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If anyone has anything to add or discuss please do so. This video was so great had to share it. I didn't feel it belonged in the movie section because of it's value.
Join me now, if you have the time, as we take a stroll down memory lane to a time nearly four-and-a-half decades ago – a time when America last had uniformed ground troops fighting a sustained and bloody battle to impose, uhmm, ‘democracy’ on a sovereign nation.
It is the first week of August, 1964, and U.S. warships under the command of U.S. Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison have allegedly come under attack while patrolling Vietnam’s Tonkin Gulf. This event, subsequently dubbed the ‘Tonkin Gulf Incident,’ will result in the immediate passing by the U.S. Congress of the obviously pre-drafted Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which will, in turn, quickly lead to America’s deep immersion into the bloody Vietnam quagmire. Before it is over, well over fifty thousand American bodies – along with literally millions of Southeast Asian bodies – will litter the battlefields of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
For the record, the Tonkin Gulf Incident appears to differ somewhat from other alleged provocations that have driven this country to war. This was not, as we have seen so many times before, a ‘false flag’ operation (which is to say, an operation that involves Uncle Sam attacking himself and then pointing an accusatory finger at someone else). It was also not, as we have also seen on more than one occasion, an attack that was quite deliberately provoked. No, what the Tonkin Gulf incident actually was, as it turns out, is an ‘attack’ that never took place at all. The entire incident, as has been all but officially acknowledged, was spun from whole cloth. (It is quite possible, however, that the intent was to provoke a defensive response, which could then be cast as an unprovoked attack on U.S ships. The ships in question were on an intelligence mission and were operating in a decidedly provocative manner. It is quite possible that when Vietnamese forces failed to respond as anticipated, Uncle Sam decided to just pretend as though they had.)
Nevertheless, by early February 1965, the U.S. will – without a declaration of war and with no valid reason to wage one – begin indiscriminately bombing North Vietnam. By March of that same year, the infamous “Operation Rolling Thunder” will have commenced. Over the course of the next three-and-a-half years, millions of tons of bombs, missiles, rockets, incendiary devices and chemical warfare agents will be dumped on the people of Vietnam in what can only be described as one of the worst crimes against humanity ever perpetrated on this planet.
Also in March of 1965, the first uniformed U.S. soldier will officially set foot on Vietnamese soil (although Special Forces units masquerading as ‘advisers’ and ‘trainers’ had been there for at least four years, and likely much longer). By April 1965, fully 25,000 uniformed American kids, most still teenagers barely out of high school, will be slogging through the rice paddies of Vietnam. By the end of the year, U.S. troop strength will have surged to 200,000.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world in those early months of 1965, a new ‘scene’ is just beginning to take shape in the city of Los Angeles. In a geographically and socially isolated community known as Laurel Canyon – a heavily wooded, rustic, serene, yet vaguely ominous slice of LA nestled in the hills that separate the Los Angeles basin from the San Fernando Valley – musicians, singers and songwriters suddenly begin to gather as though summoned there by some unseen Pied Piper. Within months, the ‘hippie/flower child’ movement will be given birth there, along with the new style of music that will provide the soundtrack for the tumultuous second half of the 1960s.
An uncanny number of rock music superstars will emerge from Laurel Canyon beginning in the mid-1960s and carrying through the decade of the 1970s. The first to drop an album will be The Byrds, whose biggest star will prove to be David Crosby. The band’s debut effort, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” will be released on the Summer Solstice of 1965. It will quickly be followed by releases from the John Phillips-led Mamas and the Papas (“If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears,” January 1966), Love with Arthur Lee (“Love,” May 1966), Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention (“Freak Out,” June 1966), Buffalo Springfield, featuring Stephen Stills and Neil Young (“Buffalo Springfield,” October 1966), and The Doors (“The Doors,” January 1967).
One of the earliest on the Laurel Canyon/Sunset Strip scene is Jim Morrison, the enigmatic lead singer of The Doors. Jim will quickly become one of the most iconic, controversial, critically acclaimed, and influential figures to take up residence in Laurel Canyon. Curiously enough though, the self-proclaimed “Lizard King” has another claim to fame as well, albeit one that none of his numerous chroniclers will feel is of much relevance to his career and possible untimely death: he is the son, as it turns out, of the aforementioned Admiral George Stephen Morrison.
