Goths would never ever listen to classical music... Part 2

*Drum roll* Here's the second part.

First from my beloved composer again (did I mention that I named my dragon soft toy Franz Liszt?^^) and as suggested from Miss Esther Romaine: "The Mephisto Waltz" inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethes work "Faust".




This is a great piece a friend of mine introduced to me, she started playing it on the piano and showed the complete piece. I was simply amazed, a very powerful work from Frédéric Chopin (22 February or 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) the so called "Revolutionsetüde" (revolution étude). It's from his first set of études dedicated to his friend Franz Liszt, the official name is "Étude Op. 10, No. 12". I'm pretty sure there's a story behind that name connected with Chopins love to his home country Poland, but I couldn't find any proper information to prove it.




Two very well known works from Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770– 26 March 1827), just for completeness. He's maybe the most fancied composer of all time, so there isn't that much to say about him.
I like to listen to the whole "5th symphony" from Beethoven while cleaning up, so something boring like this gets epical^^.

Nearly played to dead by every piano beginner and in general played too often and I'm on the edge of getting annoyed of it, but here it is: "Moonlight Sonata".




My former music teacher has one obsession: György Ligeti (May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006).In the first lesson he warned us: You will hear this name really often and you will learn to hate him. But only the first part of the sentence counts for me. I even knitted a mugwarmer (don't know if something like this exists, maybe I invented it!^^) with the inscription "Ligeti" as a christmas present for him.
If you never heard of him, I'll warn you: Ligeti was a composer from the 20th century classical music. For the majority of people this kind of music is just mind-blowing and they can't stand listening to it. But I hope you give it a try.
If you ever watched some of Stanley Kubrick's movies - like for example 2001: A Space Odyssey - and you wondered about the strange music in the background: it's from Ligeti. Here's one piece from this particular movie: "Lux Aeterna"


I found this one by accident looking for another piece I've just "lost", because somehow the folder on my computer has vanished... It's really sudden, scary and funny, but I somehow like it a lot.


This is another great piece of him I discovered. And I found an interesting description of it on the youtube commentaries:

"This piece is supposed to be a network of states which get interrupted and transformed by fixed events. It's based on a childhood dream of his in which he was caught in a web with a collection of other organisms. Every movement made by any organism, he said, would cause a massive wave of vibrations and reciprocal vibrations in the web which caused irreversible changes to take place in the web's internal structure." FutureMoth

Just a fun fact at the end: György was born in Transylvania.

Okay, maybe you have expected some a little older pieces here, but I'm talking about classical music as serious music (as people call it). Although I don't care about the name that much, I have a simliar opinion as Kurt Weill.

"I have never acknowledged the difference between 'serious' music and 'light' music. There are only good music and bad music." Kurt Weill

As I still have some pieces I want to show you, but I just can't remember the names, maybe there will be a third part out soon ;)

Fake Eyelashes - Paperself

Sometimes reading the starblog on stardoll regularily can be a good thing. Look what I found:


These are fake eyelashes. They were mady by a company called Paperself inspired by the art of Chinese paper cutting. I think they're just marvellous and really good fitting to the goth scene.
I think together with a great make-up you'll be the star of every party ;)

Here are the other designs:





You can buy these in their online shop for 15 Pounds for each pair. Maybe you'll take a look.

Show your accessory!

As promised, I post the self made stuff I got on the comments section. (I just realised I wrote accessory wrong in the last article, sorry :( )

But befor I'll do so, I want to talk about a curious incident happened to me yesterday:
I wanted to dye my hair purple again, as always, and my mum brought me two packages of the dye you can get in local drugstores. After putting the whole first package in my hair, I opened the second one and instead of a coloration for the complete head, there was a kit for making strands and also in a different colour! Can you imagine how irritated I was? I was lucky it had a similiar colour to the one I used (it should be deep violet) and I just mashed the two together, hoping my head won't explode or all my hair won't fall out. As this hasn't happened yet, I'm just not that happy with my actual haircolour, it's a mixture of purple and red (everything violet turns red on my head...), but I think, that will be okay for one month. Believe me, now I'll open up both packages before dying my hair...

And now I'm showing you ScarletBlade's self made jewelry :) Beutiful earings, pendants for necklaces and wristbands. Enjoy.








And that's just the stuff I made yesterday. I received my beads order, and couldn't wait to make something of it

You belong to me, my Snow White Queen..

Another tale that Goths are attracted by is Snow White. The reasons are multiple:

*The Character Of SnowWhite incarnating the stereotypical gothic look, black hair, very pale "snow white" skin, red lips.

*The Beauty of the Queen:  beside being regally beautiful ,she has a raven as pet and she is also into dark magic and transforms herself into a witch. 

*The fascination of the Red Apple: the queen's goal is to make Snow White suffer of Sleeping Death. She achieves this by tempting the girl to take a bite from a poisoned apple she created. 

