GENESIS P. ORRIDGE

Sometime back in the late 80s I stumbled upon in some bookstore somewhere (probably in Berkeley, but who the hell really knows) RE/Search publishing’s series of counterculture books based out of San Francisco, which consisted primarily of essays and interviews with some of the underground's foremost authorities on calling “Bullshit” on contemporary societal paradigms. Industrial Culture Handbook, Modern Primitives and the mighty Pranks introduced me to an army of comrades (Williams Burroughs, Jello Biafra, Mark Pauline and Survival Research Laboratories to name a few) I probably would never meet, yet these volumes spoke to my bourgeoning collective sense of belonging to a set of other individuals who reacted strongly to determined societal “Norms” with thoughtful and deeply constructed philosophies and manifestos. I never pierced more than my earlobes and never bothered with tattoos, but my gut feeling was that whatever the majority took for granted was a large and opiate-like pill that tasted like dried up turds. Authority was to be questioned at all costs and life was at best an experiment and a full-on mandate for the responsibility to find out what life, my life, not yours, was all about at all costs. That meant risking ridicule, parental pooh-poohing, nay saying, opposition, and ultimately alienation in the search for some kind of Truth, that shape-shifting and nebulous concept that only seems to hold value for whatever moment it makes itself revealed before mutating into yet another form requiring further investigation. In other words, a never-ending job that paid the highest of salaries, a kind of temporal enlightenment that never lasts for long anyway.

So yesterday afternoon Cara and I head down to Greenwich Village to visit her close friend Shawn who has a salon there. They both lived in Olympia at the same time and have known each other for years. He’s one of the reasons she moved here. We knew in advance he was going to be cutting hair for Genesis P. Orridge; we’d even been invited to the first of several Psychic TV shows that started last Sunday in Brooklyn. I actually knew more about him than Cara, Genesis being one of the first people in the RE/Search books I was exposed to. His contributions were about distinct body modifications and philosophies, complete with detailed shots of his body, penis etc for all his piercings. I always thought he was a Satanist, but that term has so little meaning anymore, since it really doesn’t apply to anything in my opinion. He’s definitely explored mysticism and the occult, though probably on a far more esoteric level than say people understand the Dahli Llama and Buddhism.

These days he’s undergoing some other transformation, becoming essentially an M2F transsexual, complete with breast implants. Though his intent is far from the hyperstylized porn tranny fantasies that are made for supersex fuck fests.

We walk into the boutique, Shawn’s working on Genesis’s hair and it’s surreal already, because seeing people in the flesh you’ve read about for years is always surreal and freaky. His wife is there; she’s probably younger than me and looks like she could have worked at the salon. A photographer and make up guy are there as they’re actually doing a photo shoot later on that day.

Cara I say a quick hello then go eat some chicken kabobs then come back. We hung out in the salon for a while, talking more to Shawn than Genesis and his wife. It’s just bizarre really; I’m certainly not the same person at 40 as I was in my twenties. I guess I’ve taken off and explored a smattering enough of the world, occult etc., to solidify my own antiestablishment stance and see the bullshit for what it is, so anyone who shares similar ideas is fun to talk with and bounce ideas off, even learn a thing or two. I’m still very interested in new concepts; really, I've hardly learned anything and have only dabbled in some things because some occult/spiritual practices frankly doesn’t interest me. At the same time I’ve moved far away from my own naïve ideas about enlightenment and the idea of self long ago. Since I quit drinking years ago I popped a big bubble in my ego and have dried to continue the deflation ever since. Keeps me humble. So that’s it. I guess I felt humble even if this fellow has taken his personal quest into some territory I can’t imagine going at this time. But who cares really? He has to be close to 60 and if I’ve learned anything at my age, it’s that the body is going to go no matter what you do, so have fun with it. Do whatever you want with it, it’s yours to use and it won’t last forever. I didn’t let on of course I knew who he was or anything like that, it was hardly the time or place, but it was enough to be in the presence of a true pioneer, and he was sweet and funny, and short. He had on a loud pair of Nikes and I watched him tap his feet to a Michael Jackson song. I could see liking him and hanging out with him and tapping into some of that whatever he’s tapped into himself.

• • •

Also, I don’t think I really had much to say about 9/11 and NYC since I really didn’t think I had any sort of ability to formulate an idea of what it must have been like for anyone here. That’s just presumptuous. I’ll just leave it as an interesting day to be here, and that it’s embarrassing to be an American most of the time with the kind of representation we have. Proves my point.