#closetgoth

[gypsysmiles]

Another day at work #closetgoth #apple #stickers #ux #redbubble #souls #cat #meow #metal #death #grimreaper #gothic #scully (at Cincinnati)

[gypsysmiles]

All in black 🖤 #nightwing #closetgoth #mazda #spaceship #nave #boughtacarandhadtoshare #metal #merol (at Mason, Ohio)

[4chanmusic]

https://closetgoth.bandcamp.com/album/friendship-village

[gypsysmiles]

#tbt I used to be a ham 🙂 #selfiesbeforeselfies #closetgoth #razorbladebromance #cincinnati (at Hyde Park, Cincinnati)

[johnnybwilde]

Pardon the bandages, but I felt pretty good today... #vacation #ohio #vampire #closetgoth

[desertbeats-blog]

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@thesoaksband @thedesertbeats with #thegayboys #closetgoth #garysplace

[94on94]

Closer

I’m going to run with this dark thing for a minute. Further down the spiral, if you will. I spent the afternoon listening to Nine Inch Nails and struggled to write anything or do anything for at least 24 hours. 

Hurt is too perfect for these restless autumn days of disorder and discontent. It comforts me in the way that Nick Cave’s “People Ain’t No Good” does on days where the whole world is the worst. Like, who cares, we’re all gonna die, anyway, so just f*#k everyone. 

Which brings me to a song called Closer (get it?). I first became aware of this salacious gem back during the legendary (in my mind) 1994 MTV Music Video Awards ceremony. 

My previous experience with NIN mostly consisted of photos of Mr. Reznor and his keyboard, both caked in Woodstock ‘94 mud. I took a cue from the excited alternative masses that this was something of a cultural milestone. And I think I sort of got it, though I was still not so familiar with this thing they called Industrial Music. But how dangerous, how elemental, how sexy it all sounded. Closer’s heart thuds and hissing opening notes were like a slinking locomotive pulling the freight of sexual obsession into Shining Time Station (ie. my innocence).

Really, if I remember correctly, I don’t even think the actual words even registered with me. But the way he was saying them…

And those few seconds of sepia-tinged decay stayed with me. A heart literally pumping steam, a nipple-shaped mic silhouette, Trent suspended from the ceiling in leather. A Christ-posed monkey. What was happening?! Muchmusic didn’t let me watch it, just like my mom wouldn’t let me watch Pulp Fiction (I told you it was quite a year), and I demanded answers. I kind of waited for it during those late night “Too Hot For Much” bacchanals held by the nation’s music station every so often, but to no avail. Even though it scared me. Especially because it scared me.

By 1997, shock had worn off and novelty had settled in. I owned a copy of The Downward Spiral and think I got about half of it, but that sense of underworld mystery that hung over the rest still remained. Enough to make me consider buying a VHS compilation of NIN’s videos released that year and called Closure (but at 15 years old, $50 might as well have been $500). Closure, indeed.

I don’t think I ever got to see it until YouTube came along and turned me into my own goddamn VJ. Even in the context of adulthood it's still pretty shocking (maybe even more so in the context of 2014- if you will recall); pulsing with sex and danger and obsession and vermin and steampunks riding wings of meat. And undeniably hot, in that desperate way that damaged people are to other damaged people.

Trent is quoted as saying in The Work of Mark Romanek DVD that “the rarest of things occurred; where the song sounded better to me, seeing it with the video. And it’s my song." In the context of his current career highs of merging sound and vision, I find this observation immensely gratifying; prophetic, even. It's becoming rarer to witness an artist's successful creative evolution over 2 vastly different generations, while retaining such stylistic and thematic coherence. 

And it was beyond cool to see him mature and healthy-looking and dapper as shit, co-accept an Academy Award with Atticus Ross for Best Original Score a few years back. And to read about the ways he’s changed (“happily married with 2 kids and an Oscar winner”), as well as the ways he hasn’t (“as if I can be summed up as that now”). 

With two decades separating Trent's descent and his subsequent bouncing back, a lot of that pain can get lost in translation. Closer has become- has always been- to the chagrin of the man wrote it as a cry for help, a "lust anthem". Not that there’s much of a difference between the two. You gotta learn sometime, why not in 1994 (even if you were 12)?