 The Red Apple is a symbol of death and babylon, and we all know that goths are attracted and fascinated by death and esoterism. So this tale is ideal.

I have seen many pictures of Goth interpreting both Snow White and The Queen. In all the pictures there's the red apple. :)

Oh and some info for the make-up lovers: last year MAC released some cosmetics (eyeshadows, lipsticks, nail polish) inspired by Disney villains and of course the Queen of Snow White and the Sleeping Beauty witch could not be missing!

I saw them and tried them on and they were fantastic !! Too bad I was in a hurry and I eventually couldn't buy them T_T 

Gothic songs related to Snow White:

Evanescence - Snow White Queen

Entwine - Snow White

The Cure - The Real Snow White

Goths would never ever listen to classical music... First Part

While BallerinaDark is writing an article about fighting goth stereotypes, I write a little about one I could never understand.
Goths only listen to agressive and/or depressive music. O-N-L-Y.
I know, gothic is inspired by music and lifestyle, and prejudices about the outer appearance may have developed this stereotype, but it's just not true.

I've read about this some time ago on "The Ultimate Goth Guide": A festival (don't remember which one) and a classical concert in the same town. Collision of two completely different cultures. But then people just wondered why a lot of goths also appeared on this classical concert...

I think there is a lot of classical music, that is really aesthetic, dramatic, thrilling and gloomy. I want to introduce some componists and their wonderful pieces of music to you.

The first one is a really common one and I bet you heard "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and "Morning Mood" about a thousand times. It's a piece from Edvard Grieg's (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) "Peer Gynt Suites", where he set the play Peer Gynt from Henrik Ibsen to music. (Honestly I haven't read it yet, but it's standing in my bookshelf, waiting for me).
The two suites contain eight pieces of music:

Suite No. 1

1. Morning Mood (Morgenstemning)
2. Aase's Death (Åses død)
3. Anitra's Dance (Anitras dans)
4. In the Hall of the Mountain King (I Dovregubbens hall)

Suite No. 2

1. The Abduction of the Bride. Ingrid's Lament (Bruderovet. Ingrids klage)
2. Arabian Dance (Arabisk Dans)
3. Peer Gynt's Homecoming (Stormy Evening on the Sea) (Peer Gynts hjemfart (Stormful aften på havet))
4. Solveig's Song (Solveigs Sång)

Here are some of my favourites you maybe havent heard that often.



I like this one a lot, I always turn the stereo up and dance and jump through the kitchen :D




I'm a big Liszt (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) fan, if he would still be alive, I bet I would stand in the very first row of a concert screaming "I want a child from you!". That guy was a piano virtuose, obsessed with this instrument, practicing for hours and hours and he wrote some really great pieces for it. Mostly all of them are concerned as really hard, and though I've tried to learn the piano for some years, I still couldn't play any of these. It's sadly only for the pros.
One of my favourite is "La Campanella", one of his etudes (a piece that is meant for the piano player to practice certain techniques) inspired by a piece from Nicolo Paganini, played by the gorgeous Evgeny Kissin (look at his hair, whils he's playing^^). Everytime I listen to this, I close my eyes and goose bumps appear on my whole body.



Here's another pretty cool one from Camille Saint-Saens (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) the "Danse Macabre", it really seem fitting for the goth scene ;) Everytime I listen to this, I see sceletons dancing.


Let's jump from the romantic era straight to the baroque. Although I don't like Emilie Autumn that much, I found a very good performance on her Laced album of Arcangelo Corelli's (17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) "La Folia".
I would really like to explain in short what a Folia is, but because it's a little to complicated and long for this post, I'll just redirect you to Wiki ;)



That was the first part, I'll make others, if you're interested. Feel free to make suggestions about classical stuff you like :)


sources: www.wikipedia.com
www.youtube.com

Goth VS Goth -Close encounters of the third kind-

You surely have noticed the poll right under the followers section. The one asking about your reaction when you meet another goth on your way. The question might have sounded stupid but if you see the answers are not as obvious as you thought they would have been. I had the idea of making this poll because when I meet another goth, usually my reaction is to look down and keep going on my way and I see that I'm definitely not the only one!! There are some psychological explanations to this reaction:


*You are afraid to be unaccepted. You think that the other goth could judge you and tell you that you not goth "enough" and that you could get hurt by such a reaction.


* You are afraid to show you are a happy charming sociable loving person because that doesn't fit the stereotype of goth being a loner, cold, unhappy person (-_-")

*You look down and keep going you way because you want to show to the other goth that you are cooler than him/her, that you already got a life and already have a goth clique to hang with and you don't need him/her.

