What is Goth?
"Priestess of Delphi" by Jon Collier
One of the comments I have had about this site which really amused and annoyed me was someone telling me "I was really impressed how intelligent you are in your views. I wasn't expecting that." At first it seemed a good compliment, but then I realized that apparently, Goths are just supposed to be silly little teenagers who can't spell without a spell check program and use numbers instead of words ("I wuld B 4 U, 2 Goku"...I HATE THAT!!!) So, I felt the need to put something up here about the Goth Culture as I see it. So far, I think people seem to dig it, and understand, so here we go.
Back in the day, a band called Bauhaus with a singer named Peter Murphy started a little schtik with a song called "Bela Lugosi’s Dead(Undead)". It was supposed to be a joke, with the creepy music and dark theatrics. Instead, it spawned a whole new culture that claimed the right to wear darkness, and made it darker still.
The wearing-o-the-black isn’t anything new, but everyone seems to think so. Coco Chanel shocked the designing world by disdaining her own creations ( "The Rich have no mirrors") and sticking to the "little black dress" that is still a standard of every woman’s wardrobe. From Eurotrash to Vidal Sassoon to multi-millionaire moguls to smart super-businesswomen, wearing black is "what is done". It is only when accompanied by a darker mindset - the world of Tim Burton, of Type-o-Negative, of Danzing, The Cure and the like - that it becomes something more; it becomes "Goth".
Imagine if you will, a time when AIDS hadn’t even been heard of. When the internet, computers in every home, CD’s and CD players, and video games were just something in someone’s head, but not even on paper yet, let alone taken seriously. This was a darker time, when we didn’t always say what we felt, and said more than was decent: when being interracial was looked upon with disgust from both sides (and sadly, is now just "exotic pieces of ass"); when dressing or acting differently would more often than not get you beaten, ostracized, and sent to a shrink or a sanatorium. There were no gay pride groups, no support systems for emotional or sexually abused people, no alternative religions or beliefs outside of California. This was a very closed time, and there were a lot of things that were going wrong.
To some of the younger Goths (and by younger I mean ANYONE who is under 20), Goth is little more than listening to music that is dark and sensuous, dressing in dark colors and blending it a bit with Japanime, and sticking your nose up in the air. It isn’t something you decide in a day, or even a week. Acting as badly, or even worse, as the "jocks" that the Granny-and Geri-Goths remember from our tortured youth, seems to be the norm, and angst, hatred and infighting seems common, and now we are starting to "classify", just like any other sect of religion or politics. ("I am a Taoist/Wiccan/Antiquegoth with Jewish tendencies" [??!!!]
To the older Goths, the Goth culture is symbolic of "Paradise Lost", the Tree of Knowledge that we were forced to eat from, without free will. It is the banshee scream of our lost innocence. And I don’t mean mom and dad kicking us off mIRC at 11:00 or not getting that car on graduation. I mean those of us who had to deal with being beaten by parents and schoolmates because there were no groups back then to stop them. Those of us who lost our virginity at 4 before we even knew it was wrong. It was the first time we heard the word "nigger", and then learned what it meant. The orphans with no families, or those of us who do have families, but had been disowned for who we wish to be. The young mothers who lost children out of their beliefs or miscarried from being beaten, the gay men who went through life in terror of being found out - and perhaps didn’t live long enough to see the Millennium due to hatred, AIDS, or both. So those of you that say "no-one is born Goth", I amend the statement. No, we were not born, but we were MADE.
I'm not understood by most people in the Goth Culture because of my odd viewpoints or in short, my oddities. I am very Different and I state it. For some reason, people think I am trying to get reassurance for it. No, I am just telling you; "Don't try to understand me; you can't. I wouldn't wish you to, it would be too horrible. Just accept that you cannot, and accept me regardless, with all my oddities." Am I mad? Perhaps, but again, I was made. But do not think that all Goth people are as I am. Some just want to do and be different, some just wear the clothes because it is a nifty thing to do and they like to have anhks all over the place. But we of the Walking Wounded know our own, and take strength in ranks of black. And to the contrary, there is nothing glamorous in being fucked up in the head. I want you to realize that. It is almost funny to me that Goth is now glamorous, because that was never the intention of Goth. Goth is pain. Goth is about getting up in the face of that which angers us, not just snickering about it and rolling well-made up eyes in dark corners. If you don't like something, you try to change it. But most don't; if something is glaringly wrong in the Goth culture, we just shrug our shoulders, rather than say "That is bullshit and I am going to do something about it!" Even Goth is tame now. It really is just a word. It is a word that I no longer use much in reference to myself, because it means nothing. I profess to no label anymore.
I have been locked up in asylums, I have lost one child to miscarriage, one to rape, and one to CPS because of what I believe and what I look like (half because I was wearing black, half because my son, even lighter than I, didn't look black enough!!) I have been shunned by my family and not talked to any of them for over a decade because my mother believed me in league with the Devil (I'm pagan, so I guess she was half right..j/k). I wandered five years homeless and survived only from the Lady’s intervention. I starved in the house of Christians because they would not let me eat until I converted. I have, in short, been through hell and back, and I brought the keys with me. And still, I would not and WILL NOT give up what I am, what I believe, not for judgmental children, not for the attorneys I work for, not anyone. I have earned my right to be proud in the wearing-o-the-black, and I will wear it as I choose. This does not mean that I threaten weekly to slit my wrists or perform other self-destructive behavior (I never once turned to drugs in that whole time, though I sometimes wonder how I managed to escape any sort of addiction other than smoking), nor does this make me a sorrowful being that is a complete drag to be around. I forgive past transgressions and difficulties, but I do not forget them...forgetting dooms one to repetition. If I talk about my past, it is not in playing the "my life was worse than yours" game...it is a warning, to try and protect people younger than I, heading onto the same dark path. If I profess the problem of being a minority in a subculture, is in not to scream "racism" every five minutes, it is to educate ignorance. Racism I can't do much about, people who really WANT to hate someone, will. People who want to end that sort of shit will ASK and will further tell others how uncool it is to belong to a group that was about rebelling against conditioning, and yet falling back into the conditioned state of cultural ignorance. Goth was about stirring things up and making ourselves heard, not just about fashion or music sense.
….and that is what Goth is to us older ones. It is not guns or viciousness…is was armor against a hostile world, armor that looked strange, yes, but protected our individuality, and saw us through. And we shall keep it as it is.