They say that fetishes are born from random childhood experiences that seem meaningless at the time, but become key moments in ones personal history once the fetish has become fully manifest in adulthood. I do not know if this is true, or simply a case of justifying the present by exaggerating the past. Here is my experience not of a fetish, but of an interests.
The year must have been 1978 or '79 when I went on a school trip to Disneyland. One of the benefits of growing up in Los Angeles is that going to Disneyland is a mere field trip. I remember going into a small room off Main Street, USA where there was a model of the park complete with future plans. Apparently in-between Tomorrow Land and Frontier Land there was to be Discovery Land, a section of the park devoted to the Victorian Science-Fiction of Jules Verne I learned a few years back that although this land never materialised in Disneyland, it is a part of Disneyland, Paris. I would like to believe that the thrill that I felt seeing this model, the expectation that gripped me, played some role in my development.
It must have been 1981 when I was distracted by Indiana Jones and my interests focused on the music, culture, and literature of the 1930's. This lasted many years. Then it was the fringes of the LA Goth scene, and then 1988 began my long passion for things Celtic. It was during this period that I first remember putting on waistcoat, buttoning it up, and feeling very Victorian. This was the start. From there is was living in 1863 with the 79th NYSM throughout the 1990's. This was when I began wearing my trademark pocket watch.
In 1998, I began plotting what would become my first, and only, screenplay called Thunderchild, a science fiction story set in the Victorian world involving steam powered space ships and regimental warfare against the Martians. I was sitting in the Research Club at Glasgow University recounting the plot to someone when he said to me. "Oh, its Steampunk". I had no idea what he was talking about. So I went on-line and did some research from what few websites existed on the subject.
William Gibson is credited with creating Steampunk with his novel, The Difference Engine. I prefer to believe that I invented Steampunk, but he gets all the credit only because he was an established writer with a best selling novel.
My influences were that little model in Disneyland, Jules Verne, HG Wells, the original television series The Wild Wild West, a short lived show called QED, and of course my time in re-enacting the American Civil War. When I left the regiment to come to Scotland, it was not unlike those men who went West after the war.
I saw myself entering civilian life and I dressed as Victorian "western" gothic as my debts would allow. Over time I was finally able to afford a black bespoke frock coat as opposed to the tattered Victorian originals I once wore. It was something that I had wanted since I was nineteen years old. A few years back I started wearing a black Stetson, and last month I was finally able to purchase a pair of high waisted black Victorian trousers and a new period waistcoat, complete with a collar. Over a year ago I was able to purchase a mobile phone from Nokia's retro chic L'Amour collection that could be worn on my watch chain. Very Steampunk indeed. Again, my only limitations are my pocketbook.
Both last year and the previous year I have appeared in two Scottish newspapers, The Herald and Scotland on Sunday, in their "street style" section. In both cases I explained Dandyism, Steampunk and Neo-Victorianism to the reporter and in both cases I was misrepresented and misquoted to fit their impressions rather than mine. The others who adorned their spreads were influence by pop stars and fashion rags, whereas I was influenced by an ideology exemplified by Doc Holliday and the Earps in the film Tombstone.
About six years back I began writing the book, Gothic Philosophy: The Way of the Dark Romantic. Throughout most of the Naughties I was involved in Glasgow's Goth scene as a regular figure at most events as well a key mover in the Scottish Vampyre Society. If you called me a Goth, I would not say no, but I always considered myself more of a Romantic or Neo-Victorian. Even though I loved the music and the style, I always saw that as part of a deeper ideology. This inspired me to write a book on Goth as being more than just a fashion. I was wrong.
You see. I don't give a shit about the boys in the band and I care even less about impressing people in my local clubs or on-line. This is not to say that I do not like music or fashion, but I see these as the products of an ideology. The problem here is if the group ideology is just about consuming the latest "cool" alternative cultural commodities rather than an actual belief system.