Ok this last one might sound selfish but this happens very often, not only with goths but also among all the people of the world! It's the most common reaction that people have with other people. It's the main reason why people have Facebook. Because they want to show how cool their life is, that they always hang out and do crazy funny stuff...in your face! Sad right?
I believe people should correct this behavior because it makes people even more selfish and could deeply hurt others and why? For nothing..because in the end we all die alone anyway xD

Anyway, as for goths, this behaviour in my opinion is really damaging goth culture. Instead of looking down or just staring pointlessly, we should at least smile at the other goth. Show that we appreciate him/her. Even dare to say "hi" or "Cool, we got similar style!" and start a conversation maybe..! Supporting goth culture means also trying to create a connection between goths, create one large group! :) And that's why I will change my reaction when I will meet another goth on my way to a more pleasant reaction.

I say this because as you might have noticed from the poll, many people don't even have the chance to meet a goth on their way because where they live they are probably the only ones! So you meeting one and doing nothing is almost disrespectful towards those who can't even "look" at another goth "beside their own reflection in the mirror" :P



Also there's no reason to be afraid to talk to another Goth, because they are like you!! He/she is not an alien!! (That's why I put "close encounters of the third kind" as title..I was being ironic!) Maybe they are having the same "approach issues" as yours and expect YOU to do something..!

So take your chance next time, and don't be afraid!

I'm Gothic Lolita and you are a criminal...

Gothic lolita, sometimes shortened to GothLoli (ゴスロリ, gosu rori), is a combination of the Gothic and Lolita fashion. The fashion originated in the late 1990s in Harajuku and was promoted by Visual Kei bands such as Malice Mizer, which brought it to greater popularity amongst fans of alternative street fashion and followers of the musical style.


Gothic Lolita fashion is characterized by a darker make-up and clothing. Red lipstick and smokey or neatly defined eyes, created using black eyeliner, are typical styles, although as with all Lolita substyles the look remains fairly natural. Though Gothic make-up is associated with a white powdered face, this is usually considered bad taste within the Lolita fashion. Gothic Lolita usually uses dark color schemes including black, dark blues and purples, although black and white remains popular. As with some Western Gothic styles, cross jewelry, religious symbols, bags and purses in shapes like bats, coffins, and crucifixes are also used to accessorize the Gothic Lolita look.

Elegant Gothic Lolita (EGL) and Elegant Gothic Aristocrat (EGA) are substyles of gothic lolita (and of aristocrat fashion coined by the Visual Kei artist Mana (click to know who he is), in connection with his own fashion label Moi-même-Moitié.





Japanese brands which exemplify the gothic lolita style include Atelier-Pierrot, Atelier Boz, Black Peace Now, h. NAOTO Blood and Moi-même-Moitié.

Though the term lolita is often referred to a girl who's only goal is to be sexy and attract men, in this case the term lolita means "cute and pretty". Men feel more intimidated by a grown woman who dresses like a little girl and shows no skin than by a woman who shows it all. Also dressing Gothic Lolita and all the other styyles is a kind of rebellion of Japanese against their strict society.

Gothic Lolita style has also been featured in many Animes (Japanese cartoons).

Gothic Make-up - more eyeliner designs & ideas

Since my previous post about gothic eyeliner designs is the most read of all times, I will give you some more pictures of eyeliner designs and make-up in general that you can take inspiration from to achieve a gothic look!

Aren't these amazing??? *-*

Some advice, there are now in commerce some eyeliner pencils made with gel that are fantastic!! they are very long-lasting and easy to put as you don't have to "push hard" to make bold lines. And if you want to have a bolder eyeshadow just put a little water on the applicator! :)

Gothic Idols - Amy Lee of Evanescence

I know, you might say "why are you writing about her? she's a poser-goth"! But I think she instead deserves to enter my Gothic Idols list as she influenced many Goths especially thanks to her image and also because in my opinion she's truly a goth, even though she never said she is..but again like with Marilyn Manson it's up to us to decide wheter she's a goth or not.




Evanescence surely enter in an average goth music playlist as they do alternative-rock with that lovely dark twist we can't resist to..!

So who is Amy Lee?



Born 13th December 1981, Amy Lee, is an American singer-songwriter and classically trained pianist. She is co-founder and lead vocalist of the rock band Evanescence. She cites influences ranging from classical musicians such as Mozart to modern artists Björk, Tori Amos, Danny Elfman and Plumb.

Lee has a recognizable fashion style, marked by her occasional use of gothic make-up and taste for Victorian-styled clothing. She also designs many of her own clothes, including those worn in the music video for "Going Under", the dress she wore at the 2004 Grammy awards, and the dress worn for the cover of The Open Door. After she designed it she chose Japanese designer H. Naoto to make it for her. In concerts, she often wears a corset-top and fishnets, as well as long skirts and knee-high boots. She at one point had a piercing on her left eyebrow, which is visible on the cover of Fallen

 In an interview, Amy said that the first songs she remembered writing were called "Eternity of the Remorse" and "A Single Tear". The first was written when she was eleven years old and wanted to become a classical composer, and the second was for an assignment when she was in the eighth grade.

