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Genesis P-Orridge’s introduction to The Salivation Army Black Book – Freedom ov Salivation:

[reprinted in Thee Psychick Bible:] “This text was originally written for Scott Treleaven, as the introduction to his compendium 'THIS IS THE SALIVATION ARMY BLACK BOOK'. This book is/was an anthology of every issue of his tremendously influential and effective radical queer/occulture fanzine....We are re-printing the piece, in its introductory form, as we feel a it deals with a lot of important issues and strategies that remain central to the mission of both this site, our process of Breaking Sex and demystified, functional and practical methods for maximising potential within ones L-if-E. A Next New Way On...”

FREEDOM OV SALIVATION: A DISCOURSE ON BEING RADIQUEER...

This radiqueer publication demands an unusual, but pleasing perspective of its readership. The anthology archives that you are now entering, “This Is The Salivation Army”, assembled in print with teeth and claws (and BIG LOVE) by Scott Treleaven from 1996-1999; and in video form as “The Salivation Army” in 2001, requires a level of trust and intimacy unequaled and feared (with good reason) by the lowest common denominator, ultra- commodified, faux-culture, within which you are usually immersed. Naturally, and I choose that word with care-aforethought, this is not just a good suspension of collusion (by which I suggest your everyday submissive acceptance of so called consensus reality), but it is also a psychic purge, and a revelation, beneficial to your potential identification of, and with, your own private and unique concealed SELF.

What you have, right NOW! In your hands, is more than a book, I.T. is a direct attack upon gender oppression and chance biological circumstance. It is an howling, screaming, blood curdling denunciation of every past, present and future bigotry, real or imagined tearing at our throats and hearts with it ruthless honesty and vitriolic integrity. I.T. is a call to arms for all those wandering, idealistic, nomadic souls wounded by inherited dogmas, primitive moralities and mindless fundamentalist ignorance of any and all persuasions anywhere, at any T.I.M.E, across this entire, wonder-full, vandalized, and unjustly suffering planet. This is a definitive subculture rallying cry for all occultural warriors represented herein by the metaphor and righteous madness that is, and all-ways will be THE SALIVATION ARMY!

OUR AIM IS WAKEFULNESS – OUR ENEMY IS DREAMLESS SLEEP —Old TOPI Proverb.

Let there be no mistake, we have reached a place in our popular culture that requires us to face, (giving) head-on, this new intimacy, this knowing and sophisticated privatization of desire and fetish. Our survival as (eventually) intelligent sentient beings and our (optimistic) capability of achieving self-esteem as a species programmed to evolve, depends upon courageous individuals proposing inspirational new metaphors and 21st century behavioral maps as soon as possible, without recourse to any previous or current status quo. The greatest leaps of faith, comprehension and metaphysics are driven by an irresistible compulsion to execute the inevitable against all odds. Usually this is accompanied by persecution in advance of acceptance after the fact. So are martyrs born and lone wolves hunted which explains the drive to locate like-minded others for the added safety of a temporarily anomalous “pack”. What we are voluntarily seduced into by the assembled texts by is a contemporary, and timely, heresy. A compulsive explosion of dreams made flesh, meticulously designed to catalyze an apocryphal social, deviant sexual, unorthodox magickal and unapologetic “queer” unfolding of the central issues of mortality, mystery and creativity. These are core drives of the engine that is SELF, the process of building a SOUL, and address the newly redundant concepts of gender and authorship, authority and authenticity. Scott Treleaven has aspired to build in public his perfecting reality, sharing, without extreme prejudice, his most cherished and occasionally painful discoveries within the context of his chosen people, an often overlooked; misguidedly ostracized (by both “straight” and “gay” establishment) yet most surprisingly common; media-invisible; disarmingly familiar and charming, radical “queer” and proto-pagan alternative community. His tribe, your tribe, a chosen family rather than a confluence of familial disjunction laced with the institutionalized bigotry of betrayal.

