RICK CASTRO: DIARY- 4/6/2020

So This Is How The World Will End: by Rick Castro 4/6/2020

6am, lightly raining and an ambulance just passed by my cabin window with their red lights flashing.

There are roughly ten homesteads on this street, three are family members, two who are not here, one, (auntie Nicky) is deceased, and one home is abandoned. In all my  fifty-three year history of coming to Bee’s cabin, I have never, ever seen an ambulance. 

There is no hospital for 40 miles. To wake up to this image, starts me day off with a bang.

I didn’t realize birds flew during the rain… Is this normal? These crows are hovering about… 

I would say that’s the first time I’ve seen birds fly in the rain…..

I like the rain….. I liked in the city, and I like it even more here in the high desert. It’s so steady and relaxing, like a non-sexual massage. When I lived in LA, (remember way back then?) I made a point of walking whenever it rained. Being a southern CA native, rain was an anomaly. A special occurrence when concerned newscasters would predict, “a storm” and everybody would get into car accidents, because the drizzle would make the oily road tops slick. In the high desert it has the same rarity without the drama. 

Yah! Our live stream just started with me goth buddy~ Parma Ham. 

We’ve never met in real time, (how old fashion) but have been in contact for about a year online. We had plans to do an exhibition at his goth club WRAITH, in London, then the plague hit and wiped out all our plans. ALL my exhibitions- projects- jobs have been cancelled…. gone… Currently I have no income.

Parma reached out to me to present my images during his live DJ set, and HERE it is!- 

I love it!… I’m 100% grandfather goth. Parma is the current wave. With his gravity defying mohawk, and partner, make-up queen Salvia, together they are creating goth culture for the 21st century… They are the future; the harsh/isolated, virtual brave new world.

Goths instinctively understand plague. Original gothic is all about plague mass~14th century with the Black Death, 16th century with the Italian Plague. Then the 19th century got literate with Edgar Allen Poe’s, Mask of the Red Death, (inspired by consumption) and gothic heroine Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s, The Last Man; the first post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. My goth era, 1980s/90s understood and dealt with the AIDS plague. Now Parma and his goth~comrades are taking COVID19 head on. Goths are instinctually introverted and standoffish, they don’t even want to try to fit in. As my dear, late sorceress, goth diva Camille O’Grady said way back in 1974, 

“In the future everyone will wear black.”   

So this is how the world will end.

copyright-rick castro- 4/2020

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