How to be Goth Date Saturday, April 20, 2024 - 02:34 AM PST Topic Theories Recently I received a submission from a person that wanted to know "How to be Goth". It had an enumerated list. It also mixed the word "goth" with "gothic" rather freely. It asked about vampires, graveyards, and clubs. This happens more than some of you may realize. I get two or three of these a month every month. It is proof that the writer hasn’t bothered to read the site, or if they have that they wasted their time. The reasons that this bothers me are many. The Christian pedagogy inherent in the idea that "goth" has a list of rules, the idea that "goth" is the endpoint of a journey rather than the road itself, the idea that "goth" wants converts and is willing to train them so that they can join the hegemony, the idea that there is a hegemony, and the idea that just because people wear black that they have to get along are just a few of the most major points of contention. I like the ones that ask things like "what are the principles of "goth"?", "what is the ideology behind "goth"?", "what beliefs do I have to have?" and so forth because these at least show that the writer accepts the idea that they may have to start thinking a new way. It shows, I think, that they see that there are other ways of living, not just another way of dressing when you go out. Some people say that "goths" are free thinkers; I would say they think about the things they see around them and the things they do. They try to see which life rules are relevant to them, which principles are relevant to them, which ideologies or religions are relevant to them. In short, they live an examined life from an early age rather than waiting until their 50's or 60's to stop and think about where they have been. They are ready to face the anger, hatred, fear, and bizarre lust issues of the larger society. They can do this because they have taken the time to understand the rules of game and have chosen to accept the alternate penalties and rewards of not following all the rules (women are weak, men can't cry, money is the real god, possessions equal status, reading is only for eggheads, thin is beautiful, hating people is right, etc). I would like to point out that following the rules also has penalties; keeping up with the Jones's, never knowing your children, high rates of divorce, status issues, corporate ladders, inflexible dress codes, public schools, and dinner parties for your boss all spring to mind. I have been called everything from a poser to an uber in my time. I have no idea where the uber comments come from and I don’t really care. I think the poser comments are because I like to wear lime green. I think it looks stunning on me, in that it stuns people to see someone wearing a plaid skirt and a lime green shirt. It sometimes makes them blink a lot in disbelief as well. A very dear friend of mine likes to wear danger orange. He is also more than a foot taller than me. We really stop traffic when we go out. Usually women only get to be stunning at night at certain restaurants and social events. They also get to be hated for being stunning by everyone else. They get to elicit envy, fear, and jealousy by spending a lot of money and time to look a little different that the other women in the room, while I get to elicit shock, amazement, and bafflement while spending very little. People laugh and feel good about the world when they look away instead of bad. I like my way better. Lots of people say "goth comes from inside" or "you are just born that way". I don’t think that is true. I think it comes from outside and that very few of us are born thinking much of anything. It is hard to examine your life when you are 4 minutes old, wet, cold, and suspended upside down. You're too busy at that moment for contemplation. Its hard to think about the way the world works when all you have seen of it is your mom's tummy and a hospital room, no matter what kind of drugs your mom did or how strangely decorated the birth room. I think goth comes later, when you start to dress yourself, feed yourself, clean yourself, and become accountable for your actions. I think it comes from outside in as you see how life is and what you can do about it. When you see that people hide things and lie about things and you start to wonder why. When you see that the ideas of love, sex, and babies intertwine with the ideas of hate, rape, and death, you start to think about why. When you start to look at where you fit in to the world, what you want out of life, what life wants out of you, then you start the process that might lead to goth. The desire for elegance, beauty, balance, history, art, creation, and destruction can lead to goth. But it can lead to other paths as well. You have to be the sort of person that will draw a line in the sand and stay on your side of it. You have to be the sort of person that refuses the idea of tolerance (to tolerate is to judge and find wanting but not attack it openly; it is to hate and to stifle) and instead demands understanding and compassion. You have to be the sort of person that can see all 903 sides of an issue. You have to be the sort of person that is willing to try. Does wearing black make you goth? No. How about having lots of piercings, funny colored hair, and boots with skulls on them? No. Does liking vampires, graveyards, and Keats make you goth? No. Will watching all the right movies and reading all the right books make you goth? Still a big, fat no. Not until you stop and think about all you have read and watched for a few years and see how it relates to you and your future and your past. Not until you have an examined life. Just changing the color of your fleece doesn’t change your sheep-ness. It just changes the type of sweater they make after they fleece you. To have an examined life you have to have some of it under your belt, whatever design is on it. 6 months of kindergarten isn’t enough. 