Interview with Genesis P-Orridge
AP: What was the, um, genesis of the film?
GENESIS: It was Lady Jaye’s idea, really. The process of becoming each other was an instinct from the beginning [1993]. Luckily, we both wore size 7 1/2 women’s shoes. In 2003, when we wanted to take it further with surgery, we thought it would be great to have someone filming and documenting this entire process. We met Marie [Losier] in this concert we were doing. Although we’d not seen any of her films, and knew nothing about her, we felt it was right. She began filming chunks of our lives, and we gave her total access.
AP: How did you work with Marie Losier on the footage to include?
GENESIS: We gave her access to our lives and thoughts for 7 years and took her on tour with us and Psychic TV–being awake for 20 hours, not getting good food, sleeping in bunk beds on the bus…She was determined to do all of that. In the end when it came to editing, we gave her 100% freedom, 100% her choice of what to put in the film…. She had all of our archives at her fingertips. How she managed to memorize it and turn it into a story is mindboggling. A voice over narration is collaged together from hours of talking and sound. It feels and flows as if scripted, but it wasn’t. It was uncanny.
AP: Can you discuss more about the pandrogyne project?
GENESIS: Lady Jaye said, “Some feel they are a man trapped in women’s body. Some feel they are women trapped in a man’s body.” The Pandrogyne just feels trapped by the body. [It] has nothing to do with gender. We blur our inherent characteristics of gender. At the beginning it was an expression of our absolute love of each other–that we were so close that we merged. We were two halves of a whole. We blended ourselves into one entity. Our surgeries are a way of refuting the DNA and the physical realities. We are creating a third being, a positive androgyne. The ultimate perfect state is male and female reconciling and becoming one. We became spiritually involved as well as conceptually. The final coming together of male and female as a beautiful fusion symbolizes evolutionary change where the human species can move into the next level.
AP: What is your favorite memory of Lady Jaye?
GENESIS: [Pauses.] Oh Gosh. The very first time we made love. It was in a small apt in east village, She had a bunk bed. We were lovers for a year before we had intercourse. And all of a sudden, she said, “don’t move” and made love to me, and it was the most incredible, mystical orgasmic moment we’d ever experienced. It made everything we’d ever felt/explored pale in comparison. It was religious and beyond human, inexplicably beautiful and perfect outside time and space.
AP: What do you think people would be surprised to learn about you?
GENESIS: I still can’t play “Three Blind Mice,” and can’t tune a violin, but I am a trained singer.
AP: Your story is extreme, and personal, but it has a universal quality to it. Can you explain why you wanted to share your love story?
GENESIS: It’s simple. It was Lady Jaye. The moment we were together and until she passed, it was [her desire] to be remembered as one of the great love affairs. Which is why 3 years after she dropped her body, we continued to do it [make the film]. It was all for Jaye. Thank goodness that we did do all that. We didn’t realize she’d be lost so early in life.
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