OPEN GRAVES

Deep into the so-called spooky season, Heather and Vesta have a one-on-one that takes turns all over, from our Obelisk Halloween party (Night of the Mamushka!) to goth music being vetoed by a hipper than thou afterhours bartender, to a stalker coming out of the woodwork. We also discuss the dilemma of explaining goth to inquiring minds who don’t even know who David Bowie is, more notes on the ways in which we talk about trauma, and the myth of the chill girl. We hope you’ve had a fulfilling Halloween season, and shoutout to Christie and Kristy!

New to Los Angeles but not at all new to goth, Bob Gardner joins us to talk about being adopted into our community and all of the strange detours that led him here. As you may be able to tell, Bob is from northeastern England, has a gregarious ADHD charm, and a lot to say. We talk gothcest, transhumanism and quantum voodoo bullshit, varying degrees of Otherness, and hot takes on neurodivergence and capitalism. He tells us about clawing his way out of “the Detroit of the UK,” entering goth through Nine Inch Nails, the concept of subculture vs. counterculture, and the male gaze within goth. We end on a trauma cliffhanger, which we’ll get into in part two.

From tarot reading, to a 16 year career in dance, L Faunt is a wildly multifaceted goth, queer, Jew-witch comedian, and today they share their insights with us. They discuss being raised in a Romanian interfaith household and rejecting both religions in favor of “skeptical agnostic jewish inspired mysticism,” struggling with cultural appropriation, and the goth renaissance that is taking place in Los Angeles post-pandemic. We touch on the commodification of goth femme people, how LGBTQ+ folks are taking up the mantle in newer goth spaces, and how “woke” comedy is actually funnier. Oh, and Vesta is a terrible tarot client. Come see El perform a dance piece alongside your hosts reading poetry at Cortex Worship at North End on 9/30!

It starts with a chat about a goth pool party and ocean report, but ends with a full therapy session and a cliffhanger. This is a followup to our two-part recording with Marc Heuck, because he gave us a lot to dwell on. As goths, what is the consensus about the intersection between horror, sci-fi, and our music-based subculture? We agree that horror was once a very sexist genre, but how is that changing now, how does it affect us, and the androgynous male horror fans in our community? We discuss our relationship to processing trauma when you experience the world in a different way from others, and not knowing how to be a kid leading to acting like a kid as an adult. Heather also conducts a therapy sessions about Vesta’s parents’ temporary separation and how it influenced all of her future relationships. The word “sensitive” has too much judgmental baggage; we believe that goths are absorbent. But if you’re soaking up everyone else’s shit, is there space for your own? Fuck it, we’re going to a cat’s birthday party. 

Having left off with Night of the Living Dead becoming public domain, we continue our discussion with Marc about how mainstream media set the stage for goth. We also question how the influence of worldwide collective trauma set us up to embrace feelings of otherness, how monster narratives provide solace, and debate the difference between pop culture and subculture. From Harold of Harold and Maude as the prototypical goth boy to Bauhaus and Bowie in The Hunger, to the opening of Spirit Halloween and The Cure releasing a compilation on a major label, we conclude with Lydia Deetz codifying contemporary goth in Beetlejuice. We also get Marc’s personal history with Rocky Horror and his goth-adjacent tastes. Check out his film blog at projectorhasbeendrinking.blogspot.com/

Marc Heuck, Vesta’s first employer, friend of 20 years, and  self-proclaimed goth-adjacent film nerd, might be our first guest to show up with pages of notes, and is definitely our first guest to lead to a two parter. This dissertation-level discussion is about the media that set the stage in the mainstream for goth to thrive later on. By this he means television, radio, and comics; the types of media that come directly into your home. We begin in 1930 with “The Shadow,” through the Charles Addams in the New Yorker, to Night of the Living Dead becoming public domain. We discuss how an interest in monsters humanizes Otherness, and that the feeling of otherness is a unifying factor in the goth community. If we say “monster kids drink beer and goths drink wine,” you probably know what we mean. But in this case, we are actually drinking scotch. 

Today on zoom we have one of Heather’s gothmothers, Laura Coldheart. She discusses coming to the goth side through experiencing death in the family and the cultural influence of Dia de los Muertos, finding music through working at Sam Goody, and feeling that the goth community used to offer more support to its members. This evil librarian offers insight into how appearing dark and spooky can function as protection against predators - and her children agree. Keep it spooky!

After a preamble about lingering Covid, summergoth pool parties, vasectomies, and laser hair removal, we revisit the ever-surfacing topic of The Addams Family in their many incarnations, this time prompted not by Netflix’s Wednesday, but by a recently discovered Pluto channel that plays only the 1960s television show. This time Vesta is fixated on deconstructing the capitalist themes in every iteration of the family, the way that their outsider status relies on wealth, how their wholesomeness allows for wealth without abuse of power, and worldliness and openness as part of their alienation from the white middle class. We also dredge up the forgotten corpses of Addams Family Reunion, the Broadway musical that should definitely stay buried, and we also learn a deep dark secret: Heather transitions from Wednesday into Morticia every day and night. And you heard it here first: Obelisk is throwing a Mamushka party in October!

We are joined today in some stereotypically bisexual and neurodivergent seating positions by Jared Eakin aka define.human, to talk about how they skipped right over goth to get to industrial, how health trauma in the family coincided with their introduction to goth and industrial, growing up in the homophobia mecca of Riverside, and now living in an entirely queer, nonbinary, trans, and poly household. They discuss their spreadsheet-level obsession with new darkwave music, becoming a club DJ and promoter just this year, and being part of the “cult” of Ex Corpse, the art collective that curates space for queer safety. Hear Jared DJ Nihil at The North End every second, third and fourth Fridays, and check out their industrial music project define.human here: linktree.com/define.human.