Gothic: Of or relating to a style of fiction that emphasizes the grotesque, gloomy, mysterious, and desolate.
For many, the word Gothic conjures up cadaverous beauties with ebony fingernails or an affinity towards the ghoulish music tinged in melancholy. The Gothic is much more and lives beyond perception, in irony, in fragments of dreams, nightmares and distant memories. It knows what you truly desire, and those things that you whisper in the darkest of shadows. The Gothic is everywhere and is part of us. Birth, death and funerals are Gothic events. Old ladies with skin like parchment, whispering behind fans in an overheated Southern church, are Gothic. Mansions with gables, cupulas, abandoned swimming pools, faded family images, a crucifix with and scented candles illuminating a darkened room, are part of the Gothic. Gothic cities dot the earth: Paris, Ho Chi Minh City, New Orleans, London, Old Boston, Savannah and Budapest. Some places like the Bayou, the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, the Everglades, Natchez, Mississippi and anywhere Spanish moss drapes over dying trees and night blooming jasmine perfumes the evening air are quintessential Gothic. The silence of a graveyard, rosaries, painted dolls, lace fans, wrought iron candelabras and Victorian jewelry woven from the hair of the dearly departed are part of the Gothic as are absinthe, elderberry wine, rosehips and tea laced with arsenic. An ancient Bible, crepe used in mourning or an afterbirth, preserved and passed down for generations, are touchable Gothic. Bandeleon music accompanying a couple dancing a passionate tango in a Buenos Aires dance hall is the Gothic, Argentine style! The Gothic encompasses the all that is macabre, bizarre and curious. It lurks the shadows, in those moments when something flickers in your peripheral vision on the edge of a mirror.
We invite you to join us, gentle reader, as we examine the Gothic in all its glory.