G o t h i c F r o m t h e S e c u l a r P e r s p e c t i v e by Joseph J. kopnick This segment on Gothic from a Secular Perspective is exerpted from the larger pamphet entitled "What is Christian Goth" which also contains information on what is Gothic from the Christian Perspective. SOURCE 1 - anonymous How do you define Goth? This must be one of the most asked questions about Goth. It is also surrounded with the most amount of confusion, hype, and misinformation of any query pertaining to this particular subculture. This might take a while, so get comfy and let's take a peek at what Goth actually is... Origins of Modern Gothic Culture Goth is actually much more than the sum of its parts, and, depending on who you ask, you can get a bewildering array of contradictory answers, many of which are valid parts of a much larger subculture. It is more than a label or description. Goth is at once a lifestyle and a philosophy that has its roots firmly embedded both in the historical past and the present. The central Ideal that characterizes Goth is an almost compulsive drive towards creativity and self-expression that seeks to reach out and ensnare its audience using our current society's covert but deeply rooted fascination with all things dark and frightening. This act can be either subtle and seducing or nightmarishly terrifying, but it must play on what society secretly knows but can not acknowledge to itself about its duality. The mediums of self-expression and creation can be anything from a mode of dress to novels or music. Imagination and originality have always been key elements in Goth. As a lifestyle, Goth is as diversified as its adherents. There really is no true unifying stereotype or dress code as it were. Not all Goths are depressed, nor do they all wear black, listen to the same music, or employ the same modes of self-expression. This tends to make Goth-spotting a little tricky and creates part of the tangled confusion over what it is to begin with, but this diversity also is one of the defining factors. So how does one identify a real Goth if they are all so different? Now we reach part of the heart of the counterculture! You see, as mentioned earlier, one of Goth's defining characteristics is the need to take the underlying darkness that is in all of us and bring it into the light in such a way as we can recognize it as what it is-an integral part of all of us, for better or for worse. To better
understand what Goth really is, it is essential to know
where it came from. It has been with us for much longer
than the label we have given it. This is a subculture
that has appeared, flourished, then died, only to rise
again in many eras and in many societies. Its adherents
have always been the young intellegensia, frustrated and
bored by the parent culture. The parent cultures were
usually restrictive, highly stratified into rigid caste
structures, and intolerant of diversity in schools of art
and thought. Because of this, nearly every manifestation
of this particular type of counter-culture was greeted
with suspicion, hostility, and sometimes active
aggression on the part of its parent culture. Only rarely
was this brand of subculture welcomed and allowed to
flourish, as it was during the Italian Goth, as we currently know it, has its roots in Western Europe and North America during the late seventies and early eighties. The counterculture was, and still is, dominated by dissatisfied youth hailing from the middle classes, which were at that time just entering a new period of prosperous stability. The children of these newly wealthy were left, unlike their parents, with a strong feeling of instability and lack of identity. They were unable to reconcile the new values their society was trying to impress upon them with their newly fragile sense of self. The tightening lines of social restructure were separating them from their accustomed peers in both the upper and lower classes. Responding to the confusion and theft of identity, a few of the brightest and most creative children of these newly prosperous families began to create their own social structure. It was a counter culture based on a synthesis of historical elements, leaning heavily on dramatic traditions, philosophies, and schools of thought such as were popular in Byronic England, World War Two Germany, and American Beat. They first dubbed themselves the New Romantics, then swiftly settled on Gothic as the counter culture grew and became more stable. Always more than a little bipolar in nature, Goth split into two distinct factions, one Appolonian and the other Dionysan in its approach, by 1981 when it had reached its peak. Each faction was a personification of the mixed fear and fascination the Goths felt for the darker side of their parents' legacy of materialism, elitism, and false sense of moral superiority. The difference lay in their ways of expressing their sense of alienation and abandonment. The more Appolonian faction were mainly concerned with the artistic and philosophical facets of Goth. They were, for the most part, fairly non confrontational in their means of self-expression. They were in most cases all but obsessed with the act of creation and the appreciation of literature, art and music. A number of them attempted to legitimize their subculture in the eyes of the parent culture with very little success. Because they were regarded as harmless, if morbid dreamers, they were tolerated. The more Dionysan faction of Goth passionately embraced the more hedonistic and sometimes self-destructive facets of the movement. Their contributions to Goth were more ephemeral and less easy to define in traditional terms as creativity, but still were vibrant with the haunted, dark spirit of the counter culture. Some of the more prominent Goth musicians and thinkers belonged to this faction. Being more confrontational in their self-expression, they were regarded by the parent culture as