An Essay on Gothicism by I wish I knew
How do you face the darkness? Do you pretend it doesn't exist? Do you
wrap it in a scenario where it doesn't seem so bad? Do you face it and
despair? Or just laugh at it?
It's always there - a hundred thousand horrors every day: wars, starvation, random acts of violence in your own neighborhood, oppression, depression, the monotony of existence, the loss of love, of loved ones, the looming threat of our own mortality. It's there. We see it on the news, read it in the papers, hear about it from friends, witness it ourselves; it cannot be ignored. And so we deal with it. But how?
As any person with even a slight back round in psychology knows, your mind creates defense mechanisms to deal with any number of pressures put upon the psyche - trauma, information overload, frustration, indecision, despair. It works the subconscious mind while you work the conscious. This can result in dreams, peculiar habits, or even a change in your likes and dislikes.
Death and everything related to it is a concern for us mortals. How can we possibly face something as monumental as the threat that everything we have ever worked for, or believed in could just stop in an instant? Just like that we are gone, but totally unaware, with no resolution or answer ever to be given.
Some people turn to religion, obviously. Religion is as an integral part of society as any other, but even more so. We had religion even before we had government, before we had a civilization. And religion has been active in every civilization that has ever existed. One could almost say that civilization could not exist without religion. Communist Europe tried to disallow religion. Admittedly, they did not do the best job stopping its practice, and the lack of religion was probably not the largest contributor to its downfall, but nevertheless, Communist Europe is no more. And the people are practicing religion again, and its no surprise.
The people need reassurance. They need support when faced with the 'undiscovered country.' When faced with unanswerable questions, humans, as resourceful as we are, will make answers. Religion was created to answer these questions. Admittedly, it is much more than that - it has its role as social structure, its advice for interactions with others, rules for good living to promote peace and stability. It keeps the people happy and content as government alone cannot do. It answers those questions, puts death pain and hardship in the frame of a greater good, it tells the people not to worry about what comes after - that it will be better than this life.
And that works. For some - nay, for most people. But not for everybody. There are the atheists, the agnostics, and the existentialists, who either reject religion or question its validity. Often times these people do not know where to turn when faced with the entropy of the impending void. And often times we turn to each other.
I turn to the gothic community. Though raised Christian, I have come to question my beliefs so much that I cannot stand the simple acceptance of the devout. And while there are members of every religious persuasion in the gothic community, a great majority of them question religion. But I get ahead of myself. What is this gothic culture, really?
The primary element in the gothic culture is a fascination with the macabre. Things morbid. The dead, the undead, the supernatural; Goths live in that little space between night and death. We drink in the erie cries of desolation in the night, we make our own cries and add to the chaos. We dream of life as an immortal, we question why it is not possible. We look death in the face. We study evil (if there is such a thing) in all its forms. And we laugh at it.
We laugh the belly-laugh of father time. We laugh at the absurd attempt to know all the answers. We laugh at the fear we feel when we don't. We laugh when we think about the pain that is inescapable anywhere and everywhere in this life. We laugh at our attempts to find a meaning for 'it all' even while we search frantically. We laugh because it is the only thing that we can do. We laugh so that we do not cry.
The gothic culture is a coping mechanism. It adds just a shade of meaning to individuals who cannot find that meaning elsewhere. It is an identity and a pose. It is a lifestyle and a whim. And above all it is a set of philosophies. There are many of these philosophies as there are many kinds of Goths. But there is something that holds us all together. Something as simple and as complicated as the color black. Black is, as we know, the traditional color of mourning... It echoes the darkness of the grave, and the infinite void of space. Goths wear black, though wearing black doesn't make one a Goth. And if you ask a Goth why they wear black, they won't say anything about identification or loyalty to the gothic culture, but will most probably give you the evil eye and tell you it's because they want to. Or simply say "why not?" But why, indeed?
Though no Goth would ever admit it, the black is for identity. It is for beauty in darkness and mourning for the very calamity of life, but it is also for identity. In fact, the whole gothic image is a pose. It is a style that developed 15 years ago and is still copied/borrowed/emulated to this day. If you look in a crowd, a Goth will stand out. He or she will also often be bugged or harassed for the way they look, but this usually does not bother them. In fact, it's an effect that often makes a Goth feel good inside, assuming no undue violence towards them occurs.
What are the ramifications of this identity? A Goth never needs to be told he is a Goth. She will know it inside. Goths feel a common bond. Simon Brind, the famed ‘Sexbat,’ explains it as ‘a visual identity within the subculture,... And the safety of being within a group where we get the in joke.’ For everything comes back to that sense of humor. Laugh in the face of horror, death, despair and eternity. Laugh at others in their placid lives. Laugh at ourselves in our *gothique* pose. In the very first premise of the PerkyGoth manifest, Joel Metz illustrates this latter element of humor:
‘We realize, and perhaps declare publicly, the simple fact the our attire and decorative tastes are downright *silly*, yet in the face of this impractical and sometimes even inconvenient nature of things, we LAUGH! (Metz lines 9-12)’
Attire and decorative tastes do indeed play an important part in the gothic culture. Gothicism is rooted firmly in aesthetics. You will rarely find a Goth who is not interested in at least one artistic pursuit, be it reading and writing literature and poetry, listening to and making music, making and appreciating art, or expressing art in the realm of fashion. These aesthetics, as shallow as they seem, have solid basis in the gothic philosophies. The subject of the art invariably deals with death, or pain, or the hardships of life. Many would call it depressing.
The best music would make you weep. It would fill the air with sorrow, a pain so deep that it would carry you out into the endless void of never a tomorrow, and leave you stranded, cold and naked.
The best artwork would invoke both exquisite beauty and horror at the same time. Its subject would be painful to look at, painful even to think about, but would be rendered so delicately and beautifully (or forcefully and compelingly) that you could stare at it for hours.
The best poetry would pour a flood of emotions into your heart, a flow of images into your brain so intense that you do not wish to endure them, but you cannot stop from feeding them in. You are shaken, and continue to think on the words and images the rest of the day.
Finally, we cannot forget the aesthetics of dress. The perfect look should be a thing of beauty. It should evoke youth and health and a joy of experiencing life, while at the same time cast a shadow of sinister intentions, hidden pain, and death waiting just below the surface. It is decadence personified, pleasure and pain, life and death in an awful, terrific juxtaposition.
For the juxtaposition is ever present. We are living things about to die. Every other living thing is too, but we know it. And we choose to face it and not gloss it over or explain it away with more conventional philosophies like religion. But we live with this knowledge. And because of it, we are driven to live more, to live better.
Because another tenet of the gothic lifestyle is the love of life. We need to live life in every capacity. We socialize to no limits - dance to the music of the club, haunt the night with other kindred spirits - celebrating the end. We try new experiences, shed all arbitrary constraints - Goths are not unwilling to question traditional sexual customs, or to sample intoxicating, mind-altering substances. Some will go to dangerous extents to gather a new and different experience to themselves.
Because experience is life, and every experience you add to what you perceive as your life is one more weapon with which to fight the void. One more piece of concrete evidence to prove that you are innocent of nonexistence, guilty of life. We laugh and we cry, but most of all, we laugh and cry with others. Others who share our beliefs, or can at least understand ours. It is safety in numbers, though
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