A blessing and a curse. Learning things the hard way, on our own. They tend to mean far more that way, but in some cases, we don’t get to live to gain the benefits of new wisdom from personal experiences. The saber-tooth tiger eats us right after we suddenly realize that trying to pet the nice tiger isn’t the smartest thing in the world to do.

Anyway, no. Don’t know if there is a Jim Morrison today to guide young people. But they could do worse than to look toward someone who made it out of that era alive and intact. Leonard Cohen. A poet, novelist, and musician of the highest caliber. He’s seen it all and “everybody knows” his Hallelujah.

Today, on an exit ramp on my way to the Maryland Beltway, two flower-children wannabe youths, one seated, a shirtless guy with dread locks, and one standing, his lady friend, with a bandana around her blonde hair, waited for someone to pay attention to them and to give them a ride. They didn’t even put up a thumb. Apathy? Not sure…
My initial response was to think about that girl and to hope that she would see sooner than later that she needed to get away from this loser, get a degree and a good job, and make her way in this world. my second thought, while taking the curve around and on to the beltway, was “wow, how you’ve changed!:” You used to be the girl on the side of the road with the long haired-hippie thumbing for a ride. ” That was so long ago, and time has put so much reality into the brainwaves, that knowledge of what harm can come to those who hitch, and those who pick up hitchers… has made me nervous.

Where is our Jim Morrison? Where is the Jim Morrison of the 21st century, who will lead us with music to a better, safer world?

Steven Stills came on the radio as I exited from the Beltway to Route 50 East… “step out of line, the man come and take you away.…” so many things have “gone around” and they are “coming around” again… Hopefully they will be better, smarter, and last longer…

Peace

Again, much confusion all around. Much complexity. I’ll probably return to the topic in a day or two.

The rebellion of youth against their own rebellion is very true. Ferment upon ferment. The Doors were part of the rebellion against the “mainstream” of rebellion, if you want to call it that, and toward something far darker.

It was obvious that the character Morrison played on stage was seriously fucked up — on drugs, psychological issues, what have you. I didn’t know at the time whether it was all an act or real. If it was real, I was very sorry for him and wished there was some kind of help somewhere — which there wasn’t. If was an act, I wondered why he would want to play that way. His character was one of several avatars of the end of the Peace, Love, and Understanding phase of the youth rebellion, and the opening of the Gates of Hell.

As you say, “a con­cate­na­tion of hor­rific events.” Indeed.

After 1968, this was not a happy land of beautiful, shining people with flowers in their hair and an abundance of love to share. (It was actually never that at all, but that’s another issue.)

When I heard of Morrison’s death, I remember being unsurprised, and also being unsurprised at all the magical thinking surrounding his supposed survival and hermitage somewhere in Florida or wherever it was. Yep. That was what a lot of folks wished they could do — either end it all or just disappear. So even at the end, Morrison led the way.

I could certainly understand the feeling. But the action?

It wasn’t until many years later that I began to understand, for example, what heroin does to individuals. I had never to my knowledge been around heroin users, so I was really taken aback by what I was seeing from someone I was working with who was in recovery from heroin. The drug, I’m convinced, had changed his brain and his thinking/perceptions irreversibly. Much of it was benign — unlike the changes that manifest from meth use — but he had such a wild psychological chaos (and creativity, I might add) , and oh, the neediness. It was scary. I had never encountered anyone so deeply, and largely unconsciously, emotionally needy. And so publicly outrageous. Oh yes.

I was reminded of Morrison’s stage character. And I may have begun to understand why I instinctively recoiled from him and to an extent, from the kind of liberation he represented. Because he went too far? I don’t know. I’m still puzzling over that one. For if anything, I have a greater appreciation for Morrison and The Doors today than I did then.

As I ponder it some more, I don’t think he went too far.

Ultimately, it was that he and others were presenting a vision that was too dark, filled with too much dread, souls aching under too much evil and suffering. Too much truth, if you will.

And now, the whole idea of liberation is perverted, much as the Bushevik vision of spreading democracy has perhaps irreversibly tarnished the whole notion of democratic ideals.

Thanks for jostling my memories and braincells…