By: David Phillips

I have been doing some soul searching, or rather, soul identifying of late. Like an immigrant witnessing his borough melting under the heat of assimilation I see my community, the only community I am proud to count myself amongst, suffused with normality. Confronting me is the question, “What is Goth to me?”

Whereas Punks looked critically at society’s norms and reacted with anger, Goths’ response was one of despondency and angst. Mind you, I am not talking about those “phase” Goths who, for a time, had an affinity for dark attire. Usually, for those Goth is a choice, something sought out, typically in pursuit of the attention of some guy or girl they interpret as Goth. Nor am I speaking of those tedious rebels, target market niche consumers latching on to a methodology they receive from peers and pop culture as if it were direction from a burning bush. I am talking specifically of those who are Goth not because they chose it as a destination, but rather those who at every alternative preferred a certain path. They are Goth not by design, but by default, but by no fault of their own.

Like those unfortunate souls born under the burden of being a woman in a man’s body, or preferring the sexual company of men though a man themselves, Goths develop a nostalgia for a different era. One still rich with ritual and art, vibrant with superstition in the face of burgeoning knowledge. Appreciative of certain aesthetics and a propensity for the accoutrement of the macabre.

It is not that we celebrate and embrace death as such, but instead as a symbol for the dichotomy of change and constancy, for the totality of everything spurned, but only as a symbol. Let’s face it, until we are able to individually travel between this realm and that, it necessarily is only a symbol.
Goth, of course, is a label, derogatory to some, laudatory to others, and like any label it is as vague and variable as “American,” and equally fraught with in-fighting. There are the Anime Goths, the comi-con Goths, the rivetheads, the cyber Goths, the S.C.A. Goths, the Zombie/horror Goths, raver Goths (gravers), and romantic Goths. There are even gothabillys and gothippies. The core to all this is to one degree or another something more than a mere acknowledgement or fascination of what society tends to shun. It isn’t an escape. Hardly. It is a resoluteness to be cognizant of the aspects of life most people put a great effort into negating. Topping the list, of course, is death but certainly to include energies outside the current paradigm, i.e. ghosts and sangomancy, unbridled sexuality (but not to exclude pony play) meaning an acceptance–if not indulgence –of bisexuality, bdsm, polyamory etc. Essentially, if you’ve ever heard, “Why are you into/wearing/watching _____, its so depressing/morbid/evil,” you’ll find it in one fashion or another in the Goth culture.
I will point out this is not to mean demonic in the traditional sense of the word. Of course in the Eckhart or Cathar or Ospensky sense, well, sure. Blending them together I take it to mean the god of creation, the Judeo–Christian-Islamic god did so to detract us from fulfillment and that there is enlightenment to be had in those sensations hedged by normal culture, i.e. pain, sadness, sensual pleasure, what have you. Of course the so called Christian Goths would put me on a pyre for saying so, as they have always done, but that is merely indicative of the infighting for legitimacy to the coveted title, Goth.

Whether a person is Goth or not they are often construed as such by the expression of merely two among many indicators. Black hair, heavy eyeliner, black clothing, heavy boots, vintage (not retro) clothing, tattoos, piercings, bangles, or books. These are all good things and by no means do Goths mean to claim propriety over any of them. Hamlet said it best I think.

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not ’seems.’
‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected ‘havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. I, ii, 78-88

Why would anyone go to such pains to align themselves with something so overwhelming and other worldly as death? Why not? Why not engage the one experience universal across culture and time? Montaigne, a French renaissance essayist had a lucid insight as to how liberating a sanctioning perspective of death might be.

There is no place on earth where death cannot find us—even if we constantly twist our heads about in all directions as in a dubious and suspect land. If there were any way of sheltering from death’s blows—I am not the man to recoil from it . . . but it is madness to think that you can succeed.
Men come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come—to them, their wives, their children, their friends—catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair!
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death. We do not know where death awaits us; so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. –Montaigne, 1533-92

Too many people suffer under the delusion they can live more, live faster, and that somehow this compensates for the eventuality of death. We have all heard people say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” as though death is something to be avoided at any expense. It is absurd to turn our backs on the inevitable and ubiquitous. There is nothing, especially death, that fear and unpreparedness diminish. We cannot know the division of our consciousness at death, but if you feel compelled to believe in some sort of torment and judgment, the version put forward by the German theologian, Meister Eckhart, offers a cohesive concept of the afterlife.

Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: ‘The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they’re not punishing you,’ he said. ‘They’re freeing your soul.’ Relax…Good. So, the way he sees it: if you’re frightened of dyin’ and, and you’re holdin’ on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth. From the movie Jacob’s Ladder, Dir. Adrian Lyne, 1990