And so it is that, even while the father is actively conspiring to fabricate an incident that will be used to massively accelerate an illegal war, the son is positioning himself to become an icon of the ‘hippie’/anti-war crowd. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose. It is, you know, a small world and all that. And it is not as if Jim Morrison’s story is in any way unique.
(there is a long document I have on the elite of Laurel Canyon, like zappa,Byrds,Mamas/Papas,etc. which I won't bore you with)
Dude that was an epic read haha. I had no idea his dad was involved in anything at all.
That's prolly why he always said that his parents were dead. And why he was so anti-war.
Some of my favorite Morrison poems.
THE OPENING OF THE TRUNK
Moment of inner freedom
when the mind is opened and the
infinite universe revealed
& the soul is left to wander
dazed & confus'd searching
Untitled?
The day I left the beach
A hairy Satyr running
behind & a little to the
right.
In the holy solipsism
of the young
Now I can't walk thru a city
street w/out eying each
single pedestrian. I feel
their vibes thru my
skin, the hair on my neck
-it rises.
I found this on the web, which links Jim with the philosopher Nietzsche - I quote just some excerpts:
Quote:
The Nietzschean Jim Morrison
Chapter One: Insider/Outsider
2) Jim Morrison as a Nietzschean
"Jim Morrison was probably the most effective populariser of Nietzsche in the twentieth century." [7]
"The first and greatest satyr alive today."
FWN [8]
In the first book-length biography of Morrison of the rock group the Doors, published in 1980 in the USA - i.e. some nine years after his death, its co-authors presented him very much as a Nietzschean. Not only was he said to be well-read in Nietzsche, but he too was a 'philosopher'
The authors assert that: "Like Nietzsche, Jim identified with the long-suffering Dionysos, who was without images, himself pure primordial pain and its primordial echoing." [9]
One of the co-authors, Danny Sugarman, went on to publish a (semi-fictionalised?) autobiography nine years later which included an account of his relationship with Morrison - Sugarman had a junior administrative role in the Doors LA office.
He claims that Morrison gave him books which exemplify his Nietzschean devotion to Dionysos. In a somewhat garbled account Sugarman describes the Doors' singer enthusiastically giving him a copy of Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy', but then goes on to quote from W. F. Otto's 'Dionysos,' while seeming to describe another book by Karl Kerenyi : "I was digging through the books Jim had given me. I set down the one I was reading and picked up 'Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life.' [10]
In a later, thorough, and less hagiographical biography of Morrison, author Stephen Davis confirms that "nothing he read left a more lasting impression on Jimmy Morrison than his encounter with Nietzsche." [11]
While the posthumous 'legend' of Morrison has emphasised the Dionysian Nietzscheanism, the same image was being cultivated in his lifetime during the 1960's when writers on the popular music scene obviously longed to put a more intellectual spin on a hitherto lowbrow culture. Among those writers was Richard Goldstein, who in 1967 called the emerging 24 year-old singer and song-writer with the Doors a 'Shaman Superstar', going on to say that Morrison "suggests you read Nietzsche on the nature of tragedy to understand where he is really at. His eyes glow as he launches into a discussion of the Apollonian-Dionysian struggle for control of the life force."
[12]
4) Wilson's Nietzsche
Morrison read Colin Wilson's 'The Outsider' - published a year before 'On the Road' - when he was about fifteen [23]. Wilson is an English writer who created a stir by producing a philosophically mature work at the age of twenty-four. [24] Wilson later noted with a sardonic irony that he "was at least as important as Sartre and Camus, a real British home-grown existentialist." [25]
Wilson also had something of an affinity with the American 'Beat Movement.' [26] The leading Beat poet Allen Ginsberg - who therefore had a profound influence on Morrison's own poetry - met Wilson in 1978. Recollecting the meeting, Ginsberg wrote: "we'd not encountered before, though 'Outsider' and 'Beat' ethos had theoretically some sense of spiritual expansiveness and hermetic insight in common." And yet remained mystified as to how Wilson could have got that "open mind". [27]
The main interest for us though is Wilson’s treatment of Nietzsche in 'The Outsider' and how this influenced Morrison's own Nietzscheanism. [28] It is a view of Nietzsche which probably has its root in those passages in his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (section 7), where it is said that the character of Shakespeare's Hamlet "resembles the Dionysian man," [29] who seeks to conquer the "nausea of the absurd." [ib.]
