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Jim Morrison

by A S Morton

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From a report by the BBC's Hugh Schofield for BBC News on the 30th Anniversary of Jim Morrison's death.
3rd July 2001, Paris

He would have been 57 (in 2001) if he hadn't died in a bath-tub in a flat near the Bastille which he shared with longtime girlfriend Pamela Courson.

But he did, so the memory remains engraved of a chestnut-haired Lothario in leather trousers, the 'Lizard King'. A 20th Century Apollo.

The crowds turned out in their thousands to pay their respects and police were sent to the graveside in Paris's Pere-Lachaise cemetery to cope with the crush.

A long file solemnly drifted past, dropping flowers or scribbled messages on folded-up pieces of paper.

A whiff of marijuana hung in the air.

Few of the worshippers could have been alive when their hero sang his last in 1971. Many could be his grandchildren. Clearly it made no difference.

'Wild beast'

"As soon as I heard The Doors I was hooked," said Gregory, an 18-year-old from the Normandy city of Rouen.

"It's Morrison's personality. He was a poet, a sex-symbol, a wild beast. Someone real."

His girlfriend Annie carried a book of Morrison's poems.

"They are the work of a mind on drugs. Sometimes they are a little obscure, I agree. But I adore them."

Perhaps 50% of those genuflecting at the shrine were foreigners - holiday-makers for whom this has become part of the ritual of a visit to Paris.

'Deification'

Morrison came to France in early 1971 to escape, he told friends, the frenzied celebrity lifestyle that was forced upon him in the United States.

In Paris, he hoped for peace and to rediscover his poetic muse.

He failed, but the French love him for trying.

At the Pere-Lachaise - amid the tombs of such as Oscar Wilde, Chopin, Edith Piaf, and beneath a sky of Mediterranean blue - the line of adepts looked more and more like a religious procession.

For this is, after all, a process of modern-day deification.

'Perfection'

Like Apollo, Morrison represents youth, love and poetry.

The marijuana is the incense of today. The scribbled notes are votive offerings.

Perhaps it was just like this that some beautiful harpist from the Aegean was transformed via the collective memory into a godhead.

And in Paris, beneath the graffiti-strewn slab, the candles and the fading blooms, lies not the decaying body of an alcohol-raddled narcissist, but an ideal of perfection - as ancient as human life itself.

Jim Morrison's death/burial certificate.

Poem

An angel runs
Thru the sudden light
A ghost precedes us
A shadow follows us
And each time we stop
We fall

--Moment of inner freedom
when the mind is opened & the
infinite universe revealed
& the soul is left to wander
dazed & confus'd searching
here & there for teachers & friends.

...I can place myself anywhere in
space or time.
I can summon the dead.
I can perceive events on other worlds,
in my deepest inner mind,
& in the minds of others,

I can

I am

do you have
straight jackets
for the guests

yes we do

Jim Morrison

About A S Morton

Andrew is a committee member of the Astrological Lodge of London. He has studied with the Faculty of Astrological Studies and the London School of Astrology. He is the organiser of the Lodge's one-day events.

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