The Lords & New Creatures

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

'If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.'
Jim Morrison

Bringing together his 1969 self printed volumes 'The Lords' and 'The New Creatures'.
This the softback version coming after a hardback run in 1970.
This softback copy featured a later Jim Morrison on the cover and had no mention of the band he was in, he is said to have been delighted with the finished work.

This my over 50 year old copy I purchased in 1972 from HMV Stockton.
I read it and was not impressed. I managed to see that in a new light in 2001 after thinking it bollocks for 30 years....but what if anything do you guys feel about its worth ...or not!?









I
Snakeskin jacket
Indian eyes
Brilliant hair

He moves in disturbed
Nile Insect
Air

II
You parade thru the soft summer
We watch your eager rifle decay
Your wilderness
Your teeming emptiness
Pale forest on verge of light
decline.

More of your miracles
More of your magic arms

[stuart]

One of my faves from the lords-

Baths,Bars,the indoor pool. Our injured leader
Prone on the sweating tile. Chlorine on his breath and in his long hair. Lithe, although crippled,
body of a middle-weight contender. He liked men
near him with a large sense of life. But most of the press were vultures descending on the scene for curious America aplomb. Cameras
inside the coffin interviewing worms.

-

To me that sums up the behaviour and attitude of the press in general.

[nick]

I dug New Creatures right off- I think I was 16 when I first read it and I was immensely impressed/influenced by the visionary aspect and the images therein… those brilliant glimpses beyond this paling now…. IT DOES, to me, definitely have the feel… of notes on vision….

The Lords felt a bit too much like notes to me at first…. which they are, but very cool too in their own regard… McClure said Jim was the poet of his generation, which I’m sure you all know… adding a comment about Jim and the generation gap; and I feel The Lords relies a bit more on intellect- so that you see a bit of why he’d feel that way in there… And if Jim IS, in fact, the poet of his generation, I feel it’s definitely because of this- or that’s what sets him apart….

You’ll always have your fair share of brilliant writers out there at any given time- Hell, Bob Dylan- IMHO- in certain respects blows Jim out of the water as a poet, but Jim had his hand on the pulse of something… rare… to not catch hold of so much… as to sense… a visionary ticking, which perhaps sometimes gives way to a bit of pretension; but if so, the pretension of someone on their way to something- or someone burning justashardastheycould intothenight, as someone that HAD to write… as anyone that is wroth a shit as an artist has to….

I can see that about the attitude of the press and the given quote. They were definitely vultures after the rock star at the time- of course now too but from what I’ve read- not being alive at the time- there was a glow about the rock star then… maybe just the naïve attitude of the 60s in part finding form in that; and Jim was out there doing things that other people were afraid to do… pushing limits- so that then one becomes this sort of clown also that people want to see fall, and eat off of; versus respecting as a poet… I guess Jim started to hit bottom a bit in life, drinking heavily, becoming a bit of someone that was un-cool- of course how could he be in a way also you know; but then you had a lot of vultures out there and I don’t think he could digest the shit…. All of it must have been easy enough for a man of his intellect to play up to and play with at first (tho I feel more of his reactions to that and the toying-wit was a bit more subconscious than the planned way Jim would put on at times- tho didn’t he comment somewhere- I may be incorrect… that Miami was more an unconscious reaction the Morrison persona?)- but sooner or later the emotional reaction is going to be… a recoil. Funny therefore how one becomes as degenerate as the forces that seem to knock them down emotionally…. “to be born of beauty” I guess- Jim definitely wasn’t weak either and I LOVE the New Creatures. At the same time I get more of a Rimbaud feel from The Lords… not that that’s a good thing because I’m sure he didn’t want to sound like anyone… and overall he didn’t…. I.E.-As big of a fan as he was of Kerouac he never fell into that dharma Ebonics thing- a bit of a trap in it’s own right… It’s amazing to look at all the poetry he wrote and the true brilliance of at least the majority of it and see him as having as many self doubts as he did… It seems he wanted to more than just compile what he wrote, but make a statement- like how say Dylan would have all these great songs but only include on an album what fit into his outlook on the world at that time… Alas- I could go on all day but I need to re-read this in order to comment or analyze Specifically. Currently I just found Wilderness after having lost it for years. It’s a special book to me as a friend that passed away stole it for me once upon a time… not too cool of thing to do but hey…. The good thing about that is… as with feeling differently after re-reading it again of late… it can be like a breath of fresh air…. I felt amazed the last time I’d read over Jim’s poetry after consciously trying NOT to in order to distance myself a bit from the influence…<br>
You may notice.... I could talk about this all day and never really say anything....

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

I
The soft parade has now begun
on Sunset.
Cars come thundering down
the canyon.
Now is the time & the place.
The cars come rumbling.
"You got a cool machine."
These engine beasts
muttering their soft
talk. A delight
at night
to hear their quiet voices
again
after 2 years.



Now the soft parade
has soon begun.
Cool pools
from a tired land
sink now
in the peace of the evening.




Dull lions prone on a watery beach.
The universe kneels at the swamp
to curiously eye its own raw
postures of decay
in the mirror of human consciouness.

