Happy International Women's Day: Celebrating Alaura's 'Sacred Dreams' at 30 years

 

Today is International Women's Day 2025 as I write this. Women are as imperiled as ever, some intersections more so than others. But this is as good, if not better, time as any to celebrate a work of emancipation as powerful as the ambient solo album Sacred Dreams by Alaura O'Dell (aka Paula P-Orridge of Psychic TV fame). Sometimes the sublime and the surrendering to the divine can be as transformative as anything that is harsher, jarring, etc. Beauty can be just as shocking to those expecting to encounter confrontation. 

From the soothing nature of the music to the Dave McKean-esque tribal looking cover art, this record is more of a New Age enigma than you might expect from someone from an industrial background. I suggest you also explore the solo works of Jarboe more or Insect Ark and realize these things don't have to be exclusive and that people have many sides and faces. 

I just watched the film Strange Darling , which I enjoyed. Willa Fitzgerald is one of the most compelling actresses I have ever seen and delivers an amazing performance of a serial killer who you think for most of the film is either a victim or someone with trauma exploring some very edgy boundary pushing. In a time when "women are the real abusers" Amber Heard style witch trials are being flame fanned by incels and when there is an epidemic of sex targeted femicide around the world, I was wary of this film. However, I was surprised by how well it was handled and implied how compound traumas can alter someone's moral compass drastically if left unhealed. 

Alaura wrote Sacred Dreams in the wake of a lot of upheaval in the mid 90s. After playing an essential role in Psychic TV, she found herself bitterly sidelined and, as they say in the John Wick franchise, Excommunicado after divorcing Throbbing Gristle, COUM and Psychic TV cultural transgressor and basically underground legend Genesis P-Orridge. A recent article Surviving Genesis details things very wel (although TW: to trans readers, I can't tell if there is some misgendering going on near the end of the article or if it is a simple sort of getting used to terms thing). It was written in the wake of Genesis' passing and after previous partner to Genesis, Throbbing Gristle's Cosey Fanni Tuti also detailed abuse and coercion in one of her books. 

While Genesis undoubtedly helped change cultural expectations and norms forever and broadened the landscape and vocabulary of musical and personal consciousness, so did their victims, support systems and collaborators. It is important to me as a trans person and Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV fan to navigate that without bias. I mean, I also just don't dig when people allegedly skimp on child support or make one parent do all the work.

 It made me sad thinking of Genesis nursing a doll in a semi tender scene from The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye (which is still an excellent film despite being one sided), and then hearing Alaura say how she was mistreated a both a partner/mother and individual. Then again, this is also someone who seems like they were groomed in a paternalistic way and then handed a lot of gendered stereotypical roles to "handle" when they aged into them so the other artists in the band or relationship could frolic unfettered. Boo urns. 

For one like Genesis who challenged gender norms and roles a lot later in life, it is sad to hear Alaura or Cosey talk about gendered control or having to do menial roles that are traditional in sexist and patriarchal societies. I also know as a non binary person that sometimes there is a lot of self hatred or ptsd and brainwashing from the patriarchy to unpack and hurt people can hurt others. This is sad but if confronted can lead to steps on a healing process or, as Snapcase named one of my favorite hardcore albums, Progression Through Unlearning. 

Anyhow, Alaura's Sacred Dreams sounds more akin to Enya and a breathing out of pain and breathing in of light than some extreme music or deconstructionist industrial roadmap. "Adriatic Passion" is positively yogic. You could likely slot it into a playlist alongside Delerium and folks would be none the wiser. That is not a slight. 

"Existence Of Ecstasy" is my favorite track. It feels like Alaura is reminding herself that it is ok to stretch her wings, celebrate herself and to operate on her own frequency. This is such a crucial thing. It disgusts me to hear right wing influencers like Andrew Tate talk about mind controlling women into doing things for him and trying to pass on this toxic mental virus to impressionable boys to create a fascist MRA super army online of sad little inept shits. 

Alaura deserves to be celebrated in her own right as a pioneer and a champion of punk frontiers. Sacred Dreams in the very title alone reminds us that autonomy and the psyche are sacred ground. Sharing with others is not mandatory and is a blessing when given, be it art, sex, conversation, anything really. 

I find it gaudy when leftist spaces demean Goddess worship. I get that sometimes it can get terfy, for sure. I am not down with that. That can make people who have been assigned gender defensive when we assign one to the planet, itself. 

I also understand as someone who considers the Holy Spirit of the Trinity to be a non binary element or entity or force, in my own practice...why gender the divine? Well, different energies and elements exist within all of us. The divine feminine is still real however it manifests and ought to be respected. Mother Earth or Gaia energy is definitely real and a mothering energy towards the Earth is certainly more "punk" than an aggro cis male coded rendering obsolete our species under the excessive thrall of capitalism. I say that as someone who is by NO means a bio-essentialist. 

That said, I had a radical transformative experience with a Kali worshipping priestess once who healed a lot of trauma in me. Kali has many faces and none. It is a good meditational key to unlocking ego death and to reset oneself. 

I love Sacred Dreams in a similar manner as a positive tool and hope you will take sometime today to hear how much Alaura poured herself into this work thirty years ago and how special it is to have an artist clearly make something for herself and to hopefully connect to others who need it instead of going with the grain...even when that grain is in itself packaged as non-conformist.