The Doors and Jim Morrison lovebug inside my head.

I was born about six months before the American Prayer album came out, and seven yrs after Jim Morrison died in that hotel room in Paris. Safe to say I did not experience The Doors during their heights, nor did I ever get to see Doors-like acts until I saw the movie about the band by Oliver Stone and it just hooked itself onto my main nerve and made me a Doors fan for life.

The poetry of Morrison had a huge impact on my life as a teenager, in that post-Doors movie area when it became cool to listen to and idealize the band once more in what seemed like a second coming. Well, it might not have been as that much like a new wave, Morrisonaries have made their pilgrimage to Peré Lachaise long before the movie came out, with that “going to Paris to write poetry” kind of thing being a mission in life for so many people, ever since his death. But to me, The Doors revelation was it, it was the first serious stone laid down in the foundation of my own writing.

I did not understand too much of what his lyrics or poems was about in those days, might not understand much of it today either, but it was the way he used his words as rhythm in a playing matter. It was fun to read the poems and American Prayer, when it was re-released on CD around 1995-96 or something, let me experience the poems with the power of one of my favorite albums of all time. It just lifted the words onto a new level.

Jim Morrison was so printed into my life as a teenager that I felt a psychic connection with Jim and a lot of my writing was inspired by his poems. A mental nutcase maybe, but that was what it was like. Jim was everything to me and he was in my head. I typed out his poems on an old typewriter, framed them and hang them on the wall, read The Lords and the New Creatures and the two collections of his poems in Wilderness and The American Night, read the biography “No one here get out alive”, saw the movie again and again. Then later, in my late teens, acid made me understand the concept of the movie way better and I reconnected with Jim in a totally new way, I felt like I had figured him out in a way you cannot do without letting your brain taste that meltdown of the brain. No, I do not believe in any opening of doors with acid, it felt more like burning bridges. But it was fun to get closer to him by trying to understand the acid experience.

But anyhow, I am waiting for the new movie, “When You’re Strange”, to hit town or to get released on DVD. But in the meantime, I am still a huge Doors fan, I listen to Ray Manzarek on Spotify, combined with the American Prayer album these days and it makes me send waves and waves of “thank you”s to the man on the keyboard . Listening to Ray tell his tale of the Doors and spinning off on the everlasting love and fame of Jim Morrison just makes my day a stroll down the old Jim-mania alley that I used to go down so many times in the past. I was even a pilgrim myself, taking a picture of his grave and hanging it on the wall, blown up to a full size poster.

I am not quite sure what this entry is actually about but it feels like a tribute to The Doors, to Jim Morrison and a thank you to Ray Manzarek for recording his story of The Doors and Morrison on the CD called “The Doors: Myth and Reality”. The band made a huge impact on my life and I am glad I discovered them when I was young enough to get totally sucked up in a Doors/Morrison zone that sent me on this journey that is my life. I guess everybody has their own trip with similarities and easy comparable elements, and it all seems genuine when you're in the midst of the intensity.