dangerous and undesirable. The modern stereotype of Goth is a twisted caricature of the more Dionysan faction that captures its decadence and tendency towards self-destruction while entirely missing its subtle artistry and depth, not to mention the entire point of Goth as a whole. By 1987, both factions of Goth had almost completely vanished, absorbed back into the parent culture as their members were forced to accept conformity to ensure individual survival as adults. A marginal percentage of the original Goth community were able to adapt to adult life remaining essentially and visibly true to themselves, while still managing to keep the income necessary to maintain the rising price of living in the style to which they had become accustomed. By this time, the new generation of disaffected youth had already begun to imitate what they perceived of the Dionysan Goths. They had embraced the dark and dangerous style of dress and felt that the lonely, arrogant music was written just for them. The stereotypical lifestyle was adventurous and daring enough to spark their already bored and world-weary imaginations. The "kindergothen" were met by rejection and almost knee-jerk disapproval by their parent culture and the remainders of the Goth community alike with almost no exceptions. Those few original Goths who tried to embrace the new groups were usually met with cold hostility and anger by those who had already either been rejected by others or had heard of the rejection. The schism between the Olde School and the new was widened even more by the labels of "Poseur" and "Faux Goth" that were bandied between the sides. By the nineties, the artistry and philosophy that drove the Goth culture had been by and large replaced with attitude, posturing and dress code. The few remaining Olde School Goths and their protégés had gone underground and were not a part of the new rise of Goth, refusing to have much to do with what they considered shallow, inarticulate upstarts that paid to much attention to what the media thought was Goth. They saw the new Goth as little more than a group of image driven drug addicts that had nothing better to offer than a dress code and a bad attitude. The New School's opinions of the originals wasn't much better. In the last few years, both Olde School and New have embraced the Internet. It has become both a medium for self-expression and a battleground between them. Oddly enough, the advent of easy access to the W3 has revealed in the New School an increased drive towards the creativity and self-expression that the Olde School Goths hold in such high esteem. The New School Goths, or Goffs as many of them have begun to call themselves, have become more like the originals than either side of the schism seems to wish to admit. Hopefully this trend will continue to thrive on the Web, bringing fresh blood and a new outlook to Goth's grasp on the dark undercurrents of our society's imagination. After all, the sweetest of flowers always did have a tendency to rise from the darkest and least savory of soils. SOURCE 2 - The alt.gothic FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file What is a Goth? The term 'Goth' was used by Ian Astbury who described Andi Sex Gang as a 'gothic pixie' and popularized by the UK music magazines New Musical Express and Sounds (NME) and was used to describe a class of music. For some people that music became the basis for a 'way of life'. They brought their own backgrounds and interests along and a sub-culture was formed and it took for itself the name Gothic. What the history of the Goth movement? NME and Sounds reputedly took the term Gothic from Siouxsie Sioux (of the Banshees) who used it to describe the new direction for her band. However the earliest significant usage of the term (as applied to music) was by Anthony H. Wilson who was overcome by a rare moment of lucidity on a 1978 BBC TV program when he described Joy Division as Gothic compared with the pop mainstream. Perhaps Joy Division (who he was managing) are not what we now think of as Goth but it is possible that they are at the source of the term. Bauhaus were labeled as Gothic as early as 1979 when they released Bela Lugosi's Dead. The pop journalists were quick to latch onto the term and they applied it in a nasty sort of pigeonholing way to a number of bands that were around in the early 80s - most of which did not sound much like the Banshees (or anyone else for that matter), the journalists were more concerned with looks. The (Southern Death) Cult was foremost amongst these bands, like the Banshees they wore lots of black and silver and had extreme black hair. The Sisters of Mercy were also so labeled and when they split and Wayne Hussey founded the Mission they carried their label with them, despite being different musically. Finally The Fields of the Nephilim appeared and they (perhaps) consciously and deliberately got themselves labeled as Gothic despite looking and sounding quite different to what had previously been labeled Goth. The fans of bands like the Sisters, Bauhaus and Siouxsie liked to dress up in lots of black. The music they liked was something of a backlash against the colorful disco music of the seventies. The Banshees were a punk band before they mellowed and punk was breathing its last as Gothdom gathered speed, and the so one could claim Gothdom grew out of punk. The music of Joy Division, the Sisters and Bauhaus was angst ridden but all the hatred was turned inwards and the music was typified by introspective lyrics. Many of the new Goth followers were introspective too. Some were a bit confused by the label and started to think that the label Goth was in some way connected with the Victorian Gothic revival and Gothic horror and because enough of them thought that eventually it became true. NME and Sounds
were not oblivious to this and produced many hilarious
articles poking fun at the Goths amongst their readers.