Poor Ophelia
All those ghosts he never saw
floating to doom
on an iron candle.
JDM [30]
But the Existentialist despairs of ever being able to conquer, whereas the Nietzschean Dionysian man is very much a conqueror. The Existentialist interpretation of Nietzsche is therefore somewhat nihilistic - although Wilson will later insist that his own Existentialism is a positive philosophy (see his 'New Existentialism' e.g., Wilson 1980 passim). In 'The Outsider', Wilson says that, while Nietzsche saw the potential of genius in man, he felt that it was "only inertia" that "keeps him mediocre" [31]
This may be the seed of Morrison's idea for 'The Lords', who prey on this tendency to "inertia" - an idea we shall look into in more detail later [32]
In relation to this nihilistic notion of Nietzscheanism is the view that the profound thinker must necessarily experience pain - a masochistic tendency in the 'outsider' hero/genius. [33] Wilson takes a biographical approach to Nietzsche's work in keeping with a philosophy which says that one must live ones ideas. [34]
As a young man of 21 Nietzsche is said to have experienced a kind of pagan epiphany during a storm on a hill while witnessing a man killing two lambs as the man's son looked on. The mixture of thunder, death, sacrifice, blood and childhood innocence conspired to evoke a world of "Pure Will," that is "free", and is "without morality." [35]
Wilson quickly compares this with the "drunken" "Dionysian emotions" [36] that Nietzsche will describe in his 'The Birth of Tragedy'.
We may also compare this with Morrison's own epiphany, when he said he "experienced death for the first time." [37] As a four-year-old, he and his family chanced upon the immediate aftermath of a truck accident which had left a group of American Indians strewn across the road, bleeding to death. He later said, "At that moment, the souls of those dead Indians ... landed in my soul". [ib.]
Similar to Nietzsche's experience, we have the ingredients of blood, death, a sudden inexplicable catastrophe, blended with childhood innocence:
Like our ancestors
The Indians
we share a fear of sex
excessive lamentation for the dead
& an abiding interest in dreams and visions.
JDM [38]
15) Apollo & Dionysos
"The continual development of art is bound up with the Apollonian and Dionysian duality."
FWN [221]
"Though I love the bull's neck on him; I also want to see the eyes of the angel."
FWN [222]
From his throat, dreams
sing to ships and sailors
nightmares of our time:
island universe
dark with narcotic
blooms
vanishing
over quicksilver
waters ...
[from 'Some Deaths', W. Lowenfels (1964)]
How do the antinomies of life/death instincts play against Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian antinomy in 'The Birth of Tragedy'?
Brown devotes a whole chapter to the latter in 'Life Against death.' [223] Brown understands Apollo and Dionysus as a process of sublimation. [224] The 'Greek Dionysian' [225] of Nietzsche is an example of the Apollonian sublimation of the primitive Dionysian. The latter, unsublimated, is the Dionysian "witch's brew" Nietzsche talks of, [ib.] which can be found, according to Brown, in de Sade and Hitler, for example.
"The mass death in the war for the glory of the German race is the apotheosis of this witches' dance." Reich [226]
The sublimated Greek Dionysian consciousness, on the other hand, can be discerned in the Romantics, like Blake, and in their 'heirs', Nietzsche and Freud. [227] These have taken the first steps towards the immense task of "constructing a Dionysian ego" [ib.] according to Brown - but is this not a wilful paradox?
