An Article on Gothic parenting.

“BE GOTH…..OR ELSE”


By: Dani Alienna


We are seeing a new era of the rebel. They dress in jeans and plain tee shirts. They go to school, do their homework and hang out with their friends. Their rooms are painted white and they stick to their summer reading lists. Nothing about them screams danger, beware, or run, They are children of Goths….
The first time I ever laid eyes on a “Goth” I was strangely enough at the beach. It was in Point Pleasant N.J. My family rented out a summer home there every year and it was there upon the boardwalk a group of Goth kids would hang about on a bench. Everyone was terrified of them. They stirred up mixed emotions in the passing sun-tanned wholesome families night after night. Fear, anger, hatred, lust. I was enthralled. I loved the reaction they were getting from those around them. I wanted to be just like them. I was 8.
Having had adopted the gothic lifestyle internally and externally for my entire adult life thus far, I can honestly say It has been a loving and rewarding experience that I have fully come to appreciate and respect. From the 8 year old on the beach, then staring star eyed and wondered, to the adult I am today, I have always had to defend, explain, and fight for my freedom to be such an extreme individual. I was taunted, punished, provoked, hit, criticized, ridiculed and very much an outcast my whole young adult life. I found comfort in my fellow Goths and discovered a world of those like me where I was accepted.
Today however, Goth has become a mostly acceptable form of fashion and culture. Books explain in detail to parents every aspect of clothing down to the Egyptian eyeliner patterns. Movies make the vampire a sex symbol to even the most common of mothers of the gothic teenager. It seems all is accepted and forgiven and the years before us spent in anguished misunderstanding have now paved the way for the next generation to freely stand in the dark.
This raises an all important question. What now will the future of the gothic generations bring? Very recently I have been seeing something about the streets of New York. It is something I never expected or thought much about before. Gothic Babies. Beautiful pale parents walking down the streets of the east village, black baby strollers afoot. Drabbed inside, pale as their parents and chubby, infants sucking on a fang pacifier. Their clothes are black, Their booties are lace. It can be an adorable site if one tends to favor this lifestyle.
Often The parents Decorate the child’s room with images of bats, snakes, and pumpkins. A lighter side of gothic parenting can be a mix of happy and Gothic images such as smiling cartoons, Gothic children or things one would find in the comic stores like pink bears with bloody claws. To an infant of two or three this can all be very charming and innocent.. It hurts no one if your three year old has a Mohawk or if your baby girl is walking around in black and white stripped stockings. But what happens when the child enters pre-school? Is it still appropriate to be sending Bela junior off to the playground with his little spiked boots and vinyl lunchbox?
Parents have been imposing the images of themselves on their children for as long as time. Parents have children, Those children then rebel and become known as misfits or delinquents. Now we are asking our children to BE the rebels, misfits, and delinquents. Is it fair of us as gothic parents to assume our children’s identity before they themselves can develop it on their own? Just as we were setting ourselves up to be picked on and taunted, are we are now setting THEM up in return to be picked on and taunted? The difference is; we were asking for it. They are not. It is one thing to do your own choosing, pick a certain identity and run with it. Then you may defend that identity proudly and know what your are getting yourself into. Know where the blows will lie when they hit you in your pierced cheek. All this is acceptable to you because it is your decision. This is who you are. Who you decided to be, and you are willing to fight for it. So why is this a decision we are making FOR our children? And if so…are we no better then the parents before who told US who to be and told US what to wear? Why now would we in turn tell our children what to wear, who to be? Dare we say to them “ Be Goth or else?” Isn’t the very foundation of Goth formed on the total and complete freedom of expression and creativity? In that case a child dressed in khakis and a polo shirt he picked out for himself is more GOTH then the ten year old in mourning wear because his parents told him to dress that way.
I firmly believe just as we longed to spread our youthful wings and fly away from our nest, so will the generation after us. To take away the choice of our children and force them to be “like us” would whole-heartily go against everything “GOTH” stands for. It is a decision every alternative parent will have to make not just the Goths. Whether you be a rocker, emo, cyber or punk, If you have children they will choose a path, and it will either be yours, or you should hope, their OWN.

“Lumpkin”

On top Of a pumpkin hill, All Hallows Eve
The sun slowly set in a bright orange gleam

Everywhere you looked, children ran about
Looking for the perfect pumpkin to carve inside out

“I found a great one!” yelled one little child
“This one is better!” said a boy running wild

Every pumpkin was chosen that was seen in sight
To be part of this magic Halloween night

The sky began to dim, the sun no longer shone
But there was still one pumpkin left, and he was all alone

His surface wasn’t smooth, and his lines were all wrong
He looked more like an orange piece of corn

Two girls ran over to see this lone pumpkin
And he smiled till one shouted “ That pumpkin is a Lumpkin!”

