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 ROCK PREVIEW From Genesis to Revelation Legendary eccentric Genesis P-Orridge discovers the Word with Thee Majesty. BY JOHN GRAHAM |
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Pigface, Thee Majesty featuring Genesis P-Orridge, Sow, Project Dark Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038 9 pm Friday, Dec. 18 $15 Genesis P-Orridge of Thee Majesty stands behind a microphone. Unlike his performances with the seminal industrial group Throbbing Gristle, there are no racks of machinery ready to ejaculate spurts of taped chaos. The strobing spirals of color and flash from his days with "hyperdelic" acid-trance band Psychic TV are nowhere in sight. The atmosphere is surprisingly quiet, empty. Then P-Orridge opens his mouth and speaks. Calmly. Thoughtfully. Politely. He begins with a few chosen words, initiating a conversation with the crowd, an oral interaction where, as he writes in the liner notes to the new Psychic TV compilation/reevaluation, Origin of the Species (Invisible), "Nothing is fixed, everything is permitted." He is not there to preach, however. He wants to meet the audience, albeit in an abstract way--the blending of psyches, the sharing of space and sound. The "majesty" is the spectrum of human existence, not P-Orridge's status as king of the self-exiled subcultural elite. He does not want passive listeners who are lost in the voice of their guru or master. "I hope what will come across is a sense of true vulnerability," he says from his home in New York. He believes that his earlier feelings of vulnerability--the raw exposing of his personal hopes, fears, depressions--have faded as people have come to understand the public persona known as Genesis P-Orridge. He wants to return to that precipice of uncertainty, where he can reveal himself to the audience anew, challenging both to talk and listen. But why choose spoken word when electronica, which P-Orridge helped pioneer with Psychic TV, is suddenly receiving its critical due? "I got dissatisfied with the song as a vehicle," he explains. "I felt that...because of the mediocrity of MTV and the commodification of everything almost before it happens, that you can't help being imprinted with the feeling that the words are just surfing on top of the music. "I've come to the conclusion that I'm in love with words and language," he continues, outlining his fascination with their resonant power to trigger emotions and manifest hidden realities. "I really want to explore that without the safety net of rock'n'roll or any stylized genre...go back to square one and say, 'OK, we're starting with words and stories and dialogues and conversations, about the mysteries of being alive, if you like, in the biggest sense.'" This leads us onto the topic of written versus spoken language. We discuss Please Kill Me, Legs McNeil's "oral history of punk" (which, ironically, is printed in book form), and P-Orridge notes the proliferation of wordsmiths among underground rockers, namechecking Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira (ex-Swans) and Little Annie (ex-Crass). He believes such artists are edging away from song and toward spoken word because music alone doesn't permit full exploration of the mind. "You can fall back on clichés and tricks and riffs, or you can just make it louder on a bad day," he says. "But when you strip down to just the words, you and the audience, and no option but just to listen to each other...it's very powerful." It's this meeting of minds and bodies--which in the age of e-mail and duelling long-distance telephone carriers is an increasing rarity--that most interests P-Orridge. He observes that "maybe one day it'll be almost sacred...to have people sitting around and have their bodies touching each other while they listen, rather than be at a website. It's going to be a very different experience with me and [avant-garde guitarist Bryin Dall, the only musical element of Thee Majesty] talking to somebody three feet from them, [rather than being at] a website where I've typed the same piece of text and, maybe if you're lucky, a noise loop behind it." Such increases in impersonal interaction lead P-Orridge to ruminate about a necessity for "direct communion with words," and predict the rising concept of the poetic word as "a serious idea, not just a lyric." When that occurs, lyrical writing will no longer be a decoration pinned to a pop song; instead, the music will be the expendable element. Undoubtedly, some will be disappointed by this turn away from songwriting. P-Orridge doesn't discount a future return to the musical forum. In fact, he doesn't discount the possibility of anything. "I have sort of a silly metaphor for it," he says. "But if you think of the world as a great big fairground, we've all got into the same ride, but we don't actually want to finish building it yet. I always want to be on that ride that's not finished and I don't quite know what's going to happen."
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