They said that being Goth was about sitting around in
circles on the floor of pubs (bars) smoking a lot and
talking about being a bat. Some readers of this list get
angry at this. Luckily most Goths have a good enough
sense of humor to laugh at themselves once in a while.
The first generation Goths complain that second and third
generation Goths often seem to think that Gothdom is
about wearing They read Bram Stoker and Anne Rice and talk about being vampires. They read H.P. Lovecraft and talk about the end of the world. The sounds that were described as Gothic were appearing in other countries besides the UK in the late seventies, but I have yet to see any evidence that they were using the word. (If you have any...) Currently Germany is the bastion of Goth, where they are called Grufties. If German people are doing a write up on the Goth scene there, please send me a copy. So that's how we got where we are today. Today Goth is about music, literature, art and about clothes. Is Goth about religion? Gothdom embraces all religions, all denominations and all races. Many Goths are atheists and a sizable minority are new age spiritualists, Wiccans and members of other alternative religious groups. There are Christian Goths. Basically Goth is not about religion, but with the imagery of religion. May Goths wear crosses or ankhs, and there are many religious references in Goth songs, but it is not a religious movement. Goth uses religious imagery in some songs. Christian Death are big on this. Bauhaus did a couple of tracks with religious imagery. The Sisters have a quasi-religious name but this is ironic, their music shows that religion is not Andrew Eldritch's main concern - he prefers politics. The Mission (UK) were fairly 'new age'. Carl McCoy favored shamanistic traditions and Gnostic revelation. Religious jewelry is often worn, particularly crucifixes and ankhs. These are strong symbols with powerful subconscious effects. Sometimes they are worn as an satirical statement, sometimes not. For some it is just fashion. So what does the word 'Goth' mean? The word 'Goth' does indeed refer to a tribe of the indo-european kind. The Goths slowly integrated into the melting pot of Europe and basically disappeared. The word 'gothic' is first found in common usage in 1611, referring mainly to an 'uncivilized lack of taste or education'. The people who built in the 'gothic' style would have never used this term. These people were monks or artisans who worked for the church to build a land of Cathedrals from the 11th century on. They also built castles and other edifices. The 16th century saw a large amount of turmoil with the reform and all. This opened up the architecture field quite a bit. This new wave of artists looked back on what they saw as a bland repetitive style of architecture as 'gothic'. Unfortunately, because of the shallowness of the learned men at that time, it stuck. It was also referred to as Ogive - or the characteristic arch of this style - this word is usually used by most politically correct historians. The fact is: Ogive architecture today is extremely inspiring and beautiful. The nameless men who designed and built these works of grandeur were very talented and inspired. One merely has to look at the Cathedral of Chartres, Paris, Amiens, Canterbury or any of the other edifices of this age to realize irony of using 'gothic'. In fact, to augment the irony, the popular opinion today is that much of the baroque architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries is gaudy and flamboyant. SOURCE 3 - from "Take a Bite 1", courtesy of Sexbat Principia Diabolicus - A Philosophical Treatise Introduction There has been much discussion recently about the so-called 'gothic philosophy', a code by which we all live, a code by which we strive to live, or a code that we live by 'more than you' (but only on weekends). This abstract will consider the various aspects of gothic philosophy and sub culture in an attempt to bring together the thoughts and dreams of various learned children of the night from around the world. Germanicus If the barbarian tribes of pre-medieval 'Germany' had a philosophy it can probably be found in their writings. The Visigothic language is similar to old High German and Anglo-Saxon. However, my Anglo-Saxon is as rusty as my French, and besides they didn't actually write much down - all that exists are some passages from the Bible and some helpful phrases for the tourist: "Hwa Quithan" (translation) "What can I say?" "Wyrcan thone Wihagan" (translation) "Make a shield wall!" "Aaargh" (translation) "I am presently being serrated by a drunken psychotic, axe wielding, smelly, barbarian." However, we like to think of them as a bunch of axe wielding, psychotic, rather good looking men and women, dressed in black riding mighty war horses into battle, and eventually (axeidently (sic)) setting fire to Rome and bringing about the collapse of civilization and then going out for a beer. Philosophically speaking we have the beer and the desire to strike terror into the hearts of mortal man in common. That seems to be a useful beginning, and, as it would not do to dwell for too long on the fact that the Visigoths were actually a group of crusties on the piss, let us consider the Medieval connection. Medeivalis Castles on hill