I have seen the latest wave of Goth popularity come and go. Then it was Burlesque. Now I see the new trends beginning to emerge on-line and stirring in the clubs. Where once there was very little of Steampunk, more and more I am seeing it becoming the new Goth -- or goth in brown. Now every girl who had wanted to be a Burlesque performer now wants to be a Steamgirl.
Despite being a major player in the Glasgow Goth scene, I always saw myself as being on the fringes of Goth, but Steampunk, well…now you're on my turf. And yet I fear that once again I will be the lone voice screaming my ideology to those I think will understand based on how they dress, when in fact they only want to look the part to impress others.
Another reason I gave-up writing my book on Goth was that I realised that everything that gave Goth a viable ideological foundation was there by virtue of Goth being a subset of the Romantic. Likewise, so too is Steampunk. Which is why both are separate chapters in my current project on The Romantic.
"So what is your take on Steampunk, Logan?" I hear you ask as I put words into your mouth. Well, here it is for your reading pleasure.
The Victorian Era was the height of human civilization and the Victorian Era sucked. When I say that it sucked, I do so to let you know that I know that the modern world possesses some wonderful technologies and conveniences that I for one would not want to be without. There is no use living in the past or playing dress-up. Why ride a horse when you have a perfectly good car?
However, in terms of ideology I believe that the Victorians far surpassed us. I strongly believe that we as a civilization have inherited a great wealth from that period of history and each successive generation has squandered that inheritance leaving our modern age morally bankrupt. By morally, I should clarify to my new readers that I am not referring to morality in the Christian sense but in the Aristotelian sense.
To clarify a few more terms. Steampunk is a sub genre of science-fiction and Neo-Victorianism is the name of the fashion inspired by Steampunk, however I see the two merging into a single all-encompassing term, rather like the Gothic Romance becoming Goth. Therefore, I prefer to see Neo-Victorianism as the ideology behind Steampunk. Both Goth and Steampunk as a style of design and fashion are born from the Decadent belief that Life should imitate Art, as opposed to the Naturalist view that Art should imitate Life.
I see Neo-Victorianism as a means of taking modern technologies and luxuries and creating them in the Victorian aesthetic. Among the inventions of my mind are the Steampunk desk, a Victorian roll-top desk with a computer and printer built into it complete with brass fittings. Then there was the façade bookcase. It was a bookcase with old, hard-bound books, but that was just a false front. You popped it open to reveal an actual bookcase filled with your tatty books and DVD collection. I also created the Electric Walking stick, a cattle-prod/taser built into a Victorian walking stick. If only I had the skills and money to make my world a reality.
Likewise, I see adopting Victorian ideologies for the modern world. No, I am not talking about stuffing kids down chimneys, but I do know a few insolent brats who could use that. There were a lot of horrible things about the Victorian Era, but as the age progressed, things were getting better. The middle-class expanded, child mortality plummeted, slavery was abolished, the first age of globalisation dawned, and the era ended with women's suffrage. Whose to say what would have happened if World War I, the Rothschild banking cabal, and the Socialists hadn't screwed things up.
Victorians could buy heroin at the local chemist. Victorians carried guns. Victorians made money unashamedly. Victorians envisioned a better future. I'm all for that. During the Nineteenth Century, I would have been called a Liberal, but today the word is Libertarian. Yes, we are those crazy people who think people should make their own choices and suffer the consequences no matter how horrific. This stems from the Romantic belief that we are all individuals and therefore individually responsible for the outcomes of our life. This is the complete opposite of the widely accepted modern view that we are all part of society and that it is the responsibility of government to manage that society.
Here's another interesting observation of the Victorian mentality taken from the American West. If you have seen the film Tombstone, then you will remember Powers Booth playing Curly Bill Brocious. After Bill was acquitted for the murder of Marshall Fred White, he and two friends went to a Mexican dance hall in Charleston, Arizona. The men blocked the exits, drew their gun on the crowd, and Curly Bill ordered, "Strip, every one of you." Once they had, Bill told the musicians to strike-up a tune. The patrons danced naked at gun point for half and hour. A local policeman passed by and saw the scene through the window. A posse was organised and laid in ambush across the street in a corral, after a shoot-out Curly Bill and his pals escaped uninjured, but some horses in the corral were killed. The following day Bill sent a friend to the corral to pay for damages.
