Jim Morrison
Like everyone else around the world who left their satellite/cable TV on over the last 24+ hours, I’ve just absorbed over a day’s worth of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson mass media hysteria.
Much of it has been presented by lying shysters such as Larry King, who on my observation revelled in this tortured artist’s troubles while the poor man was still alive.
I think it’s time to post about something completely different.
This is about another ‘star’ that I miss – although I was barely aware of his existence during his lifetime.
Larry King: loves Michael Jackson, especially now he's dead
This is about Jim Morrison, who in my opinion was THE outstanding rock and roll poet of his generation.
Jim Morrison died before he was 30.
The video below conveys the power of a revolutionary music. It’s mysteriously, yet powerfully motivating. ‘The Doors’ was named after Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception‘.
When I travelled from country to country in the 1970s, shared familiarity with this haunting music was a passport to friendship with so many people from very different cultures, whether Hindu or Buddhist, Muslim or something else.
I believe Riders on the Storm is the warning we’ve so far failed to heed - and no, this is not a claim to superior insight into the ‘real meaning’ of the words of an artist I didn’t know.
I just wonder why he sang: “if we give this guy a ride, sweet memory will die”. It’s the kind of thing fans wonder about…
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house were born
Into this world were thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm
There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road, yeah
Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends
Our lives will never end…
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“In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced whom to say what when? Even in this age of technology the verbal humanities are honored. The non-verbal humanities, the arts of being directly aware of the given facts of our existence, ale almost completely ignored. A catalogue, a bibliography, a definitive edition of a third-rate versier’s ipsissima verba, a stupendous index to end all indexes – any genuinely Alexandrian project is sure of approval and financial support: But when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system – when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of some practical use) than Swedish drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it. “
- Aldous Huxley
PS. Even a rusted over Jim Morrison fan has to admit that Michael Jackson could dance.
I mean, really dance. What a dude!
It’s a shame – but so predictable – that Michael Jackson wasn’t really allowed to talk. In most of the snippets of his interviews that I’ve seen, he was steered or hectored into unwilling compliance with a hypocritical dominant paradigm.
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There’s another YouTube version of Riders on the Storm here.