tops, thunder, lightning, storm clouds, knights, dragons, musical song and dance numbers? There is a strong medievalist element in many of today's Goths. It's not an Arthurian yearning for days of chivalry and Grail quests, but rather a link with the quasi-fantastical 'romantic' aspect of the time and the genre. I think romanticism is the key here, we each have our own notion of the period and each associate it with different things. But as I appear to be bordering on psychology, and that is definitely not my field, I shall change the subject before I say something to start the Freudians twitching (....but I do have a thing for armor!). There is more, of course, the Medieval period brought us the other legends of Camelot, those which did not so easily convert to the Christian ideal, the magic and dark forces, the supernatural! There are also the 'darker' characters (and again we know about them only through literature), Chaucer's Pardoner tells of plague and of Death stalking the land, The Gwain Poet describes the fatalistic humor of the Green Knight, and Mallory of the Death of Arthur. So from this period we get our sense of the fantastic - a sort of 'New Age with Attitude' tract which was further developed by some of the Romantic poets, oh, and the desire to ride around carrying a sword and 'smiting' people for the fun of it. 17th Century The New Model Army were formed by Oliver Cromwell and went on Tour. Romantic Period The Romantic Junkie Poets were proto-goths, they fought, drank, took to many drugs, wore baggy shirts, and, like the barbarian tribes before them went to Italy to either die or misbehave (apart from Wordsworth who went to France and took part in the Revolution, and Coleridge who was too fat to be a Goth but wrote some damn fine verses so he can join as long as he stands at the back). Their own philosophy seemed to be a hedonistic celebration of nature and supernature almost on an anthropomorphic level, and a strong sense of individuality within the identity of their peer-group! I like them but Shelley was a better poet than Byron and I don't *care a toss* what the good Doctor says! Victorian Decadence The introduction of Vampire chic. This was a period more to do with the aesthetics of modern Goth than it's underlying philosophy. However a certain element of moral turpitude could well have crept in. I suppose Dracula, although it was mainly about syph. , could be considered one of the great philosophical books of the period, or not, please yourself! Punk I've jumped ahead a bit here, but the pre-gothic subcultures from which we borrowed are worth considering briefly. No Leaders, Anarchistic Nihilism? No, I don't think we really borrowed that much from the punks as a whole - of course there are many individual Goths who subscribe to these political doctrines - but it doesn't seem to be an integral part of the subculture today. Oh, and, "never trust a hippie!" - often a very useful bit of advice! New Romantic Again this was an aesthetic thing really. Adam Ant did a fair amount for breaking down the visual barriers and gave many male Goths something to aspire to (beauty?) for the first time. But then Ian Astbury was a Native American Indian about the same time, so maybe it was him. Goth One particular quote always springs to mind, it was made by a relatively insignificant heavy metal singer: "It is about having as much fun as possible, doing as little damage to yourself and preferably none to those around you that you care about, and doing as much damage as possible to people you don't like." And that, of course, is the final part, the very crux of the gothic philosophy, Ladies and Gentlemen we have a sense of humor! We are morbid, not suicidal and we can laugh at other people, and, just occasionally, at ourselves. Summary We have borrowed various philosophical elements from our historical sources, but the philosophical elements which are most clearly defined are: the desire to strike terror into the hearts of mortal man (or at least turn heads in the street), a romantic sense of the fantastic, the desire for pleasure in extremes, a visual identity within the subculture, questionable sexual and social practices, a fascination with supernature, the macabre, and the safety of being within a group where we get the in joke. SOURCE 4 - from
"It's a Stage -Why death rock won't die"
By David Turin The cool thing about Anne Rice's Vampires is that they are all scot-free of consequence. They can fiddle around with the baubles of human existence without moral repercussion. Love, death, sex-they can go to excess. Karma has evaporated, the soul is a myth, God is out of the picture. Even if they are pathetically attached to human experience by rote, by memory, by the percussion of living hearts and the charm of meaningless rituals, at least they are attached to it by fancy and not by need. Such enviable detachment. Death with style. Of course, as it plays out in the Rice books, that kind of immortality shouldn't be wished on a worst enemy: it's endless, vacant, frustratingly unconsummated. But to have it for a short time would be okay. If you could try it on for, say, three years, between the ages of 15 and 18 maybe, just when things were getting rough. Now that would be cool. You'd be undead conveniently, just long enough to escape teen crisis. You'd live