“I’m just as good as those other ones! Why wasn’t I picked?!”
Then he saw his reflection in a nearby puddle making him very, very sick.

Night turned to day and still the Lumpkin sat
His only friend was a ratty black cat

Night came again and still he waited
And waited and waited and waited and waited

“Oh well!” he cried “I give up hope!”
“No one wants me, I’m a pumpkin joke!”

He fell asleep under the moon close to midnight
Until he awoke with a startling fright

Two witched grew near and Lumpkin grew scared
He his in the grass and pretended he was not there

But, they saw him anyway and shouted “This is the one!”
“We will enter HIM in the contest. Now this will be fun!”

“Oh NO!” Lumpkin thought “They will make fun of me too!”
“and enter me in the contest because I am so ugly! Boo Hoo!”

At the ball witches gathered from all over the world
Each one has a pumpkin to make your blood curl

Green ones and black ones Lumpkin saw them all
But Thought “I am still the ugliest at the ball”

With a tear Lumpkin sighed, now everyone will laugh and stare
At the ugliest pumpkin they will cackle and glare

Sure enough the two witches won who found Lumpkin alone
And they received the prize pumpkin cup made of graveyard stone

As they held Lumpkin up high, above all with his prize
They announced why he won, with a surprise he realized

“FIRST PRIZE TO THE WINNER: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PUMPKIN
ANY WITCH HAS EVER SEEN, ON THIS MOST MAGICAL HALLOWEEN”

Aug 1, 2010

There is something changing in me. I fear the loss of my humanity. Before, where I was angry, fighting for all things, including myself… I feel now that fire consuming me instead. And all the pain spent fighting against the world has just resulted in my isolation. Here shall I quote how “all true artists are alone“? I really have begin to wonder at that concept. Could a torture soul know love…be loved? Or do they only know their own suffering.
If a choice was there given unto them…Life in the stars light…alone, angry and bereft of the tenderness of one souls touch alone…would it really be chosen. But what artist does have a choice? They are driven by their passion, and what passion it is…and that responsibility to the art drives those around them away…leaving them standing alone…loved by all…but there alone. What price are we willing to pay for our art? I would like to think the artist should sacrifice EVERYTHING, including themselves to the higher form of their creative duty. I just fear we lose much in it. Perhaps then what we gain in retrospect is worth it…to some…not all. To myself? I don’t know. I know where I wish to go, none would follow…

July 11

Little means anything today. I’m kept with a sadness that is holding me… I’m watching the history of the civil war. From the early settlers and pioneers moving westward and then the civil war, it becomes clearer to me why I much favor history to the present day. Why I don’t fit today. There is nothing glorious about our age. Then. Everything meant glory. It was kill or be killed and you had to fight to live, to mean something. And everything meant something. Not like today. Nothing means anything today. Relationships are too lightly taken as to myself hardly ever seeing a couple in real “Love”… no one writes poetry for one another….missing has gone missing….there are no great novels, or composers…I do not mean there are not great artists…there are some to say the least yes…but it just doesn’t CHANGE things anymore. Not like it use to. It doesn’t change the world….Not like I had hoped music and art still would…and I so wanted to see a revolution as our ancestors have seen before us. I WANTED it…bleeding, crying and playing out before my very eyes. So I could feel. So I could breath in the shift of powers and possess a moment. Be truly part of time. We are standing for little and our freedoms are so great we forget we have much to give. The world is more then this….we are too smoothed over like a stone too washed down from the waves of technology for anything to stick with us…violence, love, the greatest song ever heard…it barely touches our surface…I had hoped our eyes would be opened…my whole youth…please…open societies eyes…to religious hypocrisy…corruptions and secret evils we are blinded to as youths…what did it mean really…years of wasted hope on them…and in the end. I was no one to no one again anyway…
It hurts me. That I do not fit today. And I have tried but I feel stuck in the wrong time. I am not like these other women of today. I value much and seem stranger for it.

Introduction

There have been many ideas swarming about me as of late. Many things I am to later, here
or there, jot down… forget, and start all over again. At the time, as an artists whose eyes
stream open, almost nothing is more important...then that time. That time...Where ideas are realized, songs are distant formations, or a moment is felt as a lightning strike is beautiful to be seen. I don't know now as I didn’t know before, If it all matters...If my thoughts will ever be heard. If they are heard will they sink into another, like a good book to a reader absorbed and in love. It doesn’t matter. I write only for myself...if nothing more then to remember my own passions are still alive and my own thoughts are just that...my own.