July 11, 2008
People like steampunk for two good reasons. First, it's a great opportunity to dress up in a cool, weird way that baffles the straights. Second, steampunk set design looks great. The Industrial Revolution has grown old. So machines that Romantics considered satanic now look romantic.
If you like to play dress-up, good for you. You're probably young, and, being young, you have some identity issues. So while pretending to be a fireman, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever your parents want you to be, you should be sure to try on a few identities that are totally impossible. Steampunk will help you, because you cannot, ever, be an authentic denizen of the 19th century. You will meet interesting people your own age who share your vague discontent with today's status quo. Clutch them to your velvet-frilled bosom, because you will learn more from them than you ever will from your teachers.
Steampunk’s key lessons are not about the past. They are about the instability and obsolescence of our own times.
Stretching your self-definition will help you when, in later life, you are forced to become something your parents could not even imagine. This is a likely fate for you. Your parents were born in the 20th century. Soon their 20th century world will seem even deader, weirder and more remote than the 19th. The 19th-century world was crude, limited and clanky, but the 20th-century world is calamitously unsustainable. I would advise you to get used to thinking of all your tools, toys and possessions as weird oddities destined for the recycle bin. Imagine starting all over with radically different material surroundings. Get used to that idea.