So here is Curly Bill Brocious a notorious criminal and murderer, and yet he was willing to pay the owner of the livery for his lost property. Here is a man willing to humiliate people at gunpoint for a laugh, but still respected the property rights of others. How bizarre that is to the modern mind where many parents won't even offer to pay for merchandise that their children break in stores.
Here's another Victorian concept that seems alien to us today. Human beings are great. Sure there are problems, but taken on the whole we humans are pretty amazing. This runs counter to the modern view that human are a threat, or as Agents Smith says in The Matrix, humans are a virus on this planet. Laws are constantly being either passed or advocated by those intent on containing the human threat to the Earth, to animals, society, and to themselves. This is in stark contrast to the idea that human progress should be allowed unfettered for the benefit of all.
Of course a three page blog is not enough to fully cover this topic. I'll save that for the book. However, I will close with one more point of contrast. The concept of The Other and the Victorian Nightmare.
The Other is an idea often found in adventure stories and science-fiction. The Other is that which is not us. For the Victorians, The Other were usually savages driven by blind emotion. This changed in the Twentieth Century when The Other became un-emotional aliens.
The actions of the Victorians were governed by Reason. They were not so-much emotional as passionate. Emotions are a response to the real or the imagined. Passion is a specific type of emotion characterised by high-interest. It denotes an enthusiasm for an object, therefore to live life passionately is to live in a state of high-interest, which is completely compatible with living a Rational life. However, to live life based on emotion is to deny that emotions are a response to perception and claim that they are perception itself. The truth is that your feelings mean nothing to anyone but yourself. They are not reality. What feels good to you is not necessarily good and what feels bad is not necessarily bad. This is not to discount intuition, which is often called feelings. Intuition has been described as reason in a hurry. If we choose to aspire to a Victorian state of mind, then we had best learn to live rationally, passionately, and intuitively without being led astray by vain emotion and sentimentality.
The Victorian Nightmare was the end of Reason. In the Gothic Romances the victims faced two fates, death or madness. One was the loss of existence and the other the loss of reason. But there was another monster, possibly the greatest of the Victorian Nightmare creatures, the Vampyre.
In the late Twentieth Century vampires became a focus of aspiration for many people, particularly in the Goth scene. People were drawn to the elegance, power, and sexuality of the vampire, and yet for the Victorians the vampire was something to be feared. One might speculate that it was feared out of xenophobia or sexual repression. I am more inclined to believe that the Victorians saw the vampire as a parasite. A creature that sucked the life's blood out of others. For an energetic people what could be worse than to have that energy drained from you? Or to have your will, your liberty, taken from you. Now I'll admit that I may be reading too much into this, but I do like the fact that in the end of Dracula the cowboy, Quincy Morris, sacrifices his life to preserve the freedom of the others. The American representing the new order of personal liberty kills the last remnants of a parasitic ancient aristocracy. And yet today we have again parasitic governments, but rather than fight them people are scurrying around to either control or to become them. Rather than killing the vampire, we want to become the vampire.
For me Steampunk is more than just the latest fashion. It is more than the steam-powered dystopia envisioned by William Gibson in his novel. It is that Discovery Land of my youth. It is the opportunity to embrace forgotten ideologies, to rescue the Spirit of Man from the techno-feudalism that I see looming on the horizon courtesy of the Central Banks, Corporate Interests, Nanny States, and Socialists, and a return to a Romantic vision that glorifies the individual and his achievements and holds him to the highest possible standards. More importantly, it is about true freedom, and not the empty emotionalism spoon-fed the masses by politicians who, 150 years ago, would have been horse-whipped, then tarred and feather for the lying snake oil salesmen that they are. That's you Obama, McCain, and Gordon Brown.
