The Soft Parade

A tick over nine months after Jim Morrison died, I was born.  The entirety of his being on this planet had occurred and passed prior to my drawing first breath but when I was a teenager, I thought I was Jim Morrison.  He, or at least his legend, embodied everything seventeen-year-old-me thought he wanted from all of this nonsense.  Today, on the forty-second anniversary of his death I’ve devoted much more time to reflecting on his influence in my life than is appropriate for a grown-ass-man.  (For the record, I had one hell of a good day.) 

"I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments."

Numerous times in my life, that statement would have been apropos.  The same could be said of a lot of people if they’re honest I suppose.  It was never what he said in interviews that made him important to me – it was the music.  It was regretfully, the persona too.  He was the consummate rock star and at a time when I was being devoured at the apex of extremist rock ‘n’ roll stardom (e.g. ‘80s Metal) his story was a grounding influence, as ridiculous as it must surely sound.  In reality, I would internalize in time (maybe only recently), he was an absolute asshole on a personal level.  That knowledge is what I’ve tried to rationally reconcile with my past self today.  Yes, there are more important things I could and should busy myself with but I’m on this deal right now so I should see it through.  When he bathtub died in Paris, no fewer than twenty paternity suits were pending in courts all around the world – this in spite of the fact that his beloved Pam had been true to him through the years of his sleeping homeless on rooftops in Venice Beach long before his short-lived fame.  Some role model, eh?

As I’ve written about ad nauseum on this blog, I grew up in a small town in the south.  Jim Morrison was the opposite of whatever they think that ideal is and I embraced it wholeheartedly.  He by all accounts was obsessed with death, primarily his own – I’ve been accused (recently even) of the same.  He had an obvious interest in the occult – I was labeled a devil-worshipper in high school by members of my own church.  He was fascinated by Native American culture and mysticism as I continue to be.  I have a tattoo of an Indian on my left arm even though my heritage is German / Welsh.  His father was a strict disciplinarian – my father was a Church of Christ preacher. My life has obviously never been the spectacle that his was but there are parallels and patterns that force me to ask, was it him or me?  I think more than anything it was a rebellion against the small town limitations of my existence that made The Doors and especially Jim so appealing as a role model.  I’m not sure if I identified with Morrison because of similar circumstance or if I exacerbated similar circumstance so as to identify with Morrison.  That’s a big pill.  In all honesty, as with most things, the answer is somewhere between those two thoughts.

Who isn’t attracted to his Dionysian vision of what we could be at some level?  Who doesn’t agree that there should be great golden copulations in the streets of L.A.?  You might not agree with that exact statement but you probably understand the gravity of and the necessity of occasional reckless abandon.  You most likely also understand how to balance recklessness with responsibility.  I don’t think Jim was equipped with the same mechanisms that most of the rest of the world has to deal with such a dichotomous pull on his desires.  His limited sample of what this world has to offer was tainted by his ability to achieve and his inability to not succumb to stardom.  That’s the great tragedy of his life – he had to be who he was, but he couldn’t not be what the world hated.

In An American Prayer, he wrote, Did you have a good world when you died? ...enough to base a movie on?  That single line colored my existence as an adolescent and young man more than I care to admit – possibly still does at some level.  If you think about it, it’s not as superficial as it appears at first blush.  Is that not a question we all should ask ourselves on the daily?  It’s not to say that your movie should be like his, but have you lived an interesting enough life?  Do you have a story?  Of course you have and of course you do but he was painted as a narcissist because of this one passage more than any of the other nonsense he wrote.  He was exactly that, but in this instance his depravity illuminates that which he possibly was seeking throughout his life that he clearly never found – peace.  He wasn’t at peace with himself because he was different and he couldn’t reconcile within himself his difference against the acclimating pressure of the rest of the world.  If you read past the drug addled surface of his poetry, it is easy to see the lost child seeking the approval of his father, to see the insecure teenager pursuing the approval of the pretty girl, to see the boy desperately navigating the path to manhood.  

Have you ever listened to the words of Love Street?  It’s pure adulation for one Pamela Courson.  It’s the sweetest innocent teenage love song you will ever hear, but he’s remembered more for being The Lizard King and peyote in the desert and dropping trow at that show in Miami and his flirtation with witchcraft and Patricia Kennealy.  He had a story and it may even be close to what Val Kilmer portrayed near perfection in The Doors but I don’t think that’s all that he was.  His short life was a prison of his own making and that sucks – for him and for us.  If he could have let go and put the bottle down and truly spoken to us his from his true heart?  That would have been a wonderful thing.  At the end of this overwrought thought, I’m just kinda pissed off.  What a selfish asshole.  At the end of his life, he stole from us more than he ever gave.  He was too consumed with  his own bullshit – he wanted to be a rock star poet philosopher.  Join the freaking club, dude.  You betrayed your very existence; you wasted your own dawn, bro.  You were completely full of shit and that ain’t cool.  It has taken me way too long to reach that conclusion.   

    

Seventeen-year-old-me would be so disappointed in grown-ass-man-me.  I’m okay with that – change after all is the only constant in life, right?  I guess I’ve finally realized I didn’t know anything about anything when I was a kid.  The wonderful truth is that that’s still true.  Whatever I think I know and believe in now is subject to change at any given moment without warning.  As soon as I know it all, I start to die.   I still and will always love his music and his words and even the ridiculous manner in which he loved Pam but I certainly see him through a different prism than I did when I was a kid.  He wasn't someone to emulate, and he wasn't supposed to be.  Seventeen-year-old-me never understood that.  

Having said all of that, I still raise a glass to Mr. Morrison tonight.  As misguided as it might have been at the time, in hindsight his words and music allowed me to explore the same creative core that we all share.  He made it okay for me to acknowledge the inner and express it outward.  Of course, it took half a lifetime after that realization to do so publicly and even still not without a measured fear of ridicule.  Art is mostly background in my life yes, but professionally it’s probably more relevant.  As mundane as the field of architecture can be at times, it’s as close to making a living as an artist as I’ll ever come.  I would be lying if I said that Morrison didn’t have an influence on my decision to pursue and my determination to become an architect.    

In a much more profound way, my mother did the same thing without ever knowing she had.  I moved away from said little town as soon as I could after high school.  When I returned that first Christmas, she presented me with the first piece of art that I had ever allowed myself to create.  Almost immediately after the paint dried, I had tucked it safely away under the bed, out of sight and I’m almost certain that I never mentioned it to anyone.  She found it, framed it and made a gift of it to me – it has hung on every wall of every hovel I’ve called home since.  It’s as significant a moment of validation as I’ve ever experienced. 

I’m not sure what the bit about my Mom has to do with any of this.  Maybe, it’s just to acknowledge the continuum of human growth.  Maybe, the takeaway is that there is something to learn from every single person, place and thing in your life, past, present and future.  Maybe, I'm trying to be more aware of that these days.  Maybe, that is The Soft Parade.  

Tomorrow is our Independence Day and through no fault of our own most of us will likely celebrate with a cheeseburger and a cold beer or a day with family, friends.  We will undoubtedly be bombarded with all manner of patriotic display and be force-fed images of what freedom is.  As much as I’m conflicted about aligning grown-ass-man-me with him I can’t resist the power of Morrison’s thoughts on the matter:

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. It’s got to happen inside first."

With a touch of unbridled sarcasm, I say rest in peace old friend – you eternal wonderful asshole.

James Douglas Morrison 

8 December 1943 – 3 July 1971

“No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.”