Post by TheWallsScreamedPoetry on Feb 20, 2011 15:56:14 GMT
From The Lizard King Was Here
The Life & Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia
By: Mark Opsasnick
Reflections and Notes
February 18 2009
Jim Morrison moved to Alexandria, Virginia in January 1959. His first day of school at George Washington High was February 2 1959 (Sophomore year 10th grade)
Jim lived at 310 WOODLAND AVENUE (not Woodlawn Avenue) in a flagstone house built in 1941. This was in the Jefferson Park section and not in the Beverly Hills section. He occupied the basement/recreation room downstairs. This room was where Betty (Ritter) Howard committed suicide Tuesday, Sept 24 1957. (410 shotgun wound to the chest – motive – depression.)
In 6th Grade while attending (1954) Longview Elementary School in San Diego, CA –
Jeff Morehouse (friend in Elementary School & later high school – their fathers both were military men and moved to the same locations in different years):
“Jim was class president of the 6th grade. He had to lead assemblies and go up in front of the entire school and introduce what we were going to do and stuff like that and for a kid at that age, he was a very good leader. He was starting to go through changes.”
Jeff Moorehouse:
“Basically he was more withdrawn and he was reticent to be with other people. He was much happier being by himself and not really as outgoing as he had been before that.”
Jim would get a few dollars from his mother so he could by a new shirt but he would get a .50 shirt at the Salvation Army and spend the rest of the money buying books on one of his outings to Washington DC.
Jim’s resistance to authority, a practice that he developed in Alexandria was noted by Jim Merrill. He would poke fun at authority figures that he encountered at home, school and on the streets of Alexandria.
Jim Merrill
“Morrison had something that no one else had. The guy was the personification of guts and he was not going to let this disciplined system and the people making the rules change the direction he was going in and he was the only person I knew that had the balls to stand up and mock them.
Make fun of them and put them in their place.
He was starting to rebel against the whole establishment and I’m really glad I ran into him because he opened my eyes up. He was a little bit off but I don’t think Jim was crazy.
I think he was testing the limits and that’s the reason he was just so set on never following his father. I really never met anyone like him. Ever.”
Bill Thomas:
“Nietzsche and other philosophers – he’s carry around books and talk about thing and I’d be like what in the world is he talking about?
He did a lot of stuff that made no sense and in my opinion I think he was looking for a reaction. I don’t know if we all thought he was special, but there was just a general aura about him and we all knew he was different.”
Morrison according to Thomas, clearly cut his own path, had little concern for following the crowd, and stayed loyal to what he believed in.
“The whole thing with being a part of a group or trying to be with your peers didn’t mean anything to him because he was a free spirit and didn’t care what anyone else did.
Social acceptance by anybody was not anything he was concerned about and I’m certain he thought our interests were misplaced.
I remember him giving us these talks about how he didn’t like us, how we were all in high school fraternities and how we were all caught up in sports and the material stuff, and he went on about why that was wrong and how we shouldn’t be concerned with those things.
Several times he gave us big lectures on how one day he was going to be famous and when that happened he wasn’t going to give any of us the time of day.”
Jim Morrison tale:
The bus top for the middle school kids was directly in front of the Morrison house and Jim would come out in the early morning as the kids were waiting for the bus and start preaching like an evangelist and waved his arms and in a loud voice would say, ignore your teachers, disobey your parents and renounce God and become atheists before your hopes of freedom are vanquished forever.
As a result the bus stop was moved to another spot in the neighborhood.
Jim wrote a poem for Tandy Martin called, “She dances in a ring of fire”
Jim Rocca
“What I found to be very strange was that Jim seemed to be a person who moved through the school, but in a way was not a part of the school and very few people knew him and there was another life that he never let people see. I would say most people at George Washington High School knew of him rather that actually knew him personally.”
Jim Merrill
“I saw this incredible urge to be recognized and also this terrible self destructive urge that just sat there and you know that this guy was not going to be around long.
I think anybody that knew Morrison at all knew his days were numbered.”
“He had tons of books over there in his basement room and I’d go over there and look at them and I didn’t have a clue as to what most of that stuff meant.