The year must have been 1978 or '79 when I went on a school trip to Disneyland. One of the benefits of growing up in Los Angeles is that going to Disneyland is a mere field trip. I remember going into a small room off Main Street, USA where there was a model of the park complete with future plans. Apparently in-between Tomorrow Land and Frontier Land there was to be Discovery Land, a section of the park devoted to the Victorian Science-Fiction of Jules Verne I learned a few years back that although this land never materialised in Disneyland, it is a part of Disneyland, Paris. I would like to believe that the thrill that I felt seeing this model, the expectation that gripped me, played some role in my development.
It must have been 1981 when I was distracted by Indiana Jones and my interests focused on the music, culture, and literature of the 1930's. This lasted many years. Then it was the fringes of the LA Goth scene, and then 1988 began my long passion for things Celtic. It was during this period that I first remember putting on waistcoat, buttoning it up, and feeling very Victorian. This was the start. From there is was living in 1863 with the 79th NYSM throughout the 1990's. This was when I began wearing my trademark pocket watch.
In 1998, I began plotting what would become my first, and only, screenplay called Thunderchild, a science fiction story set in the Victorian world involving steam powered space ships and regimental warfare against the Martians. I was sitting in the Research Club at Glasgow University recounting the plot to someone when he said to me. "Oh, its Steampunk". I had no idea what he was talking about. So I went on-line and did some research from what few websites existed on the subject.
William Gibson is credited with creating Steampunk with his novel, The Difference Engine. I prefer to believe that I invented Steampunk, but he gets all the credit only because he was an established writer with a best selling novel.
My influences were that little model in Disneyland, Jules Verne, HG Wells, the original television series The Wild Wild West, a short lived show called QED, and of course my time in re-enacting the American Civil War. When I left the regiment to come to Scotland, it was not unlike those men who went West after the war.
I saw myself entering civilian life and I dressed as Victorian "western" gothic as my debts would allow. Over time I was finally able to afford a black bespoke frock coat as opposed to the tattered Victorian originals I once wore. It was something that I had wanted since I was nineteen years old. A few years back I started wearing a black Stetson, and last month I was finally able to purchase a pair of high waisted black Victorian trousers and a new period waistcoat, complete with a collar. Over a year ago I was able to purchase a mobile phone from Nokia's retro chic L'Amour collection that could be worn on my watch chain. Very Steampunk indeed. Again, my only limitations are my pocketbook.
Both last year and the previous year I have appeared in two Scottish newspapers, The Herald and Scotland on Sunday, in their "street style" section. In both cases I explained Dandyism, Steampunk and Neo-Victorianism to the reporter and in both cases I was misrepresented and misquoted to fit their impressions rather than mine. The others who adorned their spreads were influence by pop stars and fashion rags, whereas I was influenced by an ideology exemplified by Doc Holliday and the Earps in the film Tombstone.
About six years back I began writing the book, Gothic Philosophy: The Way of the Dark Romantic. Throughout most of the Naughties I was involved in Glasgow's Goth scene as a regular figure at most events as well a key mover in the Scottish Vampyre Society. If you called me a Goth, I would not say no, but I always considered myself more of a Romantic or Neo-Victorian. Even though I loved the music and the style, I always saw that as part of a deeper ideology. This inspired me to write a book on Goth as being more than just a fashion. I was wrong.
You see. I don't give a shit about the boys in the band and I care even less about impressing people in my local clubs or on-line. This is not to say that I do not like music or fashion, but I see these as the products of an ideology. The problem here is if the group ideology is just about consuming the latest "cool" alternative cultural commodities rather than an actual belief system.
I have seen the latest wave of Goth popularity come and go. Then it was Burlesque. Now I see the new trends beginning to emerge on-line and stirring in the clubs. Where once there was very little of Steampunk, more and more I am seeing it becoming the new Goth -- or goth in brown. Now every girl who had wanted to be a Burlesque performer now wants to be a Steamgirl.