through crucial years in high-drama focus, playing suicide and hate, acting love, feigning conviction and knowing that all this was just dress rehearsal. When you decided to come off it, you'd be returned, the same old Billy/Suzy, as good as the day you took your own life and became a death rocker. About 10 years ago, in the beginning of the '80's, groups of teenagers began to dream themselves to death. They listened to lugubrious bands like Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Sisters of Mercy. They were obsessed with morbid things. The style was drearily romantic-white pancake makeup, black lipstick, corsets, Victorian clothing, fishnets, guys in wedding dresses, girls in frocks. Gloom and doom, as they used to call it, and as they still do. By all vital statistics, death rock should be dead. It should have gone the way of trend. But it didn't. On the dance floor at Helter Skelter (Fridays at the Probe in Hollywood), the Goth kids move like jittery corpses, lifting their arms slowly, with the jaded naivete of the dead reawakened to a hostile world. They do the classic Gothic "penny drop"- falling almost to the floor, scooping with their hands. They waltz like ghosts in an old hotel. If the DJ plays anything too strange or too new or not dramatic enough, the Goth kids leave the dance floor. They curl off in clutches to dark corners and smoke cigarettes with the dim light spilling through the amber of the false-ID beer, looking very cabaret-naively, charmingly gender-bent. Goth as a movement dates to London circa 1982 where a club called the Batcave attracted a crowd that had sensibilities more morbid, more on the beauty side of decay, than punk could sustain. The Batcave showed horror films and played Glam rock -Gary Glitter, the Sweet-, as well as newer bands like Southern Death Cult (later the Cult). The decor was House of Usher. Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux were regulars. Gore obsessed performers like Gado the Barbarian introduced the crowd to body mutilation. Like a Disney pirate ship with dancing skeletons, it was delightfully ghastly. One Batcaver was Susan Arkun, who still affiliates herself with the Goth aesthetic although not with the club scene. "The Batcave was so good because it contained a feeling that has nothing to do with time or space," she says. "Goth became associated with that time period, bit it was never, in a sense, a trend, because it was a concept." For Arkun, the significance of Goth lies in a history that extends from Mary Shelly and Edgar Allan Poe through Tim Burton. The timelessness of the idea seems to tantalize the modern-day progeny of the Batcave, who try to maintain Goth's purity by freezing its advance. Very little has changed on the death-rock scent over the past 10 years. The number of acolytes swelled in the mid-'80's, then declined. Once faithful death-rock bands like the Cure and Ministry joined the mainstream. The media lost interest. Of the once myriad Goth zines, only a few are still around. But Goth remains today what it was created to be a decade ago-the private sanctuary of a few tortured souls. Change is grouchy in the scene. Novelty is unacceptable. Fashion is turgid. Memory is collective. The Goth kids want the classics, the ones they don't remember. They want "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus, "Temple of Love" by the Sisters of Mercy, "Stigmata" by Ministry. They want This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins. They want their bands pinned up on the wall in calendars called "Funeral." They want Death in June or the Virgin Prunes-newer bands, but somehow they've passed the secret test. Shown their death certificates maybe. Other bands- Attrition, Nosferatu, This Ascension-haven't made it, despite their hip names. It's a very stuffy scene. You can try really hard, wear the right things, say the right things, believe the right things, and still not make it in. Seriousness doesn't guarantee acceptance. Like Sean Brennan of the band London After Midnight. He's got it down. He's tall and gaunt. He looks like he just got off the HMS Bounty. He calls himself "Lord Brennan" and discloses to those in the dark corners of the clubs that he is, in fact, a vampire. No one really pays attention. Meanwhile, bands on the ramparts of the scene-Alien Sex Fiend and the Legendary Pink Dots-get picked up by the Goth Kids despite their departures from the code, a code that is still pure. Type [email protected] on the Internet, and you'll get page after page of fired-up, globe crossing correspondence about what's in and what's out in Goth. Lunch pails for example-another perennial Goth trend; God knows where it came from. According to Nancy, an ex-death rocker who wants to be anonymous here even though she's out of the scene, there two big cliques: the serious and the not-so-serious. The serious kids are the ones who drink blood (or at least it looks like blood). They indulge in morbidity and get fascist about the look. At the clubs, they cling to the walls and scoff at the not-so-serious kids. The not-so-serious don the attire at night, just to go to clubs and dance. Nancy describes herself as somewhere between the wall and the dance floor. She got into the scene her freshman year of high school, "for shock value." Nobody accepted her when