Morrison devoured that stuff when he was a teenager and he was in another world and you have to wonder how that affected him.
The whole point is that he was so far advanced in terms of literature he took in and he really seemed to become what he read sometimes.”
Jim Morrison’s high school reading (selected titles – he had over 1000 books in his room and according to Andy Morrison when the family moved out of the house the books went to a local library and probably ended up being sold at a rummage sale for about .25c each.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Arthur Rimbaud
James Joyce
Franza Kafka
Albert Camus
Nietzsche:
“The Birth Of Tragedy” (1872) – The primary theme of which was the recognition of the interplay between two primary artistic impulses, the Apollonian and the Dionysiac, in what he considered to be the highest form of art, Greek tragedy. Nietzsche in contrasting the two elements, explained Apollonian thought as emphasizing discreet limitation, self control and freedom from all extravagant urges, while the Dionysiac state emphasized physical intoxication and celebrated the eternal desire of existence. Nietzsche’s conclusion was that European culture had been heavily dominated by Apollonian thought since the time of Socrates and had suffered as a result. As a solution he encouraged a fill release of Dionysian thought and activity that emphasized artistic creativity, a celebration of human existence and a search for truth.
In “Beyond Good and Evil” (1886) & “On The Genealogy Of Morals” (1887), Nietzsche divided up his loosely connected philosophical rants into 9 chapters dealing with a number of topics including the religious nature, morals, virtues, and nobility of man. His basic blueprint included the pronouncement of a new kind of philosopher that would emerge in the future, a free spirit compelled to find the greatness of man and determined with overcoming conventional morality through a life promoting system of thought based on the individual’s will to power and profound faith in opposite values.
“The philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he posits: He shall be greatest who can be loneliest, the most concealed, the most deviant, the human being beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, he that is over rich in will.” And “Whatever is profound loves masks…Might not nothing less than the opposite be the proper disguise for the shame of a god?” “All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses” “Poets treat their experiences shamelessly; they exploit them.” “Measure is alien to us…our thrill is the thrill of the infinite, the unmeasured” “We reach our bliss only when we are most – in danger.”
“On The Genealogy Of Morals” was Nietzsche’s critique of all the moral values and was divided into three separate essays that questioned the very intrinsic worth of such ideas: “Good and Evil, Good and Bad;” “Guilt Bad Conscience and Related Matters,” and “What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?” His first essay delved into how the terms “good” and “bad” acquired their meaning, the second put forth the basic notion that “guilt” and “bad conscience” were created as natural inclination by man out of a need for self torture, and the third essay stated that ascetic ideals function as a way for man to give meaning to his will, even if it represents a will to nothingness.
“Man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose.”
Rimbaud: Letter From The Seer #2 (written to Paul Demeny on May 15 1871)
“The poet makes himself a seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.”
Many Doors fans have cited this philosophical proclamation as Morrisons’ inspiration for a life of intoxication after his rock star persona had been cemented.
Morrison was also no doubt enamored with Rimbaud’s romantic life adventures which courted the unknown.
James Joyce - Ulysses (1922)
Chronicled events of three main characters on a single day, June 16 1904. Many intellectuals hailed it as the greatest book of the 20th century. Many other claimed it was indecipherable. One character, Stephen Dedalus, a young, self loathing intellectual who disliked everyone and everything around him, argued incessantly about art and literature, and ended up on a drunken bridge in a brothel.
Dubliners 1907
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man 1916
Exiles 1918
Finnegan’s Wake 1939
Franza Kafka – “Kafka’s Diary” 1910-1923
Voluminous entries by the author on his friends, associates, and fellow writers, along with details on his various observations, dreams and personal conflicts, and anxieties. Kafka was born in Prague and throughout his life was torn between feelings of love and resentment for his parents. He also cited for his belief that sex was repulsive, an odd situation and a devotee of one night stands. Best of all Kafka’s peculiar feelings towards his own creations, as he wanted all of his life’s writings burned upon his death ( a request that was ignored.)
Albert Camus – Novelist 1913-1960
He relocated to Paris France during WWII. He worked for COMBAT ( a resistance network concerned with intelligence and sabotage), editing the organizations newspaper and formulating his own person philosophy. Camus’ work featured his recurring doctrine of the absurd – a belief that life is meaningless because of the inevitability of death and that it is impossible for man to make rational sense of his own existence.