And here's my favourite Evanescence song:

"Hello" like "Like You" is dedicated to Amy's sister who died at very young age for an unexplained illness. This song is really emotional and I consider it a manifesto of Amy's talent.

Also if you like KoRn too, Amy Lee collaborated with them for the unplugged version of Freak On A Leash. :) And she also reinterpreted famous "Sally's Song" of the Nightmare Before Christmas :)

Movies for the weekend

For this week I suggest you 2 movies that willl blow your mind!

The first is "CORALINE" ! The director of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" presents us a new stop-motion animated movie with a dark twist!



Plot: When Coraline moves to an old house, she feels bored and neglected by her parents. She finds a hidden door with a bricked up passage. During the night, she crosses the passage and finds a parallel world where everybody has buttons instead of eyes, with caring parents and all her dreams coming true. When the Other Mother invites Coraline to stay in her world forever, the girl refuses and finds that the alternate reality where she is trapped is only a trick to lure her..


This is one of my favourite movies and you are sure going to LOVE it! :D also the soundtrack is very well done!


The second movie I suggest you is VERY VERY scary. It's called INSIDIOUS and i think this is going to become a cult horror/paranormal movie. Really I got so scared I was almost afraid to go to sleep after watching it XD



Plot: A gripping story of a family in search of help for their son, Dalton, who fell into a mysterious comatose on one ordinary morning. Little do they know that there is much more to this endless sleep than meets the eye as they explore the paranormal, and rediscover the past; the key to getting their son back once and for all...

Really don't watch this movie alone!! XD

Also, a fun fact...remember my post about gramophones? In this movie there are scary scenes involving gramophones! xD this confirms once again my theory of presences "talking" through gramophones !! XDXD

ok..nevermind..

Have a nice weekend my gothic darklings!

Alice in..Gothic-land?

I've been wondering, why are people and especially us goths so interested and fascinated by Alice In Wonderland? I see many gothic clothes inspired by Alice, for example I have an coat called Alice Coat and all over the internet there are images of Alice reinterpreted in a gothic way. I think the answer is to be found in the era the book was written and the places where the story is developed (dark and weird) and also Alice character itself.

Though Alice has never been described in her clothing, Carroll lets us suppose she was dressed as girls used to dress at the time he wrote the novel. AIW was written in 1865, full Victorian era. Girls were thought good manners, including how to properly drink tea. *-*

I think japanese gothic lolitas started the "cosplaying" of Alice first. and especially due to the disney cartoon. Their clothes are inspired by Alice. Main characteristic of the Alice clothing are the puffy sleeves and skirt, the contrasting white apron with laces, white or black and white striped thights or socks, black mary-janes, and absolutely the black bow on the head!

Also, maybe the character of Alice itself is an inspiration for goths. She doesn't stop at appearance, I mean, she talks to a a weird cat, to singing flowers without any hesitation! And instead of being afraid, she get more and more curious about this weirdness. She isn't scared of telling her own ideas and she doesn't let herself be changed.

In my opinion , if Alice was written now, in modern era, she would surely be an alternative girl. She has her own ideas that she stands for though nobody understands her. She lives in her own world and wishes about a different world where people don't judge by appearance. She is herself all the time and she happens to go against the rules. If she was just a regular girl, she would have never been such an interesting character. And maybe it's this that inspired us to impersonate her.

♥

Self made accessories anyone?

As you may know I'm a big fan of nearly every kind of handcraft and I love to make accessories on my own. But I'm not the only one in the world who came up with this idea ;) There is a lot great stuff around the internet and I bought beautiful things on eBay already.

Now I want to here from you: Do you also do some DIY-goth stuff? You can show me pics of it, even give me the link to an instruction and I will choose some and post them here in the blog.
Another question is: Do you even want some instructions for DIY stuff (and I don't mean only knitted accessories^^)?

Here I give you some inspiration of some goodies I bought or made myself.

My latest knitting: A black collar and small black gloves

Some really cute Jack Skellington slides I bought on ebay (handmade and glowing in the dark *.*)

Two bracelets with pearls and skulls modelled out of Fimo (the white skulls also glow in the dark, the yellow one has a connection to a mexican celebration...)

Some bracelets I did myself (I love childish stuff^^). Very bad pics of them, I know, but my cam just did not want to show the tiny strawberrys and bunnys on the beads.

This is from a guy I met in the pedestrian zone selling selfmade jewelry.
And the same guy thought me how to do earrings and under his attendance I did this earring. I'm so proud of it^^
Sorry for the messy table...

I would love to see something of your works :)

Greetings