On Goth is a Lifestyle, Part 1:

I have been feeling a lot better with myself since I’ve been getting back to my Goth roots here on my blog. I guess I’ve been feeling a bit too vanilla here. Not that there is anything wrong with being vanilla. Even I have days where ‘normal’ is a good, break out of my box, thing to be.

The trouble with being Goth is the fact that it is a very broad umbrella these days.

Emos got tired of being under that umbrella and are trying to move out into their own group. With the vampire TV/book/movie movement out there in the media, that sub group of Goth will probably want to try to move on too.

‘Goth’ was once based on the Gothic style of architecture and the people that liked that style. The feeling of dark castles and wrought iron, gargoyles and reclusiveness, the people that lived there with long gowns or frock coats, candle light and shadows captured the imagination. Dark stories in these settings full of romance to stir ones blood and fright to thrill the senses became the gothic novel.

In the eighties a group of disenfranchised youth took it to the next level and the Goth music scene was born. Goth became a catch word for this group of dark punk rockers. They added some trappings from gothic fashion from days of old. Victorian mourning clothing, pale faces, and driving hearse became part of the look. (Hearse as cars was already an in thing from the seventies.) Wearing black was the new way to shock the establishment and lay claim to an identity.

They were a loosely formed group of loner, awkward teenagers that felt that they didn’t fit into the happy, preppy, school spirit crowd on the other side of the campus. A way of saying, ‘Don’t confuse us with them or expect us to join in.’

Most Goths are teenagers looking for a place where they can belong, be different than their parents and wheeled some power by shocking others without having to resort to violence. This is as true of them back in the eighties as it is now. These people while true to what Goth is/was to them at that time in their lives, often move away from and move on to other styles later in life. Not a bad thing really. Goth was there for them when they needed it and afterwards they grew into their own style on the other side of their teen years. They fit for a while, but the true Goth is a lifer.

The once Goth is not necessarily a posers. Posers are people who just do a thing to fit in with a group that will take them in, or they go Goth to scare their parents, or follow the lifestyle for a person that they want to impress, but otherwise they don‘t feel the need to be goth heart and soul by themselves.

I’m am talking about the people out there after their teens, that will still have a wardrobe of ‘normal’ clothing that is mostly black and a few choice items often unworn any longer as a reminder of good Goth times gone by.

They work and function in the ‘normal’ world, but still follow the goth bands they love and wish they were still young and had the time to be part of the scene. Goth still turns them on, and warms their ‘cold dead hearts.’

Again not talking about those people from school that just stopped and never moved on after high school or college. Wearing clothing and hair from back in the day and surrounding themselves with mementoes of youth. The ungrown-up.

But I am talking about the Goth with responsibilities and families to feed.
________________________

More tomorrow. But until then you can read this article if you don’t believe me.