6 months of kindergothen isn’t enough. Life keeps going day after day and every day you have the chance to examine your life. Every day you have the chance to NOT examine your life as well. You have to have lived long enough to have gotten over things, to have read enough to see patterns and had the time to think about them, to have listened to enough music to know what you are hearing and how it relates to you, to have loved enough to know what joy and sorrow are and how transient they both can be, and to have seen enough to know how your eyes like to lie. You have to have been there and done that long enough to have had the experience and then take the time to think about the experience. Some people get lots of life crammed into a few years but in all that cramming there is little room to think. If you have abusing, neglectful parents that drink too much, a family friend that molests you, a few friends that kill themselves, a few pregnancy scares (or maybe a baby of your own), and a crappy time in Junior High, then you have had a busy time. Once you take the time to assimilate all this stuff, act out your confusion and rage in rebellion, make some of your own mistakes, and calm down, then, and only then, are you ready to think about your life. One of the first things that you get to think about is the fact that you have only seen a tiny bit of life and that most of what you have seen is the sort of stuff that teaches you not to think. Merely seeing the futility in the teaching system of your high school doesn’t make you goth. Telling others that it is a bad system doesn’t make you goth. Protesting it on general principles doesn't make you goth. Finding a better system of teaching might. Hanging out at midnight in graveyards doesn’t make you goth. It just means that you are trespassing. Going to a graveyard to test an idea, to read the stones, to admire the stonework, to face your fear of mortality, to read poetry under a shade tree, or something like that still doesn’t make you goth. Why you go there makes you goth, not what you do when you get there. To read the "right" books you have to also have read the "wrong" books so that you can think about the differences, the similarities, the plot devices, the idea developments, the arguments, the logic, the socialization that goes behind the words, and the development of your own thoughts while reading them. Not all goths are friends. Why should they be? After all, it's hard to be friends with people that you have never met, with whom you have little in common, and no need to know. Think about the idea of two new students to a school. Do they have to be friends just because everyone else sees them as having something in common, their newness? What if one comes from a rich, private school, is female, speaks three languages, has five brothers and sisters, and is Chinese and the other one comes from an inner-city public school, is an only child, is devotedly Catholic, and is a boy. What do they really have in common? They come from different cultures, different social classes, different social groups, different sexes, different belief structures, different family structures, and different social expectations. They have different goals, experiences, needs, and outlooks. So, what do they have in common? Just that other people think that they have something in common, their status as "new student". If you exchange the word "goth" for "new student", you have the same situation. Other people think they have something in common, that you are "other" while to you (the new student or goth or really tall person or whatever) don’t see yourself as other. You see your self as you and you see them as "other". Not all of a goth's friends are goth. Why would they be? Why only be friends with people with whom you have only someone else' s frame of reference as a common factor? If you are a goth and an artist why wouldn’t you have artists as friends? If you are an actor, wouldn’t you have friends that are actors? If you are a lawyer wouldn’t you also have friends that are lawyers? Yes, of course, but wouldn’t you also have friends that you have known all your life? Friends that you have made at college? Friends that you made through your ex-lovers? Is your life structured around only one dimension of your actions? Lets look at the actor; what if she is also a single mom from a close-knit family, goes to church regularly, and teaches sign language for Red Cross? Would all her friends be the same as her? Or would she perhaps have friends from the Red Cross, friends from the other parents at her child's school, friends from church, friends from school, and so on. Why would goths refuse to know interesting, wonderful, loving, people that just happen not to wear black? What makes goths so stupid and self-hating as to deny themselves more that one dimension of life? Life is not that simple, or it isn’t to most goths. Being goth doesn’t mean that you suddenly get a lot of friends that will love you no matter what you do. Being goth doesn't give you a social set or a dating pool. No one will like you more because you wear black or have black and red striped hair. To answer, again, some of the questions that seem simple from the outside, all goths are not friends, do not think the same things are important, don’t follow the same religion, same fashion trends, teach tolerance, or anything else. No two goths are the same, or even all that similar once you scratch the surface. If two goths see each other chances are they will leave each other alone, not huddle together to make a united front against the world. They may nod in acknowledgment of each other. They may talk. Unless they are given a reason to talk or associate, they will not bother each other. Why would they? "What does it take to be goth?" is the most common question that I see. It takes a brain, a sense of the absurd, an inclination to think about things, a drive to create your life, a desire to create something outside yourself (most people want to call this art, but even that word can confuse the unthinking since art doesn’t include most of the creative endeavors of life), and an unswerving allegiance to yourself and your principles, whatever they may be. It takes being old enough to know better, the balls to walk away, the brains to start it, the stubbornness of a rock, the awareness of balance, the ability to take pleasure from the rain and the sun, the love of people, an awareness of the past, a sense of wonderment, the courage to try, the experience to know when you really lost as compared to not having won, a sense of style all your own, independence, and the strength to be alone. It helps to have seen Monty Python, to have read Moliere and Sartre and Eco, to dress strangely so that you can see what it is to be an outcast with an in crowd, to challenge the boundaries of superstition and belief, and to hold yourself to poetic standards. But these don’t make you goth. And when you examine your life, when you take the time to know yourself and what you think and what is real and what is not, when you untangle the knot of lies on which you were raised, then you might just find that you have moved past caring about goth. Then you are goth. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=409