The Lords: Notes On Vision. 1969

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Jim Morrison first published work The Lords. Michael McClure suggested Jim publish these himself in 1969 and as a result this impressive blue folder was produced with dozens of type written pages inside as a limited edition of 100 copies.
The Ray Manzarek DVD of his film Love Her Madly has special features which feature this work and Ray reading from them.
The film is awful but the special features very good.

The Lords - Notes On Vision, is presented in a folder-type format that held 82 unnumbered and unbound pages that could be rearranged in any order by the reader.









I have just had a quick flick through my copy of The Lords & The New Creaturesa nd the poems on the three printed sheets are not included.
One being the story of Nietzsche and the horse and his insanity which he also refers to In Friederich the poem he plays on the piano and at the end of The Soft Parade.


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]

82 single sheets, unbound as issued.
Verse printed on Japan vellum, housed in the original portfolio folder of flexible textured blue boards, printed in gilt, with red string tie.
Approx. dimensions 8.5 x 11.5 inches.




Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts. All
energy and sensation is sucked up into the skull,
a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood.
Caligula wished a single neck for all his subjects
that he could behead a kingdom with one blow.
Cinema is this transforming agent. The body
exists for the sake of the eyes; it becomes a
dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable
jewels.



In old Russia, the Czar, each year, granted-
out of the shrewdness of his own soul or one of
his advisors’- a week’s freedom for one convict
in each of his prisons. The choice was left to the
prisoners themselves and it was determined in
several ways. Sometimes by vote, sometimes by lot,
often by force. It was apparent that the chosen
must be a man of magic, virility, experience,
perhaps narrative skill, a man of possibility, in
short, a hero. Impossible situation at the
moment of freedom, impossible selection,
defining our world in its percussions.


"There's really no difference between Jim's book and Jim's lyrics. I can read a page and I've heard him sing pretty much the same thing I don't think there's any difference at all for him.
This is written poetry and what he does on stage is spoken poetry. His spoken poetry
is very effective although some poems read better than they speak but for the most part spoken poetry is more effective."
Ray Manzarek 1969.



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.


"No Compromise, that was Jim Morrison's style. He was always trying to stretch his own limits in body and soul.One step beyond, putting himself out on the edge."
From Stumbling Into Neon.

"I've never seen anybody from our generation who could put words together like Jim. He wrote some of his best stuff towards the end. If he had been more disciplined he could have done even greater things."
Robbie Krieger 1980.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

A room moves over a landscape, uprooting the mind,
astonishing vision. A gray film melts off the
eyes, and runs down the cheeks. Farewell.

Modern life is a journey by car. The Passengers
change terribly in their reeking seats, or roam
from car to car, subject to unceasing transformation.
Inevitable progress is made toward the beginning
(there is no difference in terminals), as we
slice through cities, whose ripped backsides present
a moving picture of windows, signs, streets,
buildings. Sometimes other vessels, closed
worlds, vacuums, travel along beside to move
ahead or fall utterly behind.




Surround Emperor of Body.
Bali Bali dancers
Will not break my temple.

Explorers
suck eyes into the head.

The rosy body cross
secret in flow
controls its flow.

Wrestlers
in body weights dance
and music, mimesis, body.

Swimmers
entertain embryo
sweet dangerous thrust flow.



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

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

The invention was soon replace 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.
~~~

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.


##Not far from Jim Morrison in Pere lachaise cemetery lies the grave of Etienne Gaspard Robert (stage name Robertson) an Illusionist and physics lecturer, born in Belgium who developed 'phantasmagoria' a pioneering projection technique.



A precursor of the cinema, specializing in spectacles based on magic lantern and 'phantasmagoria', which are depicted on his elaborate tomb.
Jim Morrison visited Pere Lachaise and would no doubt have visited this grave.
He wrote the above poem with this guy in mind so obviously had read about him.
It is always interesting to understand what Morrison was actually inspired to write his poetry about.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Anyone who knows me probably is aware that I believe that both Ray & Jim had as much film making talent as a dead hedgehog.
Ray confirmed this with his utterly abysmal film-noir Love Her Madly. It has it's own thread in the Ray section.

However any of us dumb enough to buy LHM. (yes I got it when it first came out) Will be delighted by the extras attached to the disc.
One of which features Ray guiding us through places associated with The Doors story highlighted by Ray reading poetry from Jim's Lords self released poetry volume at a couple of locations in the Venice Canal system.