Absent and peopled mirror, absorbent
passive to whatever visits
and retains its interest.

Door of passage to the other side,
the soul frees itself in stride.

Turn mirrors to the wall
in the house of the new dead.



Walking to the riot
Spreads to the houses
the lawns
suddenly alive now
w / people
running

I don't dig what they did
to that girl
Mercy pack
Wild song they sing
As they chop her hands
Nailed to a ghost
Tree

I saw a lynching
Met the strange men
of the southern swamp
Cypress was their talk
Fish­call & bird­song
Roots & signs
out of all knowing
They chanced to be there
Guides, to the white
gods.

[danceonfire]

I'm actually reading it now. It has some pretty good stuff in it. It would be really great if there was a way to hear Jim read it.

[wyldlizardqueen]

Now i do have this one, I i really Dig it:)!!!

[wyldlizardking]

Yeah I have a copy, i like it too

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

April 7th 1970 - The first printing of the
hard-bound copies of The Lords and the New Creatures is released in April under the author's full name, James
Douglas Morrison. With the support and encouragement of poet Michael McClure, Jim is successful in securing a
publisher that will present his work as that of a serious
young poet, and not use his rock-star status.
This volume combines Morrison's The Lords: Notes on Vision with The New Creatures, which he had privately
published the previous year in a limited edition of 100
copies.
When Jim receives his advance copies of the book,
he is reportedly thrilled that Simon and Schuster
have handled it with genuine respect and honored his
request that it be presented without reference to his
being the lead singer of the Doors.
The Doors On The Road by Greg Shaw


Jims handwritten opener for The Lords. Interesting as the crossed out bit at the top is from COTL.

Look where we worship. We all live in the city.

The city forms- often physically, but inevitably
psychically- a circle. A Game. A ring of death
with sex at its center. Drive towards outskirts
of city suburbs. At the edge of discover zones of
sophisticated vice and boredom, child prosti-
tution. But in the grimy ring immediately surround-
ing the daylight business district exists the only
real crowd life of our mound, the only street
life, night life. Diseased specimens in dollar
hotels, low boarding houses, bars, pawn shops,
burlesques and brothels, in dying arcades which
never die, in streets and streets of all-night
cinemas.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

36 years ago today........

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Baths, bars, the indoor pool. Our injured leader
prone on the sweating tile. Chlorine on his breath
and in his long hair. Lithe, although crippled,
body of a middle-weight contender. Near him
the trusted journalist, confidant. He liked men
near him with a large sense of life. But most
of the press were vultures descending on the
scene for curious America aplomb. Cameras
inside the coffin interviewing worms.

An armed camp.
Army army
burning itself in
feasts.


Fear the Lords who are secret amoung us.
The Lords w/ in us.
Born of sloth & cowardice


He spoke to me. He frightened
me w/ laughter. He took
my hand, & led me past
silence into cool whispered
Bells.


Bitter grazing in sick pastures
Animal sadness & the daybed
Whipping.
Iron curtains pried open.
The elaborate sun implies
dust, knives, voices.

Call out of the Wilderness
Call out of fever, receiving
the wet dreams of an Aztec King.

The theory is that birth is prompted
by the child's desire to leave the womb.
But in the photograph an unborn horse's
neck strains inward w/legs scooped out.

From this everything follows:

Swallow milk at the breast
until there's no milk.

Squeeze wealth at the rim
until tile pools claim it.

He swallows seed, his pride
until w/pale mouth legs
she sucks the root, dreading
world to devour child.

Doesn't the ground swallow me
when I die, or the sea
if I die at sea?


Camera, as all-seeing god, satisfies our longing
for omniscience. To spy on others from this
height and angle: pedestrians pass in and out of
our lens like rare aquatic insects.

Yoga powers. To make oneself invisible or small.
To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things.
To change the course of nature. To place oneself
anywhere in space or time. To summon the dead.
To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images,
of events on other worlds, in one's deepest inner
mind, or in the minds of others.

The sniper's rifle is an extension of his eye. He
kills with injurious vision

The assassin(?), in flight, gravitated with
unconscious, instinctual insect ease, moth-
like, toward a zone of safety, haven from the
swarming streets. Quickly, he was devoured
in the warm, dark, silent maw of the physical
theater.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Simon & Schuster; First Edition, May 4th 1970, hardback

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Morrison was a film student at UCLA but had an interest in the History of the genre as well as the technical side.
This can be seen in Lords and New Creatures in his references to Karl Wilhelm Gropius and the Pleorama in which the audience would sit in a boat and the scenery would move beside them as sound and visual effects would create the illusion of spectacle around them.

In 1832, Gropius was astounding Paris with his
Pleorama. The audience was transformed into
the crew aboard a ship engaged in battle. Fire,
screaming, sailor, drowning.


Robert Barker from Newcastle upon Tyne invented the first 'Panorama' using the term to describe his views of Edinburgh on a cylidrical roller. He became rich when he took the idea to London and in what could be argued to be the first ever cinema in Leicester Square people paid 3 shillings to view his Panorama of London.

Robert Baker, an Edinburgh artist, while in jail
for debt, was struck by the effect of light shining
through the bars of his cell though a letter he
was reading, and out of this perception he in-
vented the first Panorama, a concave, transparent
picture view of the city.