Camus Works In Morrison’ bookcase:
The Stranger 1942
The Plague 1947
The Fall 1956 (which one a Nobel prize of literature in 1957 as an influential work on human rights)
Plutarch of Chaeronea (Greek Historian) -
The Lives Of Nobel Grecians A.D. 100
James T. Farrell – Stud’s Lonigan Triogoly
1. Young Lonigan 1932
2. The Young Manhood Of Studs Lonigan 1934
3. Judgment Day 1935
Norman O. Brown
– Life Against Death 1959
Provided a history of the human race based on Freudian concepts.
Colin Wilson
– The Outsider 1956
A work that advanced the notion that the well being of society can be evaluated by how it treats it’s outcasts.
French Poets, Essayists and Novelists
Antonin Artaud
Charles Baudelaire
Honore de Balzac
Louis Ferdinard Celine
Jean Cocteau
Jean Baptiste Moliere
Jean Genet
Jean Paul Sarte
Brendan Behan (Irish Playwright and Novelist)
William Blake (British Poet/Artist)
Aldous Huxley (British Writer)
American Poets
T.S. Eliot
Kenneth Patchen
Kenneth Rexroth
Jack Kerouac
1. The Town and The City 1950
2. On The Road 1957
3. Dharma Bums 1958
4. The Subterraneans 1958
5. Doctor Sax 1959
Kerouac’s “The Town & The City”
The real significance of The Town & The City for Jim Morrison fans was the stunning character portrayal of Francis Martin, who was the second son of the family and was introduced as being fifteen as the story began in 1935. A careful reading of Kerouac’s descriptions of Francis through out the entire work revealed what must be considered a possible blueprint for the personality and life interests of Jim Morrison himself, as the similarities between the two were downright eerie! As the story opened Francis was described as having a sullen and sour manner in high school – he preferred keeping to himself and spent most of his time reading and staring out his bedroom window. Although dour, gloomy, and aloof he displayed brilliance in his schoolwork, was curiously respected by his peers and family members, and was well aware of the power of his own secretiveness. His own mother described him as a “strange boy” and explained to family members that he was his own boss and that his siblings just didn’t understand him. As he worked his way through school, he displayed poetic tendencies and an air of discontent ness, and embarked on solitary walks at midnight. He spent time at the local library reading biographies and French novels and believed he was the only person in town to understand the meaning of life and death. As he left for Harvard he counted among his favorite writers Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Aldous Huxley. In one of the book’s more striking passages, Francis returned to his house in Galloway and reflected back on his life, remembering himself as a child given to long solitudes during which time he imagined himself as several different entities including a hero, a warrior and a god. In the books final stages, Francis cut off communication with his parents, gravitated towards Greenwich Village (where he explored the neighborhoods bookstores), championed Balzac and Nietzsche, and in the end relocated to Paris, France.’
The notion of Francis Martin, as presented in the pages of Kerouacs’ first novel, served as a model for Jim Morrison’s existence can be presented with great believability. Morrison undoubtly was absorbing every literary morsel the Beat Generation artists offered and may have consciously or unconsciously adopted the mannerisms, behavior, and attitudes of his favorite fictional characters.
Corso
– Gasoline 1958
William Burroughs
– The Naked Lunch 1959
John Clellon
– “Go” 1952
Jim spent a lot of time making entries in his personal notebooks, painting and drawing and watching art house films. He also perfected his ledge walking in Hanes Point by scaling across an old piece of a pier that jutted out over the Potomac River. His friends who witnessed this feat claim that if Jim had fell there would no way he could have ever recovered.
According to Andy Morrison, Jim would make collages – “take a magazine with a color photo and pour lighter fluid on it and he’d make a circle of what he wanted to the back side and take a ball point pen and go back and forth over it. It forced the ink out of it. He made his own collages out of anything he wanted.” (In later years there are reports from UCLA friends that Jim had several collages hanging on his walls at the one room apt he lived in. All of the original art work and notebooks were destroyed when Jim left Alexandria for Clearwater Florida on August 13 1961.
