GOTH PSYCHOLOGY

The obituary article on the tragic death of Kurt Cobain appeared in the May 1994 issue of South Africas Top 40 Magazine. This a textual analysis. In no way does it intend to make light of the tragedy. Suicide is no joke, nor is the unimaginable mental pain that precedes it. However, the melodramatic introductory blurb reveals much of the psychology and cosmology of the Goth species / tribe and as such, merits analysis.

20/02/67 - 05/04/94

Kurdt Cobain

TRAGEDY IN NIRVANA
Picture the scene: Seattle, 5 April. Suburbia. The residence of Kurdt Cobain and Courtney Love. King and queen of grunge. Outside, dogs bark in the neighbourhood, cars cruise by as usual, the world is turning. Inside, alone, a man puts a gun to his head in a defiant salute to desperate unhappiness. A shot rings out. A lone dog barks furtively. The spirit of Kurdt Cobain floats skywards, to become one with the universe.

Barking dogs and cruising cars are fine but the statement about the world turning is not as superfluous as it may appear. It was employed to emphasize the rupture between historical time and metaphysical time, pre and post (or year of) Kurt. "... in a defiant salute to desperate unhappiness." I don't think so. (a) To defy desperate unhappiness would be to choose life, to keep on living in defiance of your unhappiness. (b) Salute. Would "surrender" not be the more correct term? As in: "... in an act of surrender..." (c) "desperate unhappiness" ~ understatement. How about: "stifling depression", "unbearable depression", "overwhelming despair"? Sure there are levels of unhappiness but what afflicted Kurt was clinical depression. The suicide was either the Anomic or the Egoistic type (Note: "egoistic" in Durkheim's terms does not mean "selfish" but "a prolonged sense of not belonging, of not being integrated in a community, an experience, of not having a tether, an absence that can give rise to meaninglessness, apathy, melancholy, and depression." Anomic = "People do not know where they fit in within their societies. Durkheim explains that this is a state of moral disorder where man does not know the limits on his desires, and is constantly in a state of disappointment. This can occur when man goes through extreme changes in wealth; while this includes economic ruin, it can also include windfall gains - in both cases, previous expectations from life are brushed aside and new expectations are needed before he can judge his new situation in relation to the new limits." "A lone dog barks furtively". How could the writer know this? Kurt's body was found 34 hours later. It functions as a mood-setter or atmospheric device. As if this wise dog knew about the tragedy that had just occurred. Thus, the factuality does not matter. In the mind of the writer, at least one living creature had to acknowledge the death of The Saviour of Rock, the King of Grunge. Thank you, loyal canine, for your furtive barking. Let us treat you as narrative fact. If you didn't exist, it was proper and suitable to invent you. If you didn't bark, putting barks into your mouth was the right thing to do. We shall presently discover who you really are. Now for the manner in which the dog was barking. Remember, before the shot rang out, many dogs were barking in the neighbourhood. Now they've fallen quiet. Perhaps they knew what had happened and kept quiet out of awe or respect. That would explain the furtive barking of the lone dog. FURTIVE: sly, secret, hidden, sneaking, covert, cloaked, behind someone's back, secretive, clandestine, sneaky, under-the-table, slinking, conspiratorial, skulking, underhand, surreptitious, stealthy.

FROM HERO TO DISRESPECTFUL VILLAIN

In the above scenario, the lone dog wasnt mourning the death. Unlike the others that showed respect, he just couldn't stop barking because he likes barking. He is well aware that the others are maintaining a respectful silence but he cannot resist the urge to bark, so he does it furtively, guiltily. There may be more to it.

Ascension imagery
Now comes the strange metaphysics. "The spirit of Kurdt Cobain floats skywards, to become one with the universe" does not make sense coming from a Goth. The author wore black, constantly watched horror movies and listened to the most morbid music. Why would s/he perceive his spirit ascending to the heavens instead of descending to dark, Gothic places? One possibility is the Christological symbolism which reinforces the concept of Kurt as the Saviour of Rock, the King of Grunge. However, he ascends to heaven not on or within a cloud but as a little cloud.

The dead universe

"to become one with the universe" ~ there's no need to "float upwards" in order to become "one with the universe". And why are only the dead "one with the universe"? Are the living not part of the universe? I suspect the key word "one" to be a metaphor for unconsciousness or oblivion. So here the Gothicism reasserts itself with a vengeance after the ascension imagery. Only the dead, ghosts, disembodied spirits, are truly part of this Gothic universe. Life and physical matter have no place in Gothic cosmology. "One with the universe" = a masking mechanism or camouflage for "annihilation of individual identity", so although his "spirit" ascends, it then dissolves into an infinite ocean (primordial subconscious?), a psychic soup or plasma where Kurt, unconscious of his individuality, is poured into the cosmic ocean. That fits perfectly with some interpretations of the Nirvana concept - loss of individual identity into the primordial "chthonic" psychic force/power that is wild and untamed, destructive and deadly as it is the same power that causes earthquakes, tsunamis and murderous behaviour when its wild passions take hold of the mass mind.

Identifying THE ARCHETYPES

The King = the Gothic King of Death that annihilates himself. (Human Sacrifice). The Queen)= the destructive fertility goddess of life and death, the prostitute and the Madonna, the mother and the lover. The World = It stops turning when the King of death sacrifices himself. So, following the clause "a shot rings out", earth ceases to exist and we enter dreamtime, subconscious or metaphysical time where past, present and future merge. Interestingly, the horror story and pornography also employ this unusual mode of time. The Dog/s = Cerberus, the Hound of Hell. They/it stop/s barking (we've entered a different realm, that of Hades) because the King of Death has joined them. The furtive barking represents suppressed joy/sublimated pleasure at the return of the king. One with the Universe = Utter annihilation of individual consciousness. This is Thanatophilia (Love of Death), caused by Angst in the minds of many young people who are afraid of adulthood and its concomitant responsibilities. NOT all their fault! Our culture is sick and has been sick for a long, long time. So we've probed the narrative to discover its source and destination (metaphysical time is cyclical), unmasked the archetypes and identified the essence of the Goth impulse: its yearning for death. No wonder Goths are also called "coffin kids". The lair of the archetypes, the "Big Bang" of Goth, is an abyss which emits and receives its desire in an endless cycle. Existing only for itself, it explicitly excludes life, joy or any of the multitude of probabilities. The Goth mindset rejects physical existence and denies the existence of life. Only the unconscious, disembodied "smoke" of individuals are real.

What a relief that most Goths outgrow the phase.

SOURCES
Cover illustration
http://www.bizarro.com/ https://www.facebook.com/bizarrocomics

Bibliography
Mautanin, Djuna. The Realized Unconscious: Tiamat and Her Struggle Against Individuation. Lecture delivered by Djuna Mautanin at Paris, February 28, 1923.
http://www.rpg.net/realm/archive/gordon.html

O'Keefe, Paula. Leviathan Chained: The Legend of the Nephilim and the Cthulhu Mythos.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29295929/Nephilim-and-the-Cthulhu-Mythos-the-Legend-of-the

Gold, Judith Taylor. Monsters and madonnas. Revised ed. Syracuse University Press, 1999. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durkheim%27s_theory_of_suicide

Pieter Uys 2013