Michael Night

Happy World Goth Day, everyone! 🖤🦇

I feel that many who had a goth or emo phase that was dismissed as “being dramatic,” and so on were actually navigating heightened emotional awareness, while unknowingly continuing to train the ability to observe, question, and feel things deeply. To notice tension in people, emptiness in relationships, contradictions in society, and to ponder our place in the world, where meaning is found, the nature of relationships, and more.

Considering how society does not really have a clear-cut and widely available system for young people to explore those things, it often felt like being lost in the woods. And the darker art, the black clothing, the music… most of it was something that spoke to that sense of being in the woods and feeling less alone in them.

Many of the emotionally intelligent, empathetic, creative adults I know today were once the kids everyone called “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” or “different.” But in retrospect, a lot of them were simply feeling and analyzing life on a deeper level than the people around them. After some deep inner work, they became the people others turn to when they need to feel understood, seen, or heard.

Maybe some of us never “grew out of it,” because there was nothing to grow out of. Just like the “ugly duckling” was actually a beautiful cygnet in a world that had simply never seen cygnets before, maybe the “phase” was actually us learning awareness and emotional intelligence in a world that instead often encourages escaping our depth, surface-level thinking, and pretending everything is fine. And maybe there is something quietly beautiful about people who never completely lost that depth.

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend. Here are some photos from what was probably the gothiest night of my life: supporting The 69 Eyes in St. Petersburg on Friday the 13th 🌌 The very first one is from Minsk on the same tour, and captured a moment when I was just very lost in the music. Sometimes, being a little lost isn’t so bad.

Mike