English musician and performance artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has died at the age of 70.
P-Orridge’s daughters shared this message earlier today:
“Dear friends, family and loving supporters,
It is with very heavy hearts that we announce thee passing of our beloved father, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
S/he had been battling leukemia for two and a half years and dropped he/r body early this morning, Saturday March 14th, 2020.
S/he will be laid to rest with h/er other half, Jaqueline “Lady Jaye” Breyer who left us in 2007, where they will be re-united.
Thank you for your love and support and for respecting our privacy as we are grieving.
Caresse & Genesse P-Orridge
#s/heisher/eforever”
P-Orridge (1950 – 2020) pioneered the genre of industrial music as part of Throbbing Gristle and also fronted the experimental band Psychic TV.
P-Orridge was also an icon of non-binary identity, embracing pandrogeny:
“Pandrogeny as a concept is not about gender—it’s about the ending of all binary perception.
It’s influenced by the allegory of the path of no distinction—that all definitions, distinctions, values, matters of what could be considered good, bad, delicious, or revolting are all human-made. They’re not innate. That’s true of identity, which includes gender.
For for us it’s about erasing the need to even consider gender.”
To understand how ahead of time – or outside of it – Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was, consider Throbbing Gristle’s What A Day, released in 1979, when disco ruled the airwaves:
R.I.P.
Another Genius left today!!!! Paix à toi !
“To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Do you free yourself from fear by cowering in your physical body for eternity? Your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool…it’s full of holes…it’s full of holes.
I want to reach the Western Lands-right in front of you, across the bubbling brook. It’s a frozen sewer-it’s known as the Duad remember? All the filth and horror, fear hate, disease and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands. Let it flow!
My cat Fletch stretches behind me on the bed. A tree like black lace against a gray sky. A flash of joy. How long does it take a man to learn that he does not, cannot want what he “wants?” You have to be in Hell to see Heaven. Glimpses from the Land of the Dead, flashes of serene timeless joy, a Joy as old as suffering and despair.
The old writer couldn’t write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. And then? “British we are, British we stay.” How long can one hang on in Gibraltar, with the tapestries where mustached riders with scimitars hunt tigers, the ivory balls one inside the other, bare seams showing, the long tearoom with mirrors on both sides and the tired fuchsia and rubber plants, the shops selling English marmalade and Fortnum & Mason’s tea…clinging to their Rock like the rock apes, clinging always to less and less.
In Tangier the Parade Bar is closed. Shadows are falling on the mountain. “Hurry up please. It’s time.”
hamburger lady 4 ever…
I’m disappointed to hear this. Genesis’ words in various media have always given us neither/neither ideas to digest and grow from consideration. We are all temporary and atonal.
Dang it’s a sad era…
I really feel like straight, cisgendered electronic musicians like myself need to pause and reflect at how much we owe to transgendered/non-binary performing artists and pioneers of electronic music. These folks reshaped how we understand what it means to be a human person and an electronic musician and I am grateful for their work.
United.