The Life & Times of Jim Morrison in Alexandria, Virginia
By: Mark Opsasnick
Reflections and Notes
February 18 2009
Jim Morrison moved to Alexandria, Virginia in January 1959. His first day of school at George Washington High was February 2 1959 (Sophomore year 10th grade)
Jim lived at 310 WOODLAND AVENUE (not Woodlawn Avenue) in a flagstone house built in 1941. This was in the Jefferson Park section and not in the Beverly Hills section. He occupied the basement/recreation room downstairs. This room was where Betty (Ritter) Howard committed suicide Tuesday, Sept 24 1957. (410 shotgun wound to the chest – motive – depression.)
In 6th Grade while attending (1954) Longview Elementary School in San Diego, CA –
Jeff Morehouse (friend in Elementary School & later high school – their fathers both were military men and moved to the same locations in different years):
“Jim was class president of the 6th grade. He had to lead assemblies and go up in front of the entire school and introduce what we were going to do and stuff like that and for a kid at that age, he was a very good leader. He was starting to go through changes.”
Jeff Moorehouse:
“Basically he was more withdrawn and he was reticent to be with other people. He was much happier being by himself and not really as outgoing as he had been before that.”
Jim would get a few dollars from his mother so he could by a new shirt but he would get a .50 shirt at the Salvation Army and spend the rest of the money buying books on one of his outings to Washington DC.
Jim’s resistance to authority, a practice that he developed in Alexandria was noted by Jim Merrill. He would poke fun at authority figures that he encountered at home, school and on the streets of Alexandria.
Jim Merrill
“Morrison had something that no one else had. The guy was the personification of guts and he was not going to let this disciplined system and the people making the rules change the direction he was going in and he was the only person I knew that had the balls to stand up and mock them.
Make fun of them and put them in their place.
He was starting to rebel against the whole establishment and I’m really glad I ran into him because he opened my eyes up. He was a little bit off but I don’t think Jim was crazy.
I think he was testing the limits and that’s the reason he was just so set on never following his father. I really never met anyone like him. Ever.”
Bill Thomas:
“Nietzsche and other philosophers – he’s carry around books and talk about thing and I’d be like what in the world is he talking about?
He did a lot of stuff that made no sense and in my opinion I think he was looking for a reaction. I don’t know if we all thought he was special, but there was just a general aura about him and we all knew he was different.”
Morrison according to Thomas, clearly cut his own path, had little concern for following the crowd, and stayed loyal to what he believed in.
“The whole thing with being a part of a group or trying to be with your peers didn’t mean anything to him because he was a free spirit and didn’t care what anyone else did.
Social acceptance by anybody was not anything he was concerned about and I’m certain he thought our interests were misplaced.
I remember him giving us these talks about how he didn’t like us, how we were all in high school fraternities and how we were all caught up in sports and the material stuff, and he went on about why that was wrong and how we shouldn’t be concerned with those things.
Several times he gave us big lectures on how one day he was going to be famous and when that happened he wasn’t going to give any of us the time of day.”
Jim Morrison tale:
The bus top for the middle school kids was directly in front of the Morrison house and Jim would come out in the early morning as the kids were waiting for the bus and start preaching like an evangelist and waved his arms and in a loud voice would say, ignore your teachers, disobey your parents and renounce God and become atheists before your hopes of freedom are vanquished forever.
As a result the bus stop was moved to another spot in the neighborhood.
Jim wrote a poem for Tandy Martin called, “She dances in a ring of fire”
Jim Rocca
“What I found to be very strange was that Jim seemed to be a person who moved through the school, but in a way was not a part of the school and very few people knew him and there was another life that he never let people see. I would say most people at George Washington High School knew of him rather that actually knew him personally.”
Jim Merrill
“I saw this incredible urge to be recognized and also this terrible self destructive urge that just sat there and you know that this guy was not going to be around long.
I think anybody that knew Morrison at all knew his days were numbered.”
“He had tons of books over there in his basement room and I’d go over there and look at them and I didn’t have a clue as to what most of that stuff meant.
Morrison devoured that stuff when he was a teenager and he was in another world and you have to wonder how that affected him.
