There are so many ways to be in the world. We choose (if we live with the blessing of freedom) the music we listen to and the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the friends we trust. Some of us are satisfied with the ordinary things in some areas of life, but in all of them some unusual passion burns. There are people fascinated by the “darkness”, the hidden and strange forces, the death that the rest of us spend our lives ignoring as if that’s how we can get rid of it. Inspired by music and literature, we dream of worlds that did not exist and will never exist, or we live in a past that we no longer had to live. We imagine so many possibilities of existence. But how many of us dare to play the game of our passions with all the cards on the table?

It’s an amazing show. This happens every year in Leipzig and always on Halloween. WGT (Wave-Gotik-Treffen) is a festival where twenty thousand goths meet to enjoy four days of concerts, art and entertainment. “Leipzig dresses in black,” repeats the media. But beyond the stereotypes – graveyard, dark romanticism, ravens, vampires and demons – there is such a variety of individual styles and interpretations that there is little we can generalize about this subculture.

Their picnic neighbors were creepy goths with Beelzebub horns and bat wings…

I have just returned from the park where the “Victorians” picnic is being held. I still smell some old perfume that I brought with me as I walked around the hundreds of tables and blankets covered with strange food eaten by even more strange people: a dashing gentleman in a top hat picked grapes from a skull, a lady dressed in a baroque French wig ate cheese and sausages, rat skeletons ran around the table that seemed to have been set by Poe himself on a black tulle tablecloth. There are so many ways to be in the world… I talked to some ladies who “just got back from their 19th century round the world trip.” Colonially surrounded by beautiful antiques brought back from their imaginary travels, they showed me a metal box where explorers collected leaves and flowers for study. They offered me dates and tea served in oriental cups. Their picnic neighbors were creepy Goths wearing Beelzebub horns and bat wings as they chatted merrily with the Girl Scouts. A young American woman dressed to give her grandmother a heart attack told us that she would attend many parties and enjoy a variety of music: gothic rock and metal, medieval music, electro-industrial, neo-folk, post-punk, dark-wave. Hundreds of bands will play these days in Leipzig: big ones like The Chamaleons and The March Violets, sophisticated ones like Lebanon Hanover or Machiniste, obsessed ones like Goethes Erben (who played at the first Wave-Gotik-Treffen way back in 1992). As if it wasn’t wonderful enough to see all these people and hear their music (even if it’s on YouTube and even if I don’t like it, just out of curiosity), 70,000 people are expected at the Depeche Mode concert this spring afternoon in Leipzig. I’ll be enjoying it from my kitchen if I’m lucky with the wind direction. (OR)