Jim Morisson

Metamorphose. An object is cut off from its name, habits, associations. Detached, it becomes only the thing, in and of itself. When this disintegration into pure existence is at last achieved, the object is free to become endlessly anything."





Jim Morrison, from The Lords


PART I


        The Sex Revolts (Harvard University Press, 1995), Reynolds' and Press' exciting book which looks at rock rebellion from the perspective of gender revolution, characterizes THE DOORS' creativity (1965-71) in terms of a "phallic delirium" and a quintessential "burning virility" while comparing Jim Morrison himself to "an eternal nomad". Oliver Stone's cartoon-comic movie THE DOORS (1991), on the other hand, depicts Morrison as a sex-crazed, semi-literate jerk. I think that both of these portrayals, intentionally or not, vulgarized the image of Jim Morrison. To me, he was always rather a "fair miller-girl of the song". And I am saying this in the right meaning of the term, since, in the Scottish tradition (and Morrison's ancestors were Scots), mills were once connected with brothels. Jim was the kind of Dionysus who became magically "cooked Over" into a maiden in a woman's kettle of female transformation. He wore his hair down like a witch, a priestess of fertility and prophecy, a goddess of the hunt, or a wild beast. In Rock Dreams, 1973, Morrison had Been depicted as a gay icon in a string vest, perching on a stool in a crowded bar and surrounded by rent boys, drag queens, and sailors. His obsession with feminine symbolism and female physiological debilitation (menstruation, birth, defloration, etc.) can best be seen in a poem he wrote:








"The Spanish girl begins to bleed:


She says her period.


It's Catholic heaven.


I have an ancient Indian crucifix around my neck,


My chest is hard and brown.


Lying on stained, wretched sheets with a bleeding virgin,


We could plan a...