Locked in a prison of my own device.

[apolla]

I once did past life regression hypnosis therapy and 'learned' that in the 1960s I was a wannabe of a model called Julia who knew a young man by the name of Jim Morrison. I don't believe I had an actually past life (although I'm open to correction), I do believe that my subconscious chose the subjects it did for a reason. It's not a surprise and maybe better than the "Maybe I WAS Jim Morrison" joke I had going before the therapy session.

It's not exactly a shocker, after all, that my subconscious would pick Jimmy out. Fuck, I call him Jimmy for one thing.

There is something that Jim Morrison that nobody else I've ever encountered has. In some ways it may be borne out that I love Philip Lynott (and crucially, his music) 'more' than Jim. It may come to pass that I do really grow out of the Doors as so many people have before me. However, there is a not-insubstantial portion of my soul that belongs irredeemably to Jim. The piece that nobody else can touch- the piece that weeps at the tragedy, rails against the injustice and rages against the selfishness of his early death.

You see, it may turn out that I hate Jim, dearest Jim, almost as much as anything else. I have ranted against Pete Doherty so many times since that horrible pseud of a junkie of a pseudo-intellectual began to poison pop culture... but I have always known that as much as I despise Doherty, the ture deep emotion of what I say or write is directed not at Pete/Peter but at Jim/James.

No, the similarities between them have never ever been lost on me, not for a fleeting moment.

As the sun rises in the sky, undeserving bastards are loved by naive fools. Yes, I love Jim Morrison. It's not romantic and hardly based in the Adonis face... but I don't love Ray Manzarek/John Densmore/Robby Krieger. Another dissimilarity between them and Thin Lizzy- I adore Brian/Scott/Robbo/Eric/Sykes almost as much as Philo.

I couldn't tell you, not even after all these years, what it is that has me firmly under Jim's spell. I could say it's his voice, his lyrics, his ideas, his ideals, his personality, his strengths or his weaknesses, but I really would be lying: I really don't know.

There are those more handsome, there are better singers, better frontmen, those more charming, even better writers... but still I am under the spell of the so-called Lizardy one. It dates back to at least '99, which doesn't seem like a long time until you put it into context:

1. I was sixteen/seventeen when he took hold of my consciousness, as opposed to having heard of him, which came much, much earlier.
2. It was obsession immediately. There was, never has been, much of a middle ground of sanity.
3. It was so intense that I was able to write a successful dissertation about him only a couple of years later. In four and a half days.

In California, I listened to my walkman a lot, always when walking to/from Natasha's. I remember playing air bass to The Boys Are Back In Town. I remember China Girl and Let's Dance from my almost-musical-crush on Bowie. But California was really about singing along to The End in the hot summer evenings, walking along that one quiet path from the circle at UCIrvine that let me skim past the parking lot and Middle Earth before making it across East Peltason to Verano Place. The dry desert evening air was the smell, California Pizza Kitchen provided the taste, The Doors were the sound.

I fell out of love with Buffy/Angel and really fell in love with Jim then. I wonder sometimes if Buffy/Angel wasn't a distraction - that I couldn't handle the Doors alone back at school and then in California I could. I dropped over a hundred dollars on Doors stuff at Fashion Island (on my own, on a whim, if I recall- and it's hard to get from UCI to FI on a whim without a car)... I had books. I listened to the Soft Parade on Spreak Break going up the coast; read The Lizard King in the car and gazed at those certain pictures that entranced me. Over and over again.

I remember dancing over and over again to LA Woman late at night when I was at school. I remember learning The Ghost Song on the plane to NYC for my birthday in March 2000. I remember scuffing up a driving lesson around that time because I was still grooving to Peace Frog. The obsession was there... the madness came after California,when I had everything to give to someone who has probably never deserved it. And I realise just yesterday that it was in California that I dsicovered that monster of a 17 minute live poem song The Celebration Of The Lizard.

I remember, in fact, seeing a lizard climbing up the back wall of the Science Library as I walked back home to Campus Village and I remember saying to a lizard, "Say hi to your king, dude."

Jimmy has driven me to great highs and terrible lows- no lower than passed out on cold concrete on an early spring night in the North West, and no higher than those moments- dancing to LA Woman, laughing at returning to Peace Frog after so long away post-dissertation, post-Zeppelin.

I've tried to think on it, but the truth is, I don't think I've had a crush or romantic love that has burned as hot or lasted as long. The Beatles, strangely enough, seem almost to pale in comparison, but they exist outside this equation. Rock and roll writing and discussion is all about the comparisons, but it doesn't count here. I've shed more tears for George and I've mourned John longer and more intensely... but these things, these people, exist alongside each other and not in a hierarchy as such. Still, it's Jim that's here right now, his picture hanging somewhere above my right shoulder, that same scowlingly pretty young man who has graced my LJ default icon since I made it, back in the early days.

I think after all this, I can explain it best thusly: He haunts me more than the others, even Philip. He haunts me more. Maybe that's what it's always been after all.

And this brings me neatly, almost as if by design, to the thing that brought me here in the first place: I've always known the Doors repertoire pretty well, but changes in technology can be useful in rediscovering things. To whit, Strange Days. Never my favourite album, it got uploaded onto my iPod a few weeks ago. It sits on my Doors playlist, chronologically smushed between The Doors and Waiting For The Sun. I've still yet to shove The Soft Parade on, but it'll get there. It was through the wonders of the 'Recently Added' playlist that I found it for what might as well be the first time: Unhappy Girl.

I shall post the lyrics in their entirety to demonstrate my point:

Unhappy Girl, Strange Days (elektra, 1967)
Unhappy girl
Left all alone
Playing solitaire
Playing warden to your soul
You are locked in a prison of your own devise
And you can't believe what it does to me
To see you cryin'

Unhappy girl
Tear your web away
Saw thru all your bars
Melt your cell today
You are caught in a prison of your own devise

Unhappy girl
Fly fast away
Don't miss your chance
To swim in mystery
You are dying in a prison of your own device

It's just an album track. Nothing much really... but to me it's become everything. It's the sense that Jim might just care... it's the instructions to break away from it and the knowledge that I never will. I realised it all now that I'm more self-awre and self-honest than I was when I was listening to this record for the very first time all those years ago: This is me. He may not have known me or this 'Julia' creature. It's not really about me. It doesn't matter. It is just the same:

"You are dying in a prison of your own device."

I personally believe that Jim is part of this device, of whatever it is that keeps me in my prison... but it was all of my own choosing. He haunts me, will always haunt me and to quote someone else, another great love of mine, the Zeppelin:

Nobody's fault but mine.