The ego, after all, is a construction of the Apollonian and its principle of individuation, [228] and is therefore alien to the Dionysian which eschews all individualism. [229] Camille Paglia, looking back at the "sixties vision" of Morrison, calling him "brilliant and learned", says that "no one can control Dionysus", and that "we can never totally harmonise Apollo and Dionysus, but we have to try." [230]
And here we must look towards Reich who's influence has been bubbling under. He advocates a complete Dionysianism which some might fear as being too unrestrained, too 'unsublimated'. It is said that Morrison read Reich's book 'On the Function of the Orgasm' carefully, making his own marginalia. [231]
Chapter Seven: Poet-Philosopher
23) Doktor Dionysos
"I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint."
FWN [341]
"The primeval world has stepped into the foreground, the depths of reality have been opened, the elemental forms of everything that is creative, everything that is destructive, have arisen, bringing with them infinite rapture and infinite terror ... Age-old laws have suddenly lost their power, and even the dimensions of time and space are no longer valid."
[342]
"The worshippers of Dionysus cast off their worldly concerns and join in a dance. This dance is an innovation of the god and he is present in it. All music derives from this desire to dance together, in a community that embraces each of us, and cancels our separation. The chorus that we form tells us the story of the god, and also the story of those who separate themselves, as we all must separate ourselves, from the pure communion, so as to embark on some fatal project of our own.
Out of the dance there steps the tragic hero, whose fate appals and fascinates his fellow dancers. He acts apart, affirms himself, and is destroyed, sinking back into the unity from which he briefly emerged."
Scruton [343]
Ultimately, what kind of philosophical positions does Morrison's Nietzscheanism lead us?
Firstly, it presents us with the problem of a 'pure' Dionysianism; of the difficulty we have in even being able to conceptualise such a thing - the abyss it offers tempts us to oblivion. Perhaps this is a problem of perception, as Morrison's Lords suggests.
As Nietzsche acknowledges: "If, however, we felt as purely Dionysian beings, myth as a symbol would stand by us absolutely ineffective and unnoticed." [344]
A solution to this is the positing of a duality: i.e. the anti-Dionysian has those qualities which the Dionysian negate: both are defined in turn against the other - opposition gives them Being. We think we know what the Dionysian is because we know what the anti-Dionysian is and vice versa.
The anti-Dionysian is called the Apollonian, of course: -
"And lo! Apollo could not live without Dionysus!"
FWN [345]
The Dionysian - "the eternal life beyond all phenomena". FWN [346]
But another problem arises - whence the 'phenomena'?
Whence the Apollonian?
If the Dionysian is 'life' in its totality, then what is the Apollonian?
Is not the Apollonian [i.e., phenomena] therefore 'beyond' all life just as the Dionysian [i.e., life] is 'beyond' all phenomena?
If this duality is maintained, then the Apollonian must be a metaphysical force beyond life itself, and yet able to give form to life.
[347]
The Apollonian therefore is the eternal realm of the gods, the realm of myth and the supernatural.
The Dionysian is - in its pure sense - the godless, primal world of Becoming: life in the raw.
The Apollonian is the world of phenomena created by the gods, or rather by the Lords and facilitated by the connectors.
Morrison's philosophy is then an invitation for us to live as gods, creating art, elaborating myths, and most of all, expanding our perceptions, in order - as he put it - to "deepen a strange hue in the clan tartan." [348]
This will involve the dangerous business of plunging periodically back to the roots, into the unfathomable abyss of the Dionysian, before heroically emerging from that underworld, ready to create once more in the searing sunlight of the Apollonian.
For Morrison, poetry had superseded philosophy. His interest in philosophy being less about ideas, but about how philosophers "have used words, have used language ... I appreciate philosophy these days from the standpoint of poetry, the use of one word next to another word, next to another word, next to another word. So, philosophy is semantics."
[22]
'The philosophers of the future' then, will be poet-philosophers or philosopher-poets - like Blake, like Nietzsche ... and like Morrison.
I believe he was being himself. But he was a worshipper of chaos. In one of his poems he says
Quote:
POWER
I can make the earth stop in
its tracks. I made the
blue cars go away.