A singular message is revealed by implication, omission, collision and unity of intent, proposing convincingly that for the first T.I.M.E. in Human Astory we have enough information at our global disposal to allow us the privilege of a real choice to deny the biological unfolding bequeathed to us; to refute the genetic program of a “GOD” (an/the original author) and enabling us to choose to rewrite his DNA (AND) book of (so called) L-if-E. For the first T.I.M.E. (Time Is Measured Energy) each of us actually has the power to deny the inherited body type and birth-given gender pressed unilaterally upon us by nature. We have entered the dawning of the age of the “cut-up” in all its forms; cosmetic surgery, genetic engineering, sampling of audio-visual data, omni-lateral access to the world wide web (or global neuro-system) and to all other methods and processes that include the demystification and deconstruction of linearity. We, as magickal, creative, soul builders are inherently empowered to truly decide which physical, sexual, or inspirationally creative components to include or discard in order to build whatever identity or biological container we chose, no matter how bizarre or physically unlikely, or how socially uncomfortable or disliked. An era of maximized SELF control is upon us. The dematerialization of identity is the last taboo.

Need evidence? Look no furthur. Our endless curiosity has generated the first age of the genuine co- authorship of reality and with it we have given our SELF the absolute right and the ability to co-author all information ourselves, defeating predestination by cutting it up and owning the narrative, the original material.Science tends to conclude that the past begets the present. The past being what is recorded and what is stored in memory. The present is experienced as a sensory intersection, taking place within the immediate consciousness of any individual. Each person, is in that very particular sense, the epicenter of their own, private universe. Change the way to perceive and change all memory. Once the tyranny of linear rationality was disrupted by the various methods of cutting-up, reality was revealed as a constant state of flux, a malleable and infinitely fluid construct, practical for primitive larval stage humans content with satisfying basic neo-animalistic needs. But dangerously constricting and misleading for sentient creatures aspiring to unlimited physical evolution, expanded consciousness and moral greatness.

In the 20th century emotionally grounded artists who actually were involved in humanE feeling and experience being integrated with aesthetic process became disconnected/alienated from the product in and of itself...in this new way on we are pushed by events to manipulate and rebuild with self determined elements alone the information society thrusts upon us that have become, surprisingly a new form of solidity and inertia. In order to be anything one might label as free and liberated, anarchic and chaotic in a fundamentally positive sense, one has, as an artist and writer, to accept LOVINGLY the state of constant flux as a more viable description of personal reality, as validated more and more by the more intelligent application of particle physics and advanced mathematics.... Once the atom was split, and consciousness

was split by psychedelics, and literature and painting were radicalized by the process of the “cut-up”, and behavior was made malleable by contemporary, functional and intuitive new magickal ritual by collectives like T.O.P.Y. all preconceptions had to be suspended once and for all in favor of an immersion in possibility and individual refuting of the despotism of all forms of conceptual and media ideologies of linearity. Once Burroughs and Gysin split the cultural atom in a meticulous and methodical manner, all models of reality were up for grabs. Linearity is defunct, long live particularity. This Is The Salivation army is both prophetic and practical. A manual of discontent, built from the individually validated and selected building blocks of consensus stagnation in order to co-opt and author language and SELF, both as a protest against bigotry and creative denial, and as an example to all. What we are totally engaged in right NOW! is a battle over authorship of our own story. “Over narrative” itself, as my dear friend Douglas Rushkoff puts it. Existence, experience is no longer a fixed and linear program. We can re-engineer the genetic text, adjust absolutely our inherited behavior, and attack the very foundations of pre-modern culture and stasis. We have become capable of, and responsible for, asking the correct questions. At last...we are given the impeccable revelation of infinite malleability of incontrovertible subjective reality as an experiential validation. Everything is true, and everything is permitted.

In this new way on, that has democratized every aspect of what world we might chose to build with our reactions to, and critique of, the great mystery of L-if-E, certain techniques are necessarily applicable for the “queer” (for “queer” please read, mark and earn ANOMALOUS in every possible, witch, way, especially sexually, AND PROUD OF I.T.). I think that the “queer” core, that one will absorb as an immediate message during reading these texts, demands of us all a discipline of vision and a quality of fantastic but validated dreaming into autonomous existence new forms and varieties of diversity. This is not just wishful thinking (although thinking a wish in order to see what happens IS a great place to begin) but, rather, the following series of suggestions for creative brains everywhere, who are aspiring to adjust the atrophied data presets of our pre-apocalyptic times, are techniques and motivational drives concerned with both our survival as a larval species AND the optimistic faith that this same young species might flourish and grow without (separate from) destruction and ignorance as its over-riding principle of action. AT LAST...

