The Student Uniform: A Few Guiding Notes on the Necro-Aesthetic
The necro-aesthetic is not Goth. Goth is all about life in defiance of death–ruby on a field of black, or amethyst, garnet, emerald, citrine, topaz, sapphire or aquamarine…. This is something else.
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The necro-aesthetic is not Goth. Goth is all about life in defiance of death–ruby on a field of black, or amethyst, garnet, emerald, citrine, topaz, sapphire or aquamarine…jewel colors on a field of black to make sure that the colors draw the eye. It’s an aesthetic of defiance, of a spark of life or rebellious unlife against the overwhelming forces of death, and how that story plays against the blackness of the ultimate end.
All black is something else entirely.
The necro-aesthetic is, in contrast, about acceptance and resignation. About the trading of the temporary monolithic institution of a single unified organism for the multiple competing and allying societies of disintegration, and about reintegration with the organic and post-organic whole that eventually will unite us all, for a while, before all of the echoes die out.
The necro-aesthetic starts with colors.
Instead of white, there is the spectrum from sunbleached ivory to burnt umber that are the colors of naked bone as it ages. There is the glistening translucent paleness of the maggot and yellowed grub. Instead of black, there is the deep warm gray of the cave lit by cold echoes of moonlight and starlight and the deep green-grays and blue-grays of subtle phosphorescence and bloodless fungal and microbial bioluminescence.
The warm glow of living flesh—from pale pearl pinks to golden to olive to ruddy to rich warm deep brown and warm black—turns colder blue and violet with cyanosis, turns gray, turns to the livid yellows and greens and purples of bruises and pooling blood. Nails are long or broken short, hair is shed and remains only in dry clumps or wisps.
The texture of the necro-aesthetic is powder: minimally gritty, soft smooth dust, and smears of spores. Dry, dry, dry.
The dead carry no glittery gems or shiny, unoxidized metals. Ornamentation is a pale powder, is ash, is patina, is fragments of fired clay, is layers of cobwebs, is coarse-woven natural fiber or aged rawhide or old cracked matte leather, is bog-preserved or petrified wood, is woad and ochre, is a set of parallel sculpted lines or whorls, is tattoos or scarification, is elective amputation. Is a mouth stitched invisibly closed to prevent yawning during one’s own boring funeral.
The necro-aesthetic cultivates relationships with the future colonists of mycelia and maggot and beetle and a thousand other gentle scavengers. We become them as they carry us away piecemeal.
The sounds of the necro-aesthetic are susurrations and drip drip drips. Anything aeolian. The tapping of the smallest wave. Cascading sand. The crack of cooling rock in the cold evening. The sounds of gentle meltings and freezings. The sounds of the smallest creatures tapping their feet on loose soil tapping their antennae on each other’s carapace, rasping their segmented integuments on the last of the desiccating cartilage. Rustling leaves from trees or books. These are the consonants and vowels of our old, old language.
Followers of the necro-aesthetic do not argue or fight. They receive violence of all kinds with indifference. Likewise, their actions are inexorable. Success or failure entail the same response, which is disinterested acceptance. Speech is … quiet. Motion is slow. Passion has no place. But there is fire.
What is fire but oxidation and deconstructive analysis? Everything burns, and the hunger of the necro-aesthetic burns everything in its time. Even if it’s only one atom at a time.
So yes, school uniforms are mandatory. You will design your own according to the necro-aesthetic manifesto. Yes, you will be graded.