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EDVAMP ON: THE ATTRACTION TO THE GOTH SCENE
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So why are you in the Goth scene? What was it that attracted you to it in the first place? Was it the music? Was it the cool people and how they dressed? Was it the mystery and erotica surrounding it? This installment of Edvamp On discusses what got me into all of this and thrust into your lives, for better or worse...
I had never even heard the word Gothic until college. I attended High School way out in the suburbs of Long Island, New York. It was essentially a cultural wasteland. During the time that I attended there (86-90), underground music was completely unknown. There were preppy New Wavers, honor students into the Cure and New Order. There were jocks and preps into pop and dance music. And there were the metalheads, classic, stereotypical, The River’s Edge, metalheads. This was me. There was a small group of punks and hardcore skaters types who were into Pistols, Meatmen, Cro-Mags, etc., but I could count them on my hands. In a school of about 6000 or so, a dozen was statistically nil.
Like most metalheads, I was fanatical about my music. To a 15 year old, Metallica and Iron Maiden lyrics were the most profound things in the world. They were unshakable words of wisdom. Now I read some of them and cringe. Also like most metalheads, I had buried myself in this fantasy that I was somehow destined for greater things than my surroundings allowed for. You see, in a place like that, you have to hold onto any belief that you’re future holds more for you than hanging out in a Waldbaum’s parking lot drinking cheap beer and smoking badly rolled joints. My music allowed me to envision myself as somehow rising above what was around me and be some sort of hero (or antihero). My first near mental collapse was when I realized that the songs weren’t true, magic wasn’t real, and I was just a nerd with a badly patched denim jacket and no friends. I was in the 10th grade.
When I got out of the hospital, I was changed. It wasn’t an immediate or even very noticeable change, but it was there and would become more apparent as time went on. I still listened to metal, I still played D&D, and sometimes I still fantasized, envisioning myself as Raistlen from Dragonlance or Wolverine from the X-Men. But I became more tied to reality. I realized that my fantasies were just that and I had to deal with reality if I wanted to really get above the shit I lived in. I tried to be more social, more friendly, less distant. I joked around more and tried to make people laugh. It worked a lot but sometimes the humor was juvenile and sometimes I hurt people’s feelings. I deeply regret some of the things I’d done.
I graduated High School still entrenched in metal but with some knowledge of punk from my sister and my cousin. The term gothic still hadn’t crossed me. In college my new attitude paid off and I found myself with a fairly large group of friends. It was here I finally heard the term gothic but mostly ascribed to the Cure, who I detested at the time. I called the few goths I knew “Trag’s”, meaning the tragically hip. I felt that the trag’s were too obsessed with death and depression. Metal was into death but the scene seemed livelier and more party oriented. I went to rock clubs and everyone was into partying, dancing and whatnot. I thought nothing could compare to that.
My first true goth friend was Luke, who I met in Sophomore year. Like all True Goths(tm) he denied it. Through him I first heard of Sisters of Mercy, Christian Death and Bauhaus, but for some reason I never listened to it. I never felt the need. Also around this time I started learning about and liking Industrial, which was Ministry, Nitzerebb and a somewhat new band called Nine Inch Nails (this was around 91 when NIN was first introduced to LI clubs). I never thought that technology could be aggressive because of all of the synth-pop stuff that everyone in High School liked. When I found out about Industrial I totally bought into it. However, I still resisted liking goth and new wave stuff. It still seemed too ‘wimpy’.
It wasn’t until I spent a year abroad at the University of Nottingham that I got a real taste of goth music and culture. I stumbled into a campus bar my first weekend there and NIN was being played on the stereo. One of the bartenders and most of her friends were into goth and industrial and I quickly became friends with them. They took me to a club called Rock City, which did a Rock/Metal night and an Alternative night. It was at Rock City and through my friends that I listened to a really got into Sisters, Marionettes, All About Eve, Nosferatu, Mission, Fields of the Nephilim and the like. The rest, as they say, is history.
So what happened? What made this more aggressive than thou metalhead and burgeoning rivethead get into this stuff? Well, for one thing my British friends were a lot more open than the people in America. In America, most of the people were very pretentious and acted like I was behind and not worthy of listening to their music. By 90-91, metal was basically over except for Metallica so I was seen as a throwback. But in England there’s still a metal scene so I wasn’t that unusual. My friends there were willing to lend me tapes to listen to and recommend stuff that I would like. I could ask stupid questions in clubs and not get ridiculed. I asked what the song was onetime when ‘Dominion’ was playing and I got a straight, honest answer with no laughing or insults.
Another thing that really attracted me to it was the sense of style and culture and atmosphere. Essentially, gothic had two characteristics that I never had and metal never offered me: beauty and grace. Goth seemed to have this sense of style that I had never been capable of. It was almost like living out those fantasies I used to have as a kid. I’m sure there was some subconscious hope that some of that beauty and grace might actually rub off on me. Goth had a depth of culture that no other group seemed to have. It was unique in a sense. There was also the sense of the mysterious and the forbidden. It was almost like we were getting away with something we shouldn’t be doing and getting off on the sensation. Anyone can be freaky and different. But it takes style to be freaky and different and make it seem natural, make it seem that it is the normal way to be.
It was this richness of environment and depth that probably triggered something deeper in me. It occurred to me that almost everything I had ever been into: role-playing games, metal, goth, fantasy, science fiction, physics, counter culture, etc. were all attempts to find something...more. I’ve always believed that there is this hidden reality or society or culture or something that lies just beneath the veneer of everyday ‘polite’ society. We all know it’s there, but we can never really see it, not full on. All of my interests and passions were perhaps expressions of this hidden reality. Goth is a full blown society existing hidden, right in plain sight, just underneath natural society. Maybe magic is real after all.
Goth is so very different to everything I’d been exposed to previously in my life. It opened my eyes to possibilities I’d never explored, not just in music but in lifestyle choices and personal philosophies. It allowed me to experience things I never would have without it. It allowed me to meet some pretty special people. Although I never consider myself beautiful or graceful or sensuous, but goth allows me to at least be a part of these things and occasionally even experience them. And it is that experience that I believe makes a goth, not clothes, makeup, or philosophy. But a simple seeking out of pleasure through music and expression of beauty and passion. That’s goth as fuck to me.
Ever and Always
Edvamp
Perkygoth Supreme
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