With your kind indulgence may I preface these thoughts with a, “Dear Scott, forgive me if I am wrong...but I feel these are some of the reasons This Is The Salivation Army was brought into rabidly intense being.”

1. Never forget (and this is hard, especially during adolescence) that you are most certainly NOT alone, you merely have to signal and find each other. A good place to look is wherever the enforcers of education that decries the learning of how to process thinking by using bogus authority and slight of mind to misdirect you. For me, discovering the BEATS was the first time I knew in my gut that it WAS possible to live a wildly eccentric, outsider, experimental and bohemian L-if-E (life if evolution...love if energy) no matter what I had been told, indoctrinated, or programmed with by the status quo. Not only did I have an epiphany that a L-if-E built upon, and with, creativity enhanced by travel was viable, but I was compelled simultaneously to believe, as a metaphysical by-product in ART as an Holy calling, a mission, or quest, that once recognized could never be discarded or abandoned, no matter what the consequences. You cannot forget once you have felt this, and it becomes your duty to serve with honor this campaign as you survive and interact with others of your “army”, “tribe” and rogue genetic kind.

2. Next, go looking for these unorthodox, like-minded individuals, have undying faith that they exist and are probably looking for you too. Offer stimulation, speculation, exchange ideas, collaborate, co-ordinate, share information and theories, recommend sources and names of activators you admire who have come to your attention via media, myth or synchronicity. Nothing is stronger in its anarchic potency and cultural resonance than a pack of previously “lone” wolves. Be prepared to do mundane, tedious, and dull tasks to demonstrate to your SELF and those co-operating with you both your understanding that you are in voluntarily bonded service to a higher calling, ART, and that your ego and public recognition are not your motive, nor can they will to seduce you. Nothing is uglier than a person who actually wants to be rich and famous and thinks those “qualities”; those all-consuming contemporary norms have any actual meaning or value in terms of human evolution measured against divinity, infinity, or the creation of a soul.

3. Then, aware that you have chosen a thankless, endless task (by consensus reality standards), due to madness, bad training, neurotic trauma, gender confusion, or your parents, or peer group (or both) don’t EVER kid your SELF about why you chose to be an artist, writer or otherwise creatively driven being. You

have become part of the metaphor not part of the problem, no matter how under siege I.T. (Imaginary T.I.M.E.) might feel! Having already worked so hard to intersect with, and collaborate with, your contemporaries and any worthy icons you have unearthed that you still respect after initial contact, all ways keep in mind that no one person, in this post-tech society, can have, or supply, as much inspiration as the sum total of an interacting group, even if that group is primarily a loose knit ad hoc collective unable to work together on a daily basis. Just as sampling and cutting-up reality gives us a randomized picture, that nevertheless shows us more accurately than is apparent, what sense based material existence looks like; so too, the interconnecting of two minds will produce as its sum a “THIRD MIND”* that, by avoiding singular, individuated solo strategies and agendas, preconceptions and blind-spots, is far greater in total, and more relevant in effect in our era than any solitary brain can achieve, no matter how visionary. In order to combat the conceptual and economic programming of conglomerate global alliances, it is an absolute necessity of declaring and consolidating liberation as each one of us conceives it by shamelessly sharing energy and mutual communication systems (yes, even Xeroxed zines). Know thine enemy. Steal their tactics, raid their resources and turn their weapons of mass media destruction and biological and neurological tyranny back on them.

NOTHING SHORT OV A TOTAL WAR —Old TOPI Proverb.