Morrison got the name wrong as it was Barker not Baker. But it shows the level of interest he had in the subject.

The next level was Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre's Diorama.
Daguerre had painted Panorama's and invented his Diorama as a platform on which the audience would rotate and get the feeling of movement. It was first shown in Paris and then London.

This invention was soon replaced by the Diorama,
which added the illusion of movement by shifting
the room. Also sounds and novel lighting effects.
Daguerre's London Diorama still stands in Regent's
Park, a rare survival, since these shows depended
always on effects of artificial light, produced
by lamps or gas jets, and nearly always ended
in fire.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Wounds, stags, & arrows
Hooded flashing legs plunge
near the tranquil women.
Startling obedience fom the pool people.
Astonishing caves to plunder.
Loose, nerveless ballets of looting.
Boys are running.
Girls are screaming, falling.
The air is thick w/smoke.
Dead crackling wires dance pools
of sea blood.




Copy autographed in Paris in 1971.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts. All energy and sensation is sucked up into the skull, a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood... Cinema is this transfoming agent. The body exists for the sake of the eyes; it becomes a dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable jewels.



The Lords. Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to enslave others. But gradually, special perceptions are being developed. The idea of the "Lords" is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The Lords have secret entrances, and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance.

The Lords appease us with images. They give us books, concerts, galleries, shows, cinemas. Especially the cinemas. Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

This June 1968 interview with Morrison inadvertantly provides a fascinating glimpse into the Poet Jim Morrison.
We see him working on his poetry and what would become part of The New Creatures.
A fragment of a page he tore up and gave to his interviewer Judith Sims read.
see more: Teenset June 1968



Fall down.
Strange gods
Their shirts
cloth and hair

All along
ornaments
bluer than
welcome.
Soft lizard


This would become one of my favourite poems in L&NC and something I read in 2006 at the poetry tribute in Paris.

Fall down.
Strange gods arrive in fast enemy poses.
Their shirts are soft marrying
cloth and hair together.
All along their arms ornaments
conceal veins bluer than blood
pretending welcome.
Soft lizard eyes connect.
Their soft drained insect cries erect
new fear, where fears reign.
The rustling of sex against their skin.
The wind withdraws all sound.
Stamp your witness on the punished ground.

[casandra]

This is interesting to see how his writing process was. It seems to me that he wrote short sentences as schematic ideas or combined words and sounds and then he developed them and completed the verses. Surely Paris Journal is so sketchy, because there are some short ideas about which he wanted to go back them after.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

#30


#71

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

a

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Phantasmagoria, magic lantern shows, spectacles without substance. They achieved complete sensory experiences through noise, incense, lightning, water. There may be a time when we'll attend Weather Theaters to recall the sensation of rain.

Cinema has evolved in two paths.

One is spectacle. Like the Phantasmagoria, it's goal is the creation of a total substitute sensory world.

The other is peep show, which claims for it's realm both the erotic and the untampered observance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or voyeur's window without the need of color, noise, grandeur.

Cinema discovers its fondest affinities, not with painting, literature, or theater, but with the popular diversions–comics, chess, French and Tarot decks, magazines, and tattooing.

The poem Jim Morrison wrote about Étienne-Gaspard Robert whose grave is in Pere Lachaise cemetery. He was a prominent Belgian stage magician and developer of image technique phantasmagoria which is depicted on his eleborate tomb.
As well as his pioneering work on projection techniques for his shows Robert was also a physics lecturer and a keen balloonist at a time of aviation development.


Robertson grave Pere Lachaise a short walk from Jim Morrison's grave. He wrote of Robertson in The Lords and no doubt sought out this grave on his walks around Pere Lachaise



Étienne-Gaspard Robert (1763–1837), often known by the stage name of "Robertson", He was described by Charles Dickens as "an honourable and well-educated showman".

Phantasmagoria
Robert attended a new form of illusion performance in 1793 in the form of a magic lantern show by Paul Philidor.
Philidor was one of the earliest known performers of such shows having adapted what he himself had seen by Johann Georg Schröpfer.
With his understanding of optics, Robert realised the potential of what would become "phantasmagoria".
His further technological developments were combined with his skills in painting and showmanship, developing a pre-cinema horror show.

Cinema derives not from painting, literature,
sculpture, theater, but from ancient popular
wizardry. It is the contemporary manifestation
of an evolving history of shadows, a delight in
pictures that move, a belief in magic. Its
lineage is entwined from the earliest beginning
with Priests and sorcery, a summoning of phantoms.
With, at first, only slight aid of the mirror and
fire, men called up dark and secret visits from
regions in the buried mind. In these seances,
shades are spirits which ward off evil.

Ventriloquism was used to enhance these early 'cinematic' performances with disembodied voices helping to bring the images to life.

The spectator is a dying animal.

Invoke, palliate, drive away the Dead. Nightly.

Through ventriloquism, gestures, play with objects,
and all rare variations of the body in space,
the shaman signaled his "trip" to an audience
which shared the journey.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

25-4-1971
Chicago Tribune IL