Paint It Black

I have always found goth or emo-type people to be affected. I've never understood why someone would take an interest that most people find bizarre and turn it into a lifestyle. It always seemed like a cry for attention to me - kids who were lonely, feeling on the fringes of their social world, who just want to say fuck it and take their differences to the extreme.

Having said that, I started wondering yesterday what happens to these people when they grow up? Of course there's the famous example of Marilyn Manson, who found a way to make money at it and so never had to. But at some point, most of us have to move out of our parents' houses and get on with our lives. Eventually we all get out of school and have to find real jobs, spouses, and the ordinary day-to-day world begins.

I guess some people just go underground, of a sorts, dress normally during the week and take on a different persona in their free time. But even that, it would seem, would eventually have to end, as the places you frequent and the crowd you fit in with get younger and younger than you each year. What is that day like, when you realize that all those black outfits will no longer be worn? When the black nail polish and lipstick get put away for the final time? How does it feel to finally be forced by society to slough off a personality, a personality you originally acquired to deal with society to begin with?

When I was in high school and college, there were lots of goth kids around. I wonder, as I look around at my Generation X as we've aged, how many of those soccer moms and baseball-coach dads I see everywhere were once those goth kids? Do you lose your angst, or just swallow it? Do you one day decide that the world isn't a bad place after all, or do you just drink the kool-aid?

I can't really speculate too much, as I was never one of them. I was in school, as I am now, just one of those average people who sort of gets along with everyone. I had friends of all ilks, and still do. I blend, like a chameleon, from the PTA to the computer geeks to the art scene. Whatever the weather brings.

Speaking of which.

Raining and cold today. Received a idea yesterday from the fiction gods, my own version of the gothic horror stories of Poe and his ilk. Am still editing the atrocious sci-fi mess that I wrote, though at least I feel now like it is starting to shape up somewhat. Maybe I'll go dress up in all my black clothes, and spackle on the black eyeliner. March on, Marilyn.



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Now playing: a-ha - Little Black Heart
via FoxyTunes

25 January 2008