eirian84's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Goth, or Not to Goth? When I was in my Freshman year of highschool, I toyed with being a goth. Now, I know, just the fact that I say "toyed with" means I was never truly goth. I was a poseur, pretty much just dressing up like a goth, in a lot of black with heavy makeup. I wasn't trying to find a lifestyle, so much as just a... visual style, I supposed, that portrayed me well. I'm not fascinated with death and evil and taboos & that sort of thing... well, not too fascinated with them. But I by no means shy away from them. But one thing I had a problem with was, I cared how people saw me, I wanted to make, if not a good impression necessarily, at least not a bad impression. And eventually I had to face the truth - I liked laughing and joking and smiling and colors too much to be goth. I was (and am) polite and respectful and shy, and completely not goth material. Says the girl who for several years continually dyed her hair burgundy, and eventually dyed it black with bleach blonde & pink highlights. The first night I showed up to work with my new hairdo, the North Charge nurse & one of the other aides working on North & I started talking about it, & Amber (the aide) said it was very punk. Punk. Now why hadn't I thought of that in highschool? Avril Lavigne's punk, isn't she? (and this is where I duck from all the rotten fruit & veggies being thrown at me from the hard core punks out there, whether they're reading this or not.) Anyway, I had a reason to start this entry. Thanks to The Sims 2 & livejournal, I've found a great Sims story called "Deception Pass", filled with vampires & dark metal music &... well, the author's description of it is something like "Buffy with twice the camp". Or something like that. Great story, which I unfortunately can't really read because of all the pictures & my stupid dial-up internet. But I digress. So, she listens to some music that I'd never heard of before, & even did a few "music videos" with her Sims (the two vampires are part of a rock band). At least one of the songs she uses is by The Cruxshadows, & I really liked it, so I scraped what I could off the internet. And then I got a subscription to Napster. So now I have two of their albums (to-go, for now), & I honestly don't think there's a song on them that I don't like. I don't sit & memorize the lyrics, but when I'm feeling for something with a few dark edges, I listen to it. I like the vocals, I like the rhythms & music (I'm listening to it right now, hee). And it doesn't hurt that quite a lot of their songs are named after Greek mythological characters - obscure mythological characters. In fact, the first song on their album is called "Pygmalion's Dream", which, after the story of Cupid and Psyche, is probably my favorite story. (Kim, if you don't know, the story of Pygmalion was later updated into the musical "My Fair Lady".) So, I like The Cruxshadows. I think I was looking for songs for Halloween (or just for songs with witches & vampires in them), & I stumbled across H.I.M.'s "Vampire Heart". I think that's still my favorite song of theirs. But I like most if not all of their songs. Again, I don't know all the words by heart, but I love "Vampire Heart". So, The Cruxshadows and H.I.M. Pretty gothic stuff, at least in the traditional sense of the word, if not the slang sense. But I still, at 23, feel so out of place when I walk into Hot Topic, like I'm some sort of interloper who shouldn't be in there. And to be fair, it's not the staff's fault - they're all super nice... what little I talk to them. But, for the most part, I don't listen to the same music they do (trust me, they blare it out of the speakers all the time), & considering their motto is "It's all about the music", that puts me distinctly ill at ease. But! They have Harry Potter stuff, and faerie stuff, and anime stuff, and vampire stuff, and kick-ass clothes that, unfortunately, are way too expensive for me to buy, especially for a dress/outfit that I'll never have the nerve to wear outside the house. So I brave the store, and my own insecurities about what people think of this petite little girl with mouse brown hair wearing trendy pants and a baby pink baby-tee and nary a piercing or tattoo in sight, to go in and browse their collection of everything and wish I had more money for it all. How's that saying go? "People wouldn't worry so much about what others thought of them if they realized how seldom they did" or something like that. But, in argument that I'm not goth material -- I do read Laurell K. Hamilton. Now if that doesn't represent goth, I don't know what does. 6:36 p.m. - 2007-12-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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