I'm not into this thing, fashion goth.

It's probably because I'm not into rock and roll, Romanticism, or Christianity.

I'm not into Asia Argento or Vincent Gallo.

I think their way of thinking is inherently right wing.

I mean, Gallo votes Republican. Fucking fashion goth!

Trent Reznor is also a plonker.

I'm not into Suicide Girls.

I hate tattoos and piercings and the cult of self-injury.

Sex is not evil or wicked.

What Christian sect do you guys belong to?

I'm not a Christian.

Fashion goth is an aestheticization of pain.

Just like a Cranach crucifixion scene.

We invented goth in London in the Batcave in 1984, but something else came along in 1985, I forget what.

Oh yes, Live Aid.

But America takes much longer to forget stuff, especially stuff like punk and goth.

And social activism has no chance against Christian imagery and teen suicide and eating disorders, has it?

The Marquis de Sade was mounting a critique of the Enlightenment.

What's wrong with the Enlightenment, girls?

Why do you dress in black and dye your hair with streaks of burgundy red?

It looks terrible.

Fashion goth!

Hedi Slimane has a lot to answer for!

Hedi gave fashion goths a skinny tie.

We love you, Hedi! But personally I prefer Bless, or Ann-Sofie Back.

Jack Brennan and Maximilian Hecker are pretty fashion goth boys.

They work for Hedi sometimes.

Life can't be all that black when you're as pretty as they are.

One DJs, one sings, hunched over his piano, so intense.

Come on, Maximilian, you fucking fashion goth tortured Romantic genius!

I like Kai Althoff much better.

When I say "I like X much better", it's usually because X has a keen sense of the absurd.

And also because I can't immediately pigeonhole X's style.

X is not a fashion goth.

Sometimes Berlin seems like nothing but fashion goths on the one hand and the cute kitsch crew on the other.

(Oh, and of course Russian punks with scary dogs.)

The fashion goths and the kitsch crew both love Japan, but I think they get Japan wrong.

I'm not into Trevor Brown, who makes S&M look kawaii.

I'm just not into S&M full stop.

And I was never a Bauhaus fan, although I did see them live in 1981.

Are you jealous, fashion goths?

Pete Murphy was vicious and pretty, lashing out at people with pointed shoes and carrying a strobe light.

Japanese people tend not to be fashion goths, or into kitsch.

Even the black lace Gothic Lolitas in Japan are something else, really.

They're human mille feuille cakes, not goths.

I think it's because Christianity has never meant anything in Japan.

If you get into a Shinto-Buddhist mindset you don't dwell on negativity.

Japan is a different culture bloc.

Shinto is a fertility religion.

Can you imagine a fashion goth soaking in a sento and then playing pachinko and then eating a hearty meal at an isakaya, chatting away and laughing at the comedians on TV?

"Where's the agony?" he would cry, meaning "Where's the beauty?"

He'd miss the beauty in the food, and in the water.

It's a mistake to think there's only beauty in pain.

Fertility religions celebrate life, whereas Christianity and Islam celebrate death and resurrection.

Your average Japan-based girl blogger photographer has something in common with the brilliant Rinko Kawauchi.

Photos of tendril ferns, a clear sky, a starfish or a seahorse, a delicious cake!

Sunshine came into the room! Life looks good, and the cake looks tasty!

Why is fashion goth always connected with eating disorders?

What's wrong with our relationship with food in the West?

Why do the Japanese-in-Japan love food so much, and celebrate it all the time on TV?

Let's not even talk about drugs here, "heroin chic".

I really, really hate heroin, and how it makes the world around you matter less.

Just like Christianity.

Shall we have children?

Shall we celebrate fertility?

Kahimi Karie was wholesome and positive until she started living in Paris and started dating a fashion goth model called Jerome Lechevalier.

She changed visibly into a fashion goth. Then she started asking me for songs about skulls and monsters and sleeping in a coffin and stuff.

I blame the fashion goth model guy. (Though of course I'm to blame too. Post-feminist guilt made me try to toughen up her image.)

When I was in New York this time all I could see on everyone's T shirt was skulls, skulls, fucking skulls.

How can you protest the Iraq war if there are skulls all over you, fucking fashion goth?

Apollo not Dionysus, Marx not Spengler, Gandhi not Jesus!

Happy not sad, chatty not mute! Celebrate, don't mourn! Fertility, not necro-fashion!

If you mourn you'll give us a reason to mourn. But if you celebrate you might give us a reason to celebrate.

The good thing about Devendra and (say) The Incredible String Band is that they're hippies, not goths.

They draw on the orient, not the occident.

Though of course the Incredible String Band were Christians, weren't they?

But they were "white robe" Christians, not black shirt and scars Christians.

Robin Williamson says something in "Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending" about not feeling inferior to god but finding god in yourself.

I wonder if 9/11 gave New York a big fashion goth boost?

New York is a big global disseminator of styles.

Are we all living in the shadow of the towers, "learning to live with somebody's depression"?

I don't want to live with somebody's depression!

You can't just suddenly become fashion goth if you don't feel it, if it's not deep in your culture.

I mean, if we were bombing people to fashion gothery the way we're bombing them to "freedom", it wouldn't work either.

Joy Division were quite a good band, but New Order are better, ne?

Because, finally, it's better to be alive than dead, and happy than sad.

My next album is going to be deeply immersed in the reputedly banal positivity of Shinto-Buddhism.

No influence from Asia Argento, but lots from Rinko Kawauchi.

Fashion goths will not buy it.

The sleep of reason breeds monsters, said Goya. "And fashion goths," we might add.