The whole point is that he was so far advanced in terms of literature he took in and he really seemed to become what he read sometimes.”
Jim Morrison’s high school reading (selected titles – he had over 1000 books in his room and according to Andy Morrison when the family moved out of the house the books went to a local library and probably ended up being sold at a rummage sale for about .25c each.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Arthur Rimbaud
James Joyce
Franza Kafka
Albert Camus
Nietzsche:
“The Birth Of Tragedy” (1872) – The primary theme of which was the recognition of the interplay between two primary artistic impulses, the Apollonian and the Dionysiac, in what he considered to be the highest form of art, Greek tragedy. Nietzsche in contrasting the two elements, explained Apollonian thought as emphasizing discreet limitation, self control and freedom from all extravagant urges, while the Dionysiac state emphasized physical intoxication and celebrated the eternal desire of existence. Nietzsche’s conclusion was that European culture had been heavily dominated by Apollonian thought since the time of Socrates and had suffered as a result. As a solution he encouraged a fill release of Dionysian thought and activity that emphasized artistic creativity, a celebration of human existence and a search for truth.
In “Beyond Good and Evil” (1886) & “On The Genealogy Of Morals” (1887), Nietzsche divided up his loosely connected philosophical rants into 9 chapters dealing with a number of topics including the religious nature, morals, virtues, and nobility of man. His basic blueprint included the pronouncement of a new kind of philosopher that would emerge in the future, a free spirit compelled to find the greatness of man and determined with overcoming conventional morality through a life promoting system of thought based on the individual’s will to power and profound faith in opposite values.
“The philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he posits: He shall be greatest who can be loneliest, the most concealed, the most deviant, the human being beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, he that is over rich in will.” And “Whatever is profound loves masks…Might not nothing less than the opposite be the proper disguise for the shame of a god?” “All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses” “Poets treat their experiences shamelessly; they exploit them.” “Measure is alien to us…our thrill is the thrill of the infinite, the unmeasured” “We reach our bliss only when we are most – in danger.”
“On The Genealogy Of Morals” was Nietzsche’s critique of all the moral values and was divided into three separate essays that questioned the very intrinsic worth of such ideas: “Good and Evil, Good and Bad;” “Guilt Bad Conscience and Related Matters,” and “What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?” His first essay delved into how the terms “good” and “bad” acquired their meaning, the second put forth the basic notion that “guilt” and “bad conscience” were created as natural inclination by man out of a need for self torture, and the third essay stated that ascetic ideals function as a way for man to give meaning to his will, even if it represents a will to nothingness.
“Man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose.”
Rimbaud: Letter From The Seer #2 (written to Paul Demeny on May 15 1871)
“The poet makes himself a seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.”
Many Doors fans have cited this philosophical proclamation as Morrisons’ inspiration for a life of intoxication after his rock star persona had been cemented.
Morrison was also no doubt enamored with Rimbaud’s romantic life adventures which courted the unknown.
James Joyce - Ulysses (1922)
Chronicled events of three main characters on a single day, June 16 1904. Many intellectuals hailed it as the greatest book of the 20th century. Many other claimed it was indecipherable. One character, Stephen Dedalus, a young, self loathing intellectual who disliked everyone and everything around him, argued incessantly about art and literature, and ended up on a drunken bridge in a brothel.
Dubliners 1907
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man 1916
Exiles 1918
Finnegan’s Wake 1939
Franza Kafka – “Kafka’s Diary” 1910-1923
Voluminous entries by the author on his friends, associates, and fellow writers, along with details on his various observations, dreams and personal conflicts, and anxieties. Kafka was born in Prague and throughout his life was torn between feelings of love and resentment for his parents. He also cited for his belief that sex was repulsive, an odd situation and a devotee of one night stands. Best of all Kafka’s peculiar feelings towards his own creations, as he wanted all of his life’s writings burned upon his death ( a request that was ignored.)
Albert Camus – Novelist 1913-1960
He relocated to Paris France during WWII. He worked for COMBAT ( a resistance network concerned with intelligence and sabotage), editing the organizations newspaper and formulating his own person philosophy. Camus’ work featured his recurring doctrine of the absurd – a belief that life is meaningless because of the inevitability of death and that it is impossible for man to make rational sense of his own existence.
