not quitting Joy Division to start a band with Gen' and I would say 'I'grand not quitting Throbbing Gristle to start a band with Ian'. And nosotros would get-go a band together. But then, that asshole, Tony Wilson – distressing, I shouldn't…- he said 'yous got to get to America', and the other three guys, who were very dainty, I liked them all, I got friends with them all, they wanted to go to America. And he said 'I'1000 not going, I'd rather be dead'. And he meant information technology. And they thought 'oh, he's e'er being dramatic, he doesn't hateful it'. Merely he did hateful it.
He rang me up, that night, he was in Manchester, I was in London, and he sang, word perfect, 'Weeping', which is well-nigh my attempt to commit suicide. And I just thought 'why is he singing my suicide song?' 'Oh, he's going to' attempt to commit suicide. Shit.' So I started to ring everybody in Manchester that I knew. Factory Records people, the manager, Jon Fell, anybody. They were all similar 'he's ever existence dramatic, he's not going to do anything'. I was 'somebody has to go effectually to his house', and they were like 'no, no no'. People didn't take cellphones in that time. So he killed himself. I felt atrocious, 'crusade I was 300 miles abroad, I couldn't do annihilation. Maybe I should take called the constabulary, but, you know, you don't desire to call the police, you want your friends to go around.
Dragoș: He must have had a lot of backbone to do information technology.
Genesis: He hanged himself; that'south really hard…Horrible. Jaye e'er said that suicide is a kind of temporary insanity and if somebody could just filibuster it, yous become past that crisis point, and so you could probably stop it. But there was no 1 who was prepared to go around and practice that. Information technology took me more ten years to heed to Joy Division again after that, I just couldn't heed. I but cried if I tried to. There are most three books now that mention this story, but for ages it kept quiet, considering they felt guilty too, you lot know? And they didn't know that we're going to' start a ring together. None of them; not fifty-fifty Tony.
It was really weird too. We were playing with Peaches in Brussels, in 2006. And Jaye came up to me after we played and said 'there'due south someone hither to see y'all. I know normally you don't want to see anyone, just I think you lot want to encounter this person.' And this beautiful adult female came in, information technology was Ian's girlfriend, she came up and she said who she was and we both started crying and held each other. She died this year…She was so immature. And we never met before. She was really special.
He used to come up visit whenever he was in London. You know whom he listened to before he did 'Closer'? Frank Sinatra. He was really into Frank Sinatra.
--
After nearly one hr, we stopped here, since in that location were a lot of people asking 'where did Gen disappear?' At the end I ask Gen if it's possible to sign a record. Information technology is the first book of 'Acid Tablets' past Jack The Tab, one of two imitation compilations produced by Psychic TV in 1988 (the other is Tekno Acrid Beat). Even if there are a lot of (fake) artists actualization on the compilation, information technology is generally Genesis' work, with help from Fred Giannelli). ''This is such a great tape!'', Genesis recalls while signs it. ''I recall nosotros had such a great fun while recording it. Imagine it, at that time, (1988), at that place was no acid house.'' The room starts to get crowded. Then crowded that I even meet a Romanaian guy living in New York, who is really the neighbour of Edley ODowd, the drummer from Psychic TV.
chief photo credits: Valeriu Cătălineanu // Command Club
other photo credits: Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
About the Writer
Dragoș Rusu
Co-founder and co-editor in primary of The Attic and allround music adventurer.
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