open areas

The Doors - Peace Frog

Happy Birthday, Jim Morrison.

I was, at one point in my wayward youth, the Biggest Doors Fan Ever. I have since come to terms with the fact that Jim Morrison really didn’t speak to me from the poster on my wall. You can see how I was easily swayed into believing so, though. There he was, in glorious black and white, shirtless, arms outstretched like a scarecrow martyr. His eyes followed me around the room. He used to tell me things, whisper to me in the dead of night when the only light in the room was from the red-tinted bulb that pointed towards my Morrison shrine. When Jim whispered, he said things like You cannot petition the lord with prayer!

Back then, back when I was reading No One Here Gets Out Alive and holding bong-fueled seances for Morrison, I dreamed of visiting the places where he lived, where he wrote and played, where the Doors gathered. 

I finally did that in 2012. I thought I would be pretty blasé about it considering all the years that had passed and having not dropped acid since 1981. But when I saw that mural on the wall, the 14 year old girl in me smiled pretty damn hard.

The Doors - Peace Frog

July 3rd. Once upon a time, this was a day of mourning for me. The day the music died. 

 I was, at one point in my wayward youth, the Biggest Doors Fan Ever. I have since come to terms with the fact that Jim Morrison really didn’t speak to me from this poster. You can see how I was easily swayed into believing so, though. There he was, in glorious black and white, shirtless, arms outstretched like a scarecrow martyr. 

When I imagined hallucinated he was speaking to me, he was full of wisdom and wise words. And I was full of drugs.

Still, he said powerful things like YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER. And sometimes he said not so powerful things like “Do your homework, Michele.” Or maybe that was my mother. Also, his eyes followed me around the room. Sometimes I would tape a piece of paper over his eyes when I got dressed, if I was feeling particularly paranoid.

I used to look at this poster then and think “Oh, Jim, you are everything I want in a drug addicted, incoherent rock star.”

I was probably about 14 when my fascination with the Doors began and not much older when it ended. Thankfully. Now, I’m not denying that the Doors put out some decent music and that Morrison wrote some interesting lyrics, but when you look at this stuff from the distance of 30 years or so, you wonder what life may have been like without the drugs. Well, I do.

Take “The End” for instance. It’s probably the most quoted Doors song of all time. It’s quoted by pretentious potheads who think they are being deep and meaningful; by retro beatnik poets who carry tattered paperback copies of On the Road in the back pocket of their faded jeans; by psuedo-intellectuals who claim that Adlous Huxley’s Doors of Perception is the single greatest thing ever written by man; and by despondent, razor-weilding, confused, emotional teenagers who think they have this connection with Morrison, a connection with the sixties, man and hey, the blue bus is calling us.

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake…he’s old, and his skin is cold

Do you know that otherwise intelligent people have spent entire weekends drinking vodka and deciphering those very lyrics? Here’s a news flash: It’s nonsense. No matter what you want to believe, no matter how allegorical and deep you think those words are, no matter how much Freud you studied or Smirnoffs you drank, those words are the magnetic poetry of the Age of Aquarius.

I’m not saying the Doors sucked in general. I was a big fan and I still dust off the albums once in a while. But if you’re over 18 and not hindered by drug addiction or alcoholism that may cloud your thinking and you still believe these words are the most powerful thing you ever heard, you might want to rethink your life path.

On a side note, I spent about 200 hours of my life watching a Doors cover band play in shitty clubs. The very same cover band the Dead Milkmen mocked in the opening to Bitchin’ Camaro.

It sucks when the haze of youth clears away and you realize your idols were nothing more than phonies.

Anyway, I still like this song. And most of Morrison Hotel.

RIP, Jim.