Reviews of Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs

Artist, musician, provocateur, Genesis P-Orridge has been a pioneer is numerous fields. Founder of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, and Psychic TV, they have contributed to the musical genres like industrial, acid jazz, and the umbrella term avant-garde/experimental. Their memoir, Nonbinary, is a chronicle of their life. The genesis of Genesis begins in media res with his visit to William S. Burroughs. Following the meeting, he takes Burroughs’s advice and decides to dedicate his life to answering one question: How do you short-circuit control?

Genesis grew up as a weak, asthmatic boy in working-class Manchester. Their youth, combating asthma, made him realize how frail and temporary the human body was a vessel. Even at a young age, they stared down the gun barrel of death, one suffocating breath at a time. Struggling with the interrelated concepts of sexuality and gender, they pursued an artistic path in college. Dropping out to pursue the arts with the squatter punks in London was a heartbreaking blow to their father. For the working-class family, attending university meant the culmination of personal and professional achievement. But Genesis saw it for what it was, merely a symbol, and an empty one at that. (While college can be a personal and professional stepping stone, it isn’t for everyone.)

What Genesis tried to create through their various artistic endeavors was a modern equivalent of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk (the Total Work of Art) uniting painting, music, performance, and film into one unified whole. Concurrent with these projects were their own explorations of gender. It was only during the latter part of their life that Genesis was able to achieve their dream of becoming “pandrongynous,” a simultaneous melding and abandonment of the male and the female. Early in the memoir, Genesis reveals they don’t like the traditional masculine trappings (and the socio-cultural baggage associated with such). They sought to “end gender,” a revolutionary stance in the desire to eliminate all the cultural stereotypes associated with both genders. While pro-trans rights and a recipient of top surgery (in this case, breast implants), they didn’t see transitioning from one to another gender as a viable societal solution. They desired to tear down the entire rotten edifice of traditional gender (gender roles, gender performativity, etc.) and erect the Pandrogyne in its place, a paradisical figure reminiscent of alchemy and esoteric knowledge. But their opinions of traditional gender roles parallels their opinions on traditional music. While having their start in punk and industrial scenes, their performances sought to break the bonds of musical rhythm, since rhythms were patterns and patterns locked one in place. Even the angriest, most confrontational punk and hardcore bands still followed a beat.

It was a joy reading this book, not only discovering the life story of Genesis P-Orridge, but reading about their everyday struggles as an artistic revolutionary. Genesis adopting the nonbinary status is their personal commitment to short-circuiting control. Listening to the Origin of the Species collections (4 CDs spread over 2 box sets) was a formative musical experience for me. In their own, Genesis represents the artist at their most heroic, setting truth to power in antagonistic installations of musical mayhem, a techno-industrial ritualism questing for a neo-pagan enlightenment.