4. Finally, in terms of thematic content, decide what really OBSESSES you, YOU. What really turns you on, your deepest (possibly most secret) fetish (sexual, paradoxical, philosophical, political, literal, mechanical, it really doesn’t matter), and make that central to your work either directly or obliquely, regardless of medium, accepted traditions of talent, or any other practical considerations. If you analyze your SELF effectively, with brutal honesty, this core integrity will charge your work with REAL individuality, charisma, influence and longevity of power. Surrender to a greater group does not erase self-esteem, ironically, and magickally, it accelerates a flow of matchless integrity into a consciously constructed personality. (By the way the most effective tool I can recommend for discovering and directing “true will” with minimum deviation or self- delusion is the ritual “SIGIL” process described in this r-evolutionary manual). Tell your SELF that you will make the entire world agree with YOU, rather than compromise by trying to figure out what the world will like and agree with I.T. in order to please and be pleased. The process is the product and regardless of how long it takes, one day the clarity of intent permeating your work WILL be recognized and your L-if-E will have purpose. Always and ONLY create based upon the assumption and sincere recognition that you may be so old that you really don’t care if they ever “get it”, and that it doesn’t matter because the worst thing that can happen is that your physical body dies of starvation or neglect in the meantime.

Genesis P-Orridge, New York City 2002

#Genesis P-Orridge #salivation army #this is the salivation army #scott treleaven

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this-is-the-salivation-army · 7 years

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REVISITING THE PERMISSION FACTORY Scott Treleaven (2015)

You’ll have to forgive a few extremely unsexy paragraphs so we can get down to figuring out the lifelong, tenuous romance between punk and gay culture: how it got started in the 70s, how it got revitalized in the 90s, and why this unique relationship persists. It’s the story of how gay culture rescued the first would-be punks from the sexual puritanism of their parents, and how punk would later resuscitate the fury of a devastated gay scene. When I first got into punk music as a kid I found that I connected with a sensibility that seemed to exist nowhere else. What I could only later describe as “Weimar-esque,” punk seemed to have awareness not only of how sex could be liberating and daring, but how it could also be used to *entertain* without being sapped of its vitality. Whatever can be said about punk’s stance against normalcy and capitalism, punks knew the importance of putting on a show; it didn’t have to be a good show, it didn’t have to be a long show, but punk always promised that there’d be something genuine to experience. The fact that some twenty years on it would become relevant again, in a regenerated form as “queercore”, is a testament to punk’s original intent. And once again this reincarnation would come partly as vaudeville, and partly as social hammer.

Of all the ‘origin of the species’ stories about how and where punk got started, who its progenitors were and what historical and cultural factors came together to birth it, Jeff Nuttal’s appraisal in BOMB CULTURE (1968) rings most true for me. Written almost a decade before punk existed, Nuttall surmised that the somber and shell-shocked post-World War II generation would also have to deal with the profound moral schizophrenia brought on by a moment that annihilated the reassuring binary simplicity of ‘good guys versus bad guys,’ forever. The men and women raising children in the late sixties in the UK and the US, the children that would eventually become the first “punks,” must have had found it hard to countenance that the good guys who liberated Europe had gone on to commit the unspeakable atrocity of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Not only did it mean that the shadow of nuclear war hung over the world’s future from now on, but it begged the mostly unspoken question of how one raises a child with any kind of moral assurance when the supposed good guys were capable of the very atrocities they had fought against. Unlike the Bright Young People who emerged as a sort of upper-class, upbeat and insolent post-WWI phenomenon, the pervading air of nihilism and punk’s working class roots had more in common with the clownish despair found in Dada. The closeness of the US/UK alliance might also explain how mutual culpability created a climate that lead to punk’s simultaneous emergence in both countries. Always in the background, the same subliminal refrain, that the dominant culture no longer held moral authority.

The staggering austerity that punk emerged from made it seem like there literally was no future to be had. When I hear tales of kids playing in the bombed out ruins of an empire I think how it must’ve made the edifices of society seem as flimsy and impermanent as they, in fact, are. The only thing you could be sure of was that your young body was alive and filled with a kind of vitality that wasn’t mirrored in the landscape. Suspicion of tradition gave way to a thirst for what was outside, what was verboten. What the parents rejected the kids embraced. Reggae was alien, exciting and new; the Nazi paraphernalia that terrified their elders could be wielded partly for shock value but also to disgrace its symbolic power; and there was also a more pronounced cognizance that underneath the New York Dolls’ and Bowie’s slap was a frank acknowledgement of the wild frontier of gay culture and its influence on style. Along with the draggish maquillage, the bondage gear and the outright porn, what punk found thrilling in the burgeoning gay scene was its frank embrace of fringe and coded styles, its penchant for hidden venues, its gender non-conformity, and the inherent power in outsider camaraderie. After all, “punk” meant “gay” before punk meant punk. The queered sexiness that would become intrinsic to punk had the dual purpose of titillating the uninitiated while simultaneously ridiculing the uptight behind-the-plastic-curtains realm to which sex (or any arousing image outside of sanctioned smut and/or artwork) had been relegated by older generations. Punks were all about giving each other permission to flaunt, demystify and explore own their sexuality.

