perkygoff world headquarters is where i live, along with my housemates mary, jamie and jamies cat morticia (no shes not black). the rest of them (cat included) may well be getting their own pages sooner or later (most likely later. were busy having fun), but for now, heres what weve got.
there are certain things one should know about "being" perkygoff. most of them are contained in the files below. the other most of them arent. you make them up as you go along. or find them in rubbish bins. the important thing, however, is to take it all with a boulder of salt, and realize that self-determination is what youre really up to here.
as for myself, i fancy i do that rather well. after having listened to "gothic" music and dealt with the goth scene since damn near its inception, ive noticed that i have a tendency to get frustrated with it, to note that in many ways, its so very much like all the other "normal" people it seems to so despise... it gets stuck in a rut, you see, which im sure some people will argue with me concerning, but thats how i see it, and this is how i fight against it - i demand self-determination and unforced uniqueness. im not your typical goth - for those of you whove been through my homepage already, you know im quite bike-obsessed, to begin with - im active, certainly not delicate or anything like that, and quite a bit on the woodsy-organic-back-to-nature side of things. not your standard goth stereotype. i dont look goth 24-7, and god forbid i ever should. i have this horrible tendency to have multiple facets to my personality. ive decided that gothgurls arent worth chasing as romantic interests as a partial result of things like this - your stereotypical gothgurl may well be absolutely gorgeous, but is she gonna be able to do anything with me besides look gorgeous? and will she wake up before noon? cause i do. oh, and shes got to have a bike, and love it like i love mine (know someone like that? you know where to send them...).
the fact is, goth is about the third thing i consider myself to be - first and always i am joel, then i am a punk, then i am goth. its not last in line, but its definitely not first. but all the same, i love it. i love the aesthetic - as horridly impractical for my purposes as it may be - and i love the music. i hate vampires, and pretentious wanks who think they can write poetry. i love hard-edged older-style goth stuff like early sisters of mercy, play dead, red lorry yellow lorry, the wake, ghost dance, skeletal family and the like. i dont like most of the one-big-band-from-germany darkwave stuff. i do like ambient goth, but i dont like projekt records. i also like run-dmc, but that has little to do with goth, and more than youd realize. i adore things dead, dying, cast-off, worn and forgotten - seashells, dead leaves, dilapidated antiques, old lace, eggshells, snakeskins, rust - but i love life more than anything else.
but again, its a self-determination thing. if theres anything id like to be able to say to people just getting in on the goth thing, its dont be goth just cause it seems like the in thing to do right now, or cause all your friends are doing it - be goth because it seems like the right thing to do at this instant in time, and dont pretend for a second that youll be like this for the rest of your life, because most likely, you wont. i just got lucky or something. and most importantly, dont let anyone convince you that what youre perceiving to be goth isnt. because if youve figured out goth for yourself, and you know whats what in your own mind, nothing else is worth shit. and there you have it. ignore me.
joel metz, magpie@sirius.com