jim morrison
"She's the 20th Century Fox ..." I think of Jim Morrison, listening to his>music pouring through our miniature boom box (that matches the minature washer/dryer and the minature flat and the minature car I have.)
Jim always sounded like someone singing out of a distant graveyard, someone on a bit too many drugs with one miserable tormented life. I remember when I was in high> chool, for some strange reason we all thought it was cool, poetic in a way, that he killed himself in his 30s ... or was it his 20s?
I am 30. I am 32 to be exact; I find nothing remotely interesting or poetic about his death. I find it just incredibly stupid. But I am not here to tell you all about the life of Jim Morrison. There's plenty of books on him, including one in the Copenhagen airport that has a picture of an almost naked Jim, embracing the world or really just embracing the title of his book, a sort of picture frame around the words "Jim Morrison and the Doors".
So I think, humming through the "20th Century Fox" theme and my mind drifts to a small town in France. It's a town that was built in the 11th century, with the most beautiful church as the center of town. You can see this church, the massive steeple, for miles. Around the church is the most incredible old brick wall that fences in little stores, houses, tiny little gardens.
It's a town in the Burgendy region that's just dedicated to wine. Much of France is dedicated to wine, but the Burgendy towns are the leaders in wine awareness, promotion, consumption. These towns aren't volume dealers, nothing in southern central France is about volume. These towns are about obscurely named bottles of wine, that unless you are a wine expert, you never have heard of.
But even the wine idiots like me... we have at least heard of the Burgundy region. Now, what at all does this have to do with Jim, his suicide, and strange creepy songs of agony, death, sex?
In the Berkely Guide to France it says that one of the statues glued over the main entrance of the church resembles Jim Morrison. When I was at that church, when I was standing there looking straight into the faces of all those statues, I just couldn't find Jim. I am not sure if Jim the statue was buried with Jim the person, I hardly doubt that.
My own personal theory is the guy who wrote the Berkely Guide followed Jim's principles and life style a bit too closely. That this writer, a creative type, stood outside this church and somehow created Jim in some very drunken, stoned state.
Hmmmm, I assume that if I did enough of these drugs that maybe I too would find Jim. Of course I might find Jim in a Pizza Hut sign, buzzing down a>highway in the backwoods of Kentucky, or maybe he would be smiling at me in the Mona Lisa. You DO see the resemblance don't you? Jim and the Mona Lisa. Of course.....
And while I was at this church in southern central France, this amazing place, I got a chance to see Saturday Catholic mass. People were lighting candles and singing (they built the whole church just to perfect the sounding) and a priest was doing mass in French. The church was cold, impressively built with this incredible stone, but all organized in the most precise way. I am sure this church took at least 2 centuries to create. The guy who started this massive project is buried somewhere onsite, to be part of his life work.
Imagine.. Imagine you take your whole life just to get something started. You have big dreams, really big dreams. You fight for years with the locals on the budget, the design. You hire the staff, find all those people who can go collect all those rocks, carry up all those materials. Every evening you stand looking at the view the church will have when it's done, but not looking at anything that remotely resembles a church. Maybe you planned the wall around the city ... maybe instead you never planned a wall at all, but just stayed focused on this amazing church. And when you die, you have nothing but a half done project to be proud of. You have started something that is great. You have captured the 11th century, not the 14th or the 15th or the 20th, but the 11th for generations to come. And then in the end, or should I say your end, you are buried somewhere in the foundation. ("This>is the end beautiful friend, the end. I will never look into your eyes>again. The end...." Jim Morrison )
Thinking about this, I picture the ghost of Jim Morrison coming to this town, to become one of the statues. The gatekeeper, the guy who designed this place who sleeps in the foundation, tells Jim that his town is not for the 20th century, only the 11th. He's so polite and Jim is so drunk, rude, out of control. The gatekeeper would tell Jim to head on back to Paris ,that a great graveyard await him there in Paris.
The gatekeeper says (in French of course), " Really, Jim, your 20th century way of thinking isn't welcome in our gates .... and certainly not ON our church. But if you wanna buy some of our great wine, don't forget to stop at one of our many wine cellars on the way out of town. I am sure you will be a premier customer."
After I write this, I pull out the guide books to France. We have a million of them. The Jim Morrison grave is located somewhere in the masses of Paris, somewhere in this massive graveyard that houses all the real famous people. I remember our friends telling us that Jim has his own private guard, that graffiti is out of control near the Jim gave site. I suppose Jim was right .. People ARE strange.
I write down the location of Jim's graveyard, add it to the MUST SEE IN PARIS list.