Eventually, after a particularly cold-blooded breed of Conservatism (perhaps there is no other kind) took hold at the end of the 70s, the virulence of its free market spirit had the effect of turning punk signifiers into just another load of feel good shopping experiences. Stock slogans, mohawks, safety pins and leather jackets became a uniform; anathema to the very things punk was initially about. While punk was defanged, an even more horrifying extermination of subcultural potential was taking place as the sexual libertinism and freedom that characterized the gay scene was ravaged by AIDS. Whereas the radioactivity from Hiroshima eventually dissipated, and the West somehow got back to convincing itself of its own decency, the AIDS epidemic was just getting started and the banner of morality was callously plied to create an exponential body count, and effectively ensuring a plague that could never be contained. By the early 90s the gay scene had gone back to adopting an attitude similar to the “clone” mentality of the late 70s; originally used as a way of signifying sexual difference and availability, the gay scene had now become cautious, conformist and grim as AIDS killed off most of the renegades and sexual astronauts. After approximately 500,000 cases of AIDS and 300,000 deaths in the US alone were reported by the mid-90s, gay culture was reeling and understandably desperate for some kind of homogeneity to patch together what was left. It was from this gloomy fray that queercore first emerged.

As punk had once turned to queer culture for its social-sexual strategies, now it was returning the favor. The blinkered gay and lesbian mainstream in the mid-90s felt neither inclusive nor progressive, or even particularly political, suffering as it was from what can only be called battle fatigue. Under siege for so long, the scene seemed to want to return to some kind of clement version of a pre-AIDS heyday where everyone could listen to mediocre dance music in the company of others who wanted to conform to the new gay normal. If the world was fair, the likes of Queer Nation, Outrage and Gran Fury would’ve thrived, but there was less room now for the libertine weirdos and troublemakers who might (or might not) have caused all of the chaos in the first place. Eventually two Toronto-based punks, G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce, would change everything by launching an incendiary campaign through zines, music and manifestoes, to call out the gays on their conservatism and to make the supposedly open-minded punks put their inclusivity to the test. Following their lead, queercore bands, zines and record labels – like Matt Wobensmith’s Outpunk – flourished. For me personally, as a twenty-year old punk recently transplanted back in Toronto in 1993 after a year of living hand-to-mouth in London, discovering that I could reconcile my music, my politics and my sexuality was a revelation. Already ideologically hopped-up on publications like RE:SEARCH, RAPID EYE and HOMOCULT, I’d also had a fortuitous meeting with queer saint Derek Jarman shortly before my return who clinched for me the idea that there was more to one’s sexuality than simply who you fucked. Jarman’s idea of queerness was that it was a blessing of sorts, a radiant kind of permission. It reinforced for me what I’d always felt: that being queer meant that you could slough off a past, an ideology and a trajectory, that's not yours to inherit and keep on forging paths that are as yet unimagined. And if that wasn’t punk, I didn’t know what was.

Graduating from art school in 1996, and with G.B. Jones’ help, I shot the world’s first queer punk documentary. More of a polemic than a who’s-who, QUEERCORE: A PUNK-U-MENTARY was an attempt to unify some of the politics and positions of the company of outcasts I was keeping. Combining these ideas with some stark pseudo-military aesthetics copped from postpunk bands like Psychic TV and New Model Army, I also started publishing my own zine, THIS IS THE SALiVATION ARMY. Rejecting salvation as a nebulous, ludicrous concept, *salivation* was where it was at; always on the tip of your tongue, something your body knows. And in the wake of the full on body-terror that followed AIDS, this kind of fluidic moniker was about more than just spit. Branding itself as a the mouthpiece of a full-fledged “queer pagan punk” movement with hundreds of members and everybody fucking each other, it didn’t seem useful, or poetically true, to tell readers that in reality it was just me with a gluestick, alone at 3am in an all-night photocopy shop. Another lesson learned from punk: print the legend. Aside from the hyperbole, the zine distinguished itself by trying to be an honest platform to discuss and celebrate sexuality in all its forms, and to this day it’s a point of pride to know that my readership wasn’t solely made up of horny homocore boys, but an equal amount of women, bi and straight readers, too.