Camus Works In Morrison’ bookcase:
The Stranger 1942
The Plague 1947
The Fall 1956 (which one a Nobel prize of literature in 1957 as an influential work on human rights)
Plutarch of Chaeronea (Greek Historian) -
The Lives Of Nobel Grecians A.D. 100
James T. Farrell – Stud’s Lonigan Triogoly
1. Young Lonigan 1932
2. The Young Manhood Of Studs Lonigan 1934
3. Judgment Day 1935
Norman O. Brown
– Life Against Death 1959
Provided a history of the human race based on Freudian concepts.
Colin Wilson
– The Outsider 1956
A work that advanced the notion that the well being of society can be evaluated by how it treats it’s outcasts.
French Poets, Essayists and Novelists
Antonin Artaud
Charles Baudelaire
Honore de Balzac
Louis Ferdinard Celine
Jean Cocteau
Jean Baptiste Moliere
Jean Genet
Jean Paul Sarte
Brendan Behan (Irish Playwright and Novelist)
William Blake (British Poet/Artist)
Aldous Huxley (British Writer)
American Poets
T.S. Eliot
Kenneth Patchen
Kenneth Rexroth
Jack Kerouac
1. The Town and The City 1950
2. On The Road 1957
3. Dharma Bums 1958
4. The Subterraneans 1958
5. Doctor Sax 1959
Kerouac’s “The Town & The City”
The real significance of The Town & The City for Jim Morrison fans was the stunning character portrayal of Francis Martin, who was the second son of the family and was introduced as being fifteen as the story began in 1935. A careful reading of Kerouac’s descriptions of Francis through out the entire work revealed what must be considered a possible blueprint for the personality and life interests of Jim Morrison himself, as the similarities between the two were downright eerie! As the story opened Francis was described as having a sullen and sour manner in high school – he preferred keeping to himself and spent most of his time reading and staring out his bedroom window. Although dour, gloomy, and aloof he displayed brilliance in his schoolwork, was curiously respected by his peers and family members, and was well aware of the power of his own secretiveness. His own mother described him as a “strange boy” and explained to family members that he was his own boss and that his siblings just didn’t understand him. As he worked his way through school, he displayed poetic tendencies and an air of discontent ness, and embarked on solitary walks at midnight. He spent time at the local library reading biographies and French novels and believed he was the only person in town to understand the meaning of life and death. As he left for Harvard he counted among his favorite writers Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Aldous Huxley. In one of the book’s more striking passages, Francis returned to his house in Galloway and reflected back on his life, remembering himself as a child given to long solitudes during which time he imagined himself as several different entities including a hero, a warrior and a god. In the books final stages, Francis cut off communication with his parents, gravitated towards Greenwich Village (where he explored the neighborhoods bookstores), championed Balzac and Nietzsche, and in the end relocated to Paris, France.’
The notion of Francis Martin, as presented in the pages of Kerouacs’ first novel, served as a model for Jim Morrison’s existence can be presented with great believability. Morrison undoubtly was absorbing every literary morsel the Beat Generation artists offered and may have consciously or unconsciously adopted the mannerisms, behavior, and attitudes of his favorite fictional characters.
Corso
– Gasoline 1958
William Burroughs
– The Naked Lunch 1959
John Clellon
– “Go” 1952
Jim spent a lot of time making entries in his personal notebooks, painting and drawing and watching art house films. He also perfected his ledge walking in Hanes Point by scaling across an old piece of a pier that jutted out over the Potomac River. His friends who witnessed this feat claim that if Jim had fell there would no way he could have ever recovered.
According to Andy Morrison, Jim would make collages – “take a magazine with a color photo and pour lighter fluid on it and he’d make a circle of what he wanted to the back side and take a ball point pen and go back and forth over it. It forced the ink out of it. He made his own collages out of anything he wanted.” (In later years there are reports from UCLA friends that Jim had several collages hanging on his walls at the one room apt he lived in. All of the original art work and notebooks were destroyed when Jim left Alexandria for Clearwater Florida on August 13 1961.