she dressed trendy anyway. So she put on the black lipstick and black clothes and started getting picked on in high school. It was better than being ignored. "I was so attracted to really skinny, really tall, really effeminate looking guys. It's accepted for guys to be effeminate in the scene. There's nothing threatening about it. Fights don't break out." Slowly, more subtle reasons for joining the scene began to surface. The Goth clubs were little laboratories, places for making transitions. A few years later, almost all her Goth friends-male and female-came out of the closet. Of course by then, the scene had lost its luster. For one thing, she and her friends noticed that the DJ's kept playing the same songs. Over and over. According to Sean Schur, one of L.A.'s original Goth DJ's (he now spins at Kontrol Faktory), the scene rotates quickly, kids spilling in and out. The new kids guard the old traditions, vehemently, like watchdogs. For a short time that they are part of it, they take the rites very seriously. Not that the scene doesn't mutate. Slowly, cautiously, it does. At its inception in the early '80s, it was in to be straight, in to button up to the hilt in layers of clothing, no matter what the temperature. Then, a few years later, it became cool to be bisexual and wear almost no clothing, to wear corsets. Pretty anorexic girls with dyed hair were the norm. For a while, crystal meth was in. That faded. One guy started wearing fishnets and garter belts and heels. All the girls liked him. His gig caught on. Influential DJs started playing a bit of industrial. Industrial became okay. But beyond a few shifts here and there over the years, the scene has a very low center of gravity. Nobody really wants it to expand. At least not drastically, not beyond the perimeters of the security blanket. In its attentiveness to uniform, Goth is Hasidic or Third Reich-ish, and while that can lead to the upsets and heartbreaks of cliquishness, it's also part of the scene's seduction. There's a position for you in its ranks, the requirements neatly and absolutely laid out, no questions asked, no thought required. Just sign here and collect your uniform. Of course, the same could be said of the punk or grunge or Deadhead scenes. The allure in these is also in the uniform, the security of affiliation. But unlike Goth, these scenes don't give you the chance to be a martyr for your image. With flannel or print dresses or Mohawks, you're not really risking ostracism. In fact, you're kind of respected as a punk or a Deadhead or a grunge-sort, because nowadays, everybody is a little bit of all of these. But trying being a guy and wearing a dress and white pancake makeup and a corset and black lipstick to school. Try carrying a lunch pail. Then you get teased and beat up. Then you really are an outcast. Your alienation is wonderfully confirmed. That group bond is fortified. The entire outside world, life itself, is a common enemy. Somewhere in the collective mind of the Goth kids is the belief that death is depth. Morbidness and intelligence go hand in hand. Personal attrition-that's the spirit. Tragic, poetic things are cool. Play dead and the serious world seems less serious. At least its rapid encroachment doesn't seem so threatening. You're removed. About a year ago, Bruce Purdue, who had run the startlingly popular LA club Scream, and Michael Steward, owner of the Goth- heavy record story Vinyl Fetish, tried to open a New York version of Helter Skelter. After all, in Los Angeles, the Goth kids abounded, spilling over from their club into not-so-Goth-y clubs like Stigmata (also run by Purdue and Steward) and the industrial Kontrol Faktory. In fact, the Goth kids were so loyal, it was sort of a pain in the ass. Stewart and Purdue wanted to do a non-Goth club and wherever they went the Goth kids followed. Once you're chosen, that's it. At least, that's it in Los Angeles; the New York club failed. No one went. That tripped Steward and Purdue out. What seemed to be s sturdy scene was perhaps only here. Over coffee, Schur tells me that some Goth kids come from wealthy families. Goth isn't a necessity, it's a privilege. When you get involved, you get heavily involved. You get a false ID and sneak out and go to clubs and buy frilly clothes and meet everybody in the cozy, gloomy little circuit. Then, three years later, you get heavily bored and drop out. Schur did that. Not that he didn't keep some of the stuff. He still wears a skirt. Because he is self-assured, because he has a good career in computer graphics, because he works as a video director with successful bands like Skinny Puppy, because he has moved on, the Goth trappings look good on him. It seems being undead for a little while was worthwhile. I ask Schur what it was like being part of the Goth scene. He can't really remember, he says. Later I ask a few other people. They too can't remember. At a club, I ask a few Goth Kids why they do it; they're too cool to really answer. Perhaps the question is inappropriate. Perhaps it's like calling someone out of a performance, like asking them to remember who they were when they were, quite deliberately, in character. To be not yourself for a little while. To be not alive for just a bit. To treat the world as a stage.
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