Gothic will always be Gothic

I’m alone in the Kingdom of Condom, it’s dark and miserable. There’s no hot water. They told me westerners live so much better. Yeah, right. Anyway, I was listening to Islander by Nightwish, to remember 9th grade. And you know what I thought? I thought, wouldn’t it be cool, if I could see them live?

Imagine being shipped to Poland. Imagine, for whatever reason, you’re supposed to spend some time with your Polish God mother. Now, I don’t mean to brag (and trust me, my family is nothing to brag about), but who has a God mother anymore? Frankly, that’s cool. But what do you do, in Poland, for a week, when you’re a kid and can’t go out on your own? In my case, you play Gothic on a computer of my cousin once removed (what cousin and how was it removed?). And you know what? Anytime I boot up the game, I can feel being there. Of course, nowadays, I can move beyond the first chapter, unravel the plot and beat the game. But Gothic will always be Gothic.

Islander? I wrote the lyrics by hand on a paper and translated it with a booklet dictionary. Remember those? You need to know the alphabet to find the word you’re looking for, there’s no autocomplete in a book. This is not an old man yelling to the clouds, I’m a millennial, but I just wanted to stress it out. The point is, I would never ever do that now. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have a physical dictionary. Also, I speak English now. I can’t experience it the same way I did in the 9th Grade.

And what if I wanted to see them live? Well, back in my day, Tarja leaving the band (being kick off) was all the rage. Islander was my favourite song of the first album without Tarja. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The lead singer is Marko, not Anette. Everybody hated Anette at the time. Years later, can I go experience Islander as it hit in 2007? Of course not! They’re a different band now! Not only Anette is no longer there, but they might not perform Islander, because capitalism dictates you need to produce and produce they did. Meaning they will play songs from their latest album.

Gothic, meanwhile, will always be Gothic. I can even get the Polish dub I heard back then. Hey, this is not to say Gothic is better than metal, not by any means. It’s just, you can better capture the zeitgeist with a video game. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. Even if I miss Mud on a replay, it’s still so close to my memory. Islander will be forever distorted, because Bluetooth headsets are now virtually mandatory, Jukka will never ever hit the drum with the beat. And that’s not progress, that’s just sad.