J a d e

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Personal Thoughts

There appears to be a "revival of Gothism" in the past few years.  Hmm...seems good on the surface.  But is it?  Once we prided ourselves on being different, sometimes for shock value, sometimes for other morbid reasons.

Now  it appears Gothic is "trendy" ~le sigh~.  Perhaps I've been locked in the dark room too long or something, but Goths used to hang with Punks.  Hmm.  Why you ask?  Well perhaps because around 1979, Punk took on a softer edge.  Yes, you guessed it Death Rock.  From the Death Rock scene came Goths. So basically Goth was (in my humble opinion ~winks~) a derivative of Punk.

Could this explain why I enjoy Sham 69 or Fugazi or The Atomic Boy?  Not that I was old enough to enjoy Goth in 1979...I didn't "discover" the scene until I was 15, when I was in some romantic fling of the time with a guy named Garreth Howell.  He started me out gently, Alarm, Cure and such.  The music touched my soul.  He forever changed my life.  I was drawn to his darkness.  Which, please do not interpret as something evil.  On the contrary.  The darkness I refer to is perhaps Scottish at best: Unknown.

Over the years, the Goths that I have associated with were gentle creatures clinging to the romantic morbid side of life - tragic romance.

Still with all this, I've always stayed with the Punks.  Until recently.  It seems sad that the 3rd Wave Punks of the 1990's and the 3rd Gen Goths of the 1990's are enemies.  Not everywhere...some have transcended the labels and joined together, no, clung together against the "norms" of society.

Now I am 30, and perhaps too old to be a Death Rocker/Goth/Whateveryouwanttolabelme anymore.  Perhaps I should stop dying my hair funny colors and stop wearing so much black.  But why?  Because society dictates it?  Then wouldn't I be selling out to the "norms" something I fought so hard against all these years?!?

Perhaps I have mellowed.  My closet now contains color, but then I'm also self-employed, and, as many Punks/Goths/Industrial/Younamethesubculture, my intelligence level is high and being a loser bum holds nothing for me.  Not that I'm some capitalist pig, but it does take cash to buy all those highly priced clothing I enjoy.  Damn but has a velvet dress skyrocketed in the last 5 years!

And so I leave you with a few words that I feel describe me...

"Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change."

From the Marquis de Sade's Last Will and Testament

This ezine/zine are © 1999-2002 both as Gothism and as J a d e

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