Despite being a major player in the Glasgow Goth scene, I always saw myself as being on the fringes of Goth, but Steampunk, well…now you're on my turf. And yet I fear that once again I will be the lone voice screaming my ideology to those I think will understand based on how they dress, when in fact they only want to look the part to impress others.
Another reason I gave-up writing my book on Goth was that I realised that everything that gave Goth a viable ideological foundation was there by virtue of Goth being a subset of the Romantic. Likewise, so too is Steampunk. Which is why both are separate chapters in my current project on The Romantic.
"So what is your take on Steampunk, Logan?" I hear you ask as I put words into your mouth. Well, here it is for your reading pleasure.
The Victorian Era was the height of human civilization and the Victorian Era sucked. When I say that it sucked, I do so to let you know that I know that the modern world possesses some wonderful technologies and conveniences that I for one would not want to be without. There is no use living in the past or playing dress-up. Why ride a horse when you have a perfectly good car?
However, in terms of ideology I believe that the Victorians far surpassed us. I strongly believe that we as a civilization have inherited a great wealth from that period of history and each successive generation has squandered that inheritance leaving our modern age morally bankrupt. By morally, I should clarify to my new readers that I am not referring to morality in the Christian sense but in the Aristotelian sense.
To clarify a few more terms. Steampunk is a sub genre of science-fiction and Neo-Victorianism is the name of the fashion inspired by Steampunk, however I see the two merging into a single all-encompassing term, rather like the Gothic Romance becoming Goth. Therefore, I prefer to see Neo-Victorianism as the ideology behind Steampunk. Both Goth and Steampunk as a style of design and fashion are born from the Decadent belief that Life should imitate Art, as opposed to the Naturalist view that Art should imitate Life.
I see Neo-Victorianism as a means of taking modern technologies and luxuries and creating them in the Victorian aesthetic. Among the inventions of my mind are the Steampunk desk, a Victorian roll-top desk with a computer and printer built into it complete with brass fittings. Then there was the façade bookcase. It was a bookcase with old, hard-bound books, but that was just a false front. You popped it open to reveal an actual bookcase filled with your tatty books and DVD collection. I also created the Electric Walking stick, a cattle-prod/taser built into a Victorian walking stick. If only I had the skills and money to make my world a reality.
Likewise, I see adopting Victorian ideologies for the modern world. No, I am not talking about stuffing kids down chimneys, but I do know a few insolent brats who could use that. There were a lot of horrible things about the Victorian Era, but as the age progressed, things were getting better. The middle-class expanded, child mortality plummeted, slavery was abolished, the first age of globalisation dawned, and the era ended with women's suffrage. Whose to say what would have happened if World War I, the Rothschild banking cabal, and the Socialists hadn't screwed things up.
Victorians could buy heroin at the local chemist. Victorians carried guns. Victorians made money unashamedly. Victorians envisioned a better future. I'm all for that. During the Nineteenth Century, I would have been called a Liberal, but today the word is Libertarian. Yes, we are those crazy people who think people should make their own choices and suffer the consequences no matter how horrific. This stems from the Romantic belief that we are all individuals and therefore individually responsible for the outcomes of our life. This is the complete opposite of the widely accepted modern view that we are all part of society and that it is the responsibility of government to manage that society.
Here's another interesting observation of the Victorian mentality taken from the American West. If you have seen the film Tombstone, then you will remember Powers Booth playing Curly Bill Brocious. After Bill was acquitted for the murder of Marshall Fred White, he and two friends went to a Mexican dance hall in Charleston, Arizona. The men blocked the exits, drew their gun on the crowd, and Curly Bill ordered, "Strip, every one of you." Once they had, Bill told the musicians to strike-up a tune. The patrons danced naked at gun point for half and hour. A local policeman passed by and saw the scene through the window. A posse was organised and laid in ambush across the street in a corral, after a shoot-out Curly Bill and his pals escaped uninjured, but some horses in the corral were killed. The following day Bill sent a friend to the corral to pay for damages.