Eventually the zine spawned a film of the same name in 2002 that would try to keep the myths alive alongside the truth. The fact that the zine and the film still get unearthed says something, to me at least, about its view of sexuality as something innately powerful, and the punk ethos at its core still gives the go-ahead to explore in the company of like-minded others; being part of an ongoing, swelling history is always better than being part of something unique. When punk first reared its head in the 70s, decrying sex as squelchy and boring was a genius way of disarming the shame-makers, the rockers and the doting hippies, showing a preference instead for anger and action over getting your rocks off and calling it a weekend. In the 90s however the slogan had shifted to take aim at the puritans and fear-mongers with a distinctly feminist pitch. The patches on people’s jackets were daubed with slogans like: You Say Don’t Fuck, We Say Fuck You!, Silence = Death, and Not Gay As In Happy, But Queer As In Fuck You! On the heels of this declaration that queers weren’t the filthy creatures that the religious zealots and right wing would have you believe, another reinvigoration of sexual awareness came in the form of a wave of punk-made porn. It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but in the pre-selfie, pre-internet world, occupying pornography was a radical act. Like industrial musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti’s astutely aware ownership of her participation in pornography – usurping the male-made-for-male-gaze structure – the queercore scene wrestled its bodies away from the overly muscled uniformity of the Aryan sideshow freaks that populated gay porn and made images of their own. Like Warholian superstars, Jones’ and LaBruce’s zines and films launched a new blue generation and everyone, myself included, loaned their time and their bodies to one another in the pursuit of a new kind of radicalism. Suddenly you weren’t jerking off to the too perfect torsos in mainstream porn, instead you could find insanely erotic homegrown smut to get off on that also served the purpose of smashing the stereotypes purveyed by the other mags. The empowerment had positive effects on the models, too. Starring in a couple of centerfolds and films, I found that the lowly view I’d held of my weedy twenty-year old body started to vanish. Better yet, as I got behind the camera I learned to make other models snap out of their narrow views of what turned people on as we added our own brands of eroticism to the collective pool.

The notion that punk was anti-sex, entirely cynical or entirely nihilistic is overplayed. There would’ve been no bands, no shows, no pageantry and no studied provocation if that were true. Now that gay culture has become obsessed with the push for “equality” an ugly, overwhelming sense of genteel propriety has come along with it. The church and the army – the last places on earth a punk or a queer should be – are the mindboggling territories being fought for. When I think about the first time I saw Pete Shelley mincing around in the video for ‘Homosapien,’ even at the tender age of eight I felt that the elegant futuristic world he occupied was going to be mine too, someday, not the weddings and wars that were the destiny of my other little friends. As the 2000s kicked in, my hometown Toronto was a hotbed of queercore activity well past the time when most of the early bands had hung up their guitars and the zines had folded. The late, great artist impressario Will Munro organized a vibrant scene there that was dedicated to the idea that the sexual vitality of the queer scene aligned with the restless utopic cravings of punk could still come together to create something *other*, something *better*. The entire planet is currently groaning under the weight of conservative corporatism, and those thinly veiled fascists are floating the idea that there is no other way but theirs. The spirit of punk, if it truly did anything in the past, and if it can do anything now, is to keep kicking the can further down the road; to say, “This is bullshit and it’s not enough, we can do better. And if you can’t make it better we’ll smash it up and start over.” Sex, punk-sex if you will, can remind us of where that desire originates. It’s in our bodies, it’s innate and it says something more to us about our human place in the world than simply being on a conveyer belt through a shopping-mall-cum-torture-chamber.

– originally published in ‘SHOWBOAT: PUNK/SEX/BODIES’ (2016), edited by Toby Mott http://bit.ly/2twFApe

#queercore #queer zines #queer punk #punk

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