I can make myself invisible or small.
I can become gigantic & reach the
farthest things. I can change
the course of nature.
I can place myself anywhere in
space or time.
I can summon the dead.
I can perceive events on other worlds,
in my deepest inner mind,
& in the minds of others.
I can
I am
He was obsessed with changing his reality. So he would fluctuate from being a nobody to being some kind of idol. I don't think you could act like him if you wanted too. If you did I don't think anybody would even tolerate it.
Kitchkinet, the reason why people like him so much is because he transcended pretty much everything. He was an artist, he did whatever he wanted, the man had no limitations. And who cares if he was a drunk satanist the man wrote brilliantly and had an amazing voice. I wouldn't call him a satanist though I mean I havent researched much of his religious beliefs, but if anything I'd dub him as a cross between a solipsist and an existentialist.
Edit - I think deep inside every rock musician just wishes they were Jim Morrison.
He was big on neitzche, huxley obviously, and william blake. I don't like neitzche too much, the dark side of existentialism but huxley and blake are great in my book.
I really don't think he was a satanist nor a megalomaniac, at all.
Why he wasn't a satanist imo - Sure he was selfish, and did pagan/wiccan rituals. I think he was enticed by other means of primitive religions and spiritual exploration(which I think we all should be to some degree). Maybe in the eyes of a die hard christian he was a satanist. Taking pleasures in sex, drugs, and speaking "vulgarities". He was married but claimed that even in his will he was a single man, but still left everything to his wife.
In some of his poems he mentions demons and heaven forbid satyrs(sex driven men/rams?) but it's metaphorical. If you read poetry word for word, you are either a fool or the poetry has no other meaning.
Why he wasn't a megalomaniac - How did he have "delusions" of grandeur when he really was grand and idolized and worshiped by thousands. He would have hordes of people following him with the enchantment of he and his bands music and his words. Manic? Sure but how could you hide feeling so good when you had any pleasure of flesh in your disposal with no real repracussions. The man did not fear death, so even his dieing probably wasn't dismal for him. He even said in the video above(paraphrased) "Life hurts a lot more than death, so there's no reason to fear death".
I think some people don't/didn't like him because they envy or fear his life-style.
But none of this has much to do with his philosophies or ideologies...
have you not read nobody gets out alive? the dude was a goddamn maniac and an asshole.... I think it's funny when people read what they want to into famous people's lives... What next? Barbara Streisand the great philosopher?
But just because someones an asshole does not imply they had nothing to give to the world. That's actually an informal fallacy for a logical argument.
I'm reading into his life because he was an entertainer and in my eyes a really good poet and song-writer...
edit - look what wikipedia says about your book?
Quote:
The book has been criticized as being obsequious and lacking any meaningful analysis of Morrison's personality, as well as with dwelling on the worst and most pointless of Morrison's excesses, such as his alcoholism. The fact that Sugerman has been described as "the number one Doors fan of the world",[2] has led detractors to label this book "Nothing Here But a Bunch of Lies" and the work of a fabulist. Critics have also opined that the information added by Sugerman, which made the manuscript more appealing to publishers, was sensationalism and in some cases outright fabrication. Those who knew both Morrison and Sugerman have said Sugerman's touting of himself as an "insider" during the time Morrison was alive is an exaggeration at best. Material introduced by Sugerman included insinuations that Morrison had not really died and wild speculations about the possible causes of his death. Surviving family and friends were not pleased with the unwanted entreaties by stalkers looking for Morrison and the vandalization of his grave by fans hoping to exhume Morrison's body. Sugerman's credibility was not helped by the fact that he lifted part of his book's foreword almost word-for-word from Venable Herndon's biography James Dean: A Short Life.
The book title is taken from the Doors song "Five To One," and is broken down into three sections: The Bow is Drawn, The Arrow Flies and The Arrow Falls, for the early years of his life, his rise to fame with the Doors and his final years and death, respectively.
I'm actually a guy. And like I've said before. This is about his philosophies not his mistakes, or his fan-base... Plenty of guys like the doors anyways...