So here is Curly Bill Brocious a notorious criminal and murderer, and yet he was willing to pay the owner of the livery for his lost property. Here is a man willing to humiliate people at gunpoint for a laugh, but still respected the property rights of others. How bizarre that is to the modern mind where many parents won't even offer to pay for merchandise that their children break in stores.
Here's another Victorian concept that seems alien to us today. Human beings are great. Sure there are problems, but taken on the whole we humans are pretty amazing. This runs counter to the modern view that human are a threat, or as Agents Smith says in The Matrix, humans are a virus on this planet. Laws are constantly being either passed or advocated by those intent on containing the human threat to the Earth, to animals, society, and to themselves. This is in stark contrast to the idea that human progress should be allowed unfettered for the benefit of all.
Of course a three page blog is not enough to fully cover this topic. I'll save that for the book. However, I will close with one more point of contrast. The concept of The Other and the Victorian Nightmare.
The Other is an idea often found in adventure stories and science-fiction. The Other is that which is not us. For the Victorians, The Other were usually savages driven by blind emotion. This changed in the Twentieth Century when The Other became un-emotional aliens.
The actions of the Victorians were governed by Reason. They were not so-much emotional as passionate. Emotions are a response to the real or the imagined. Passion is a specific type of emotion characterised by high-interest. It denotes an enthusiasm for an object, therefore to live life passionately is to live in a state of high-interest, which is completely compatible with living a Rational life. However, to live life based on emotion is to deny that emotions are a response to perception and claim that they are perception itself. The truth is that your feelings mean nothing to anyone but yourself. They are not reality. What feels good to you is not necessarily good and what feels bad is not necessarily bad. This is not to discount intuition, which is often called feelings. Intuition has been described as reason in a hurry. If we choose to aspire to a Victorian state of mind, then we had best learn to live rationally, passionately, and intuitively without being led astray by vain emotion and sentimentality.
The Victorian Nightmare was the end of Reason. In the Gothic Romances the victims faced two fates, death or madness. One was the loss of existence and the other the loss of reason. But there was another monster, possibly the greatest of the Victorian Nightmare creatures, the Vampyre.
In the late Twentieth Century vampires became a focus of aspiration for many people, particularly in the Goth scene. People were drawn to the elegance, power, and sexuality of the vampire, and yet for the Victorians the vampire was something to be feared. One might speculate that it was feared out of xenophobia or sexual repression. I am more inclined to believe that the Victorians saw the vampire as a parasite. A creature that sucked the life's blood out of others. For an energetic people what could be worse than to have that energy drained from you? Or to have your will, your liberty, taken from you. Now I'll admit that I may be reading too much into this, but I do like the fact that in the end of Dracula the cowboy, Quincy Morris, sacrifices his life to preserve the freedom of the others. The American representing the new order of personal liberty kills the last remnants of a parasitic ancient aristocracy. And yet today we have again parasitic governments, but rather than fight them people are scurrying around to either control or to become them. Rather than killing the vampire, we want to become the vampire.
For me Steampunk is more than just the latest fashion. It is more than the steam-powered dystopia envisioned by William Gibson in his novel. It is that Discovery Land of my youth. It is the opportunity to embrace forgotten ideologies, to rescue the Spirit of Man from the techno-feudalism that I see looming on the horizon courtesy of the Central Banks, Corporate Interests, Nanny States, and Socialists, and a return to a Romantic vision that glorifies the individual and his achievements and holds him to the highest possible standards. More importantly, it is about true freedom, and not the empty emotionalism spoon-fed the masses by politicians who, 150 years ago, would have been horse-whipped, then tarred and feather for the lying snake oil salesmen that they are. That's you Obama, McCain, and Gordon Brown.
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