Now I Mostly Wear Black - A Goth Evolution

(Emily Strange, by Kiara The Random - Deviant Art)
Mostly, I wear black.

It started as a reaction to Life.
To the world, to its people.
To the bullshit you go through as you experience life.

Pop (and not so pop) culture brought the goth subculture to my awareness when I was a kid, and there you had it.
I was about 12, and I became goth.

And I was goth for a very long time.

Now I just mostly wear black.

People say:
Black's not a colour.
Black's all the colours.

Whatever.
I say:
Black's an easy colour to pair up with any other black.
Black is easy go-to straight-up fashion.
It's my colour, and that's not gonna change.
Whenever I wear white, I always end up staining it anyway.
It's never really a problem if you stain your blacks. You're likely not to even notice it yourself.

*

So what does it even mean anymore to be goth?
As mentioned in one of my previous editorials, it comes down to embracing your darkness within, letting it out, and making it shine.

When you're a kid, and faced with darkness, you either choose to run away from it, or face it.
And if you choose to face it, then you open yourself to everything the goth subculture has to offer.

Sure, you can look at the South Park goth kids and have a good laugh. It's caricature of course, but there is an underlying truth in that, somewhat.

A kid's goth phase starts off because yes, the kid is angry, sad, jaded and overall done-with-it, but eventually, you find your people. Like-minded people, who are also looking for a way to find themselves amidst everything that's not them.
You find ways to fight. You find ways to smile again.
Some people grow out of their goth phase quickly. Others take years or decades. Others revel in the subculture, and as delighted to be alive as they can be, never EVER grow out of it. It's not even a phase anymore, it's their lifestyle.

As far as I'm concerned, I believe in the freedom to build yourself as you damn well please.
As figures of alternative lifestyles, we get to explore, and inspire ourselves from all the marvelous subcultures that exist, so as to create a style for ourselves that's resolutely forever our own. Such is the beauty of the human creative potential.
And this is where evolution comes into play, and this is where one can experience the beauty of it.

Evolving means there's things you're happy to let go of.
On my end, I was very happy when my Victorian phase got over and done with.
I was even happier to realize the Steampunk wave, itself, was over and done with.
(As I realized this, I also realized my clothes would be costing me a lot less.
Meaning I can spend more money on upgrading my wardrobe to latex.
Which is, in itself, one of the wonderful aspects of my personal evolution.)

And then, there's things you'll cherish forever.
There's music I got into then, that I'm still into now. That's not gonna change.
Antichrist Superstar is still an incredible album.
The Downward Spiral remains one of the greatest albums of all time, as far as I'm concerned anyway.
There's a reason why Beetlejuice and The Craft are cult movies. Everybody loves Lydia, everybody loves Nancy.
And Emily Strange is my home girl.

It's all about balance, in the end, and finding out more about yourself everyday, thus discovering more and more treasures in every culture, and in the universe itself. I love to sunbathe as much as I revel in a clear night sky full of stars.

And Life's a lot more fun when you can laugh and dance along with it.

It's evolution, baby.

Posted in: alex robshaw,Column