I repaired the link for that piece on Nietzsche and Jim Morrison above - the whole essay gets into some wierd areas that I can't agree with.
I don't think it can be denied that Morrison was one of the most intelleigent of rock stars.
Also I think there was a connection between him and Castaneda.
Morrison was a wise being - a holy fool.
I've always wondered why there are no photos of Jim and Danny Sugarman together [seeing as Jim was photographed a hell of a lot in his short career.
As to Jim's death - it is surely suspicious in the very least. All the circumstantial evidence points to him faking his own death.
I believe he may have died, but I could see just cause for him wanting to fake his own death. I mean shit, being strung out on drugs for years on end, being rich enough to retire at such an early age. Though I truly believe he died.
That link has some really good jim quotes here's some of my favorite ones:
Quote:
"People claim they want to be free ... (But) people are terrified to be set free - they hold onto their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains.", Jim morrison
Jim Morrison On Death/Dying
Quote:
They are waiting to take us into
the severed garden ...
Death makes angels of us all
gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws ...
JDM [138]
Gently they stir
Gently rise
The dead are new-born
awakening
with ravaged limbs
& wet souls
JDM [139]
In an interview of 1969 he would say: "I want to feel what death's like. I want to taste it, hear it, smell it." [140]
Indeed, he found it strange that death is feared more than pain, because "life hurts more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over."
^ This proves he was not a Satanist. Satanists don't believe in any form of after-life. Jim here mentions the dead being new-born and wet souls. So kitch you may of made some false judgements...
On Time
Quote:
"Unrepressed life has no sense of time."
On being lazy and afraid
Quote:
Fear the Lords who are secret among us
The Lords are within us
Born of sloth and cowardice.
On heros
Quote:
"A hero is someone who rebels, or seems to rebel, against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them, but obviously that can work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing."
Pretty nietzche
Quote:
As the body is ravaged
the spirit grows stronger.
Melting pot of thought
Quote:
Like our ancestors
The Indians
we share a fear of sex
excessive lamentation for the dead
& an abiding interest in dreams and visions.
I believe he may have died, but I could see just cause for him wanting to fake his own death. I mean shit, being strung out on drugs for years on end, being rich enough to retire at such an early age. Though I truly believe he died.
Don't forget that he had been convicted to at least six months prison/hard labor - his going to Paris actually broke the terms of his appeal against the conviction as it would have been absconding.
It seems the establishment were determined to put in him jail.
The fact that no one [who knew him] but Pamela Courson saw his body in the coffin is very suspicious [as well as the fact that the two French doctors who saw 'the body' gave completely different accounts].
The only real 'evidence' given of his death is that Pam was so genuinely grief stricken when she returned to the USA [and died of a drugs overdose in 1974].
However, Jim was smart enough to know that to convincingly fake his own death he would have to cut himself off completely from everybody in his previous life - including Pam.
So Pam would have grieved in any case.
Jim couldn't allow her to know where he was going [or even the details of the plot] as she would have likely to have blown his cover.
The Doors last album LA Woman certainly gives many lyrical hints at his faked death [e.g. tracks like Hyacinth House, Changling].
Location: the anguish of anticipated transformation
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Originally Posted by al-Mu'akhkhir
man morrison was completely insane *hint*
have you not read nobody gets out alive? the dude was a goddamn maniac and an asshole.... I think it's funny when people read what they want to into famous people's lives... What next? Barbara Streisand the great philosopher?
ive read it. it does a good job giving people what they want to hear about. talks about how tragically he lived and how close to death he kept his mind. i suggest watching some interviews he did when he was alive if you want to get some of his philosophy and a good idea of his personality.
he seemed to be a tortured soul. for some people that can be beautiful and entertaining to observe and learn about how he lived, for other people its torture and pain to watch someone who seems to be conciously tearing up everything within reach
__________________ PLUR
Originally Posted by verklingen
instead of setting out to connect all the dots, the intent of zen is seeing the dots, letting them connect and then seeing how oneself connects to them.
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."
"Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens" Hendrix
"A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger"- words to live by
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