Night of the Living Pilgrims
You know, upon spending the afternoon basking in my free bonus holiday from work today thanks to my American based corporation, I was able to reflect today on the nature of their beloved Thanksgiving rituals and traditions. I still have no fucking clue what a "Turduckin" is exactly, but some mysteries like the Mexican El Chupacabra, are just destined to forever remain a mystery
What I instantly realized is that the Pilgrims, the country's founding fathers who stepped off the decks of their ships at Plymouth Rock in 1620, were already wearing the everpopular all-black look with metal buckels and rebelling against popular vital secular culture long before the Goths ever made it cool in the eighties. How fortuitous into world fashion was that?
Back in these early colonial days, Pilgrims were already hip to how cool the whole "dark and mysterious" look was. Not ones to be caught skipping around the maypole with the other Puritan Separtists, the Pilgrims were more prone to hang out by themselves on street corners writing depressing farm poetry or in trendy coffee shops listening to the new Einstuerzende Neubauten albums.
They lived in a time which accepted fairies and witches, herbal remedies and astrological virtues, seasonal festivals and folklore as real parts of their lives. They looked at the world they lived in not as we do today, through the eyes of Einstein and Freud, but through the folklore of the countryside and academic traditions that stretched back to antiquity. They were both the thorough Protestants of the recent Reformation and the inheritors of the Medieval world picture that infused the imaginations of Shakespeare and Jonson.
In a world like that, how could one not end up with a pale complexion, embracing sexual androgyny and wearing a black trench coat?
What I instantly realized is that the Pilgrims, the country's founding fathers who stepped off the decks of their ships at Plymouth Rock in 1620, were already wearing the everpopular all-black look with metal buckels and rebelling against popular vital secular culture long before the Goths ever made it cool in the eighties. How fortuitous into world fashion was that?
Back in these early colonial days, Pilgrims were already hip to how cool the whole "dark and mysterious" look was. Not ones to be caught skipping around the maypole with the other Puritan Separtists, the Pilgrims were more prone to hang out by themselves on street corners writing depressing farm poetry or in trendy coffee shops listening to the new Einstuerzende Neubauten albums.
They lived in a time which accepted fairies and witches, herbal remedies and astrological virtues, seasonal festivals and folklore as real parts of their lives. They looked at the world they lived in not as we do today, through the eyes of Einstein and Freud, but through the folklore of the countryside and academic traditions that stretched back to antiquity. They were both the thorough Protestants of the recent Reformation and the inheritors of the Medieval world picture that infused the imaginations of Shakespeare and Jonson.
In a world like that, how could one not end up with a pale complexion, embracing sexual androgyny and wearing a black trench coat?
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