The Lizard King

(Photo of Jim Morrison with long-time girlfriend Pamela Courson)

I actually took the trouble many years ago while on a trip to Paris, to drop by the Lizard King's final resting place at Pere Lachaise. One of my HongKong acquaintances gave me a wide-eyed look: "Why do you want to visit a graveyard??" But at Pere Lachaise lies also Modigliani, Oscar Wilde and many other illuminaries of arts and music and writing (i have forgotten some of the other noteworthy names but google it up if you will). It was a mecca of sorts for me, being a Doors fan since my junior college days when i bought "the Best of The Doors" featuring a shirtless and slim Jim Morrison on the cassette cover. I listened on my walkman and was enamoured. Riders on the Storm, Light My Fire, Moonlight Drive. Jim had the words, he had the voice, he spoke my language, i understood the man. More importantly, he understood me. Later when studying abroad i went to the premier of The Doors' movie at the local cinema with an American communist acquaintance (haha a member of the American Communist Party now that's a contradiction in terms if any). Anyway, the American Commie suggested that in order to fully appreciate the movie, one had to get drunk. Heck yes, Jim Morrison was stoned most of the time if not all of the time. The band's name itself was taken off Aldous Huxley's the doors of perception and dropping acid was all the rage in the 60s and the rest of the story well, you know it. But Jim's appeal was in his poetry and his music. I didn't care for his druggie hyped-up image or his well-publicised temper tantrums (wait, i wasn't even born when those happened) or maybe some of it i did because it was all natural, of course. He struck a chord in me that was so deep i still feel it today whenever i play his music. Back at Pere Lachaise, Jim's final resting place was none too grand. It was just a plain old tomb carved out in concrete (not even a headstone of Jim like in the movie); there were some graffitti on the wall, some complimentary, others less so ("Jim you asshole" read one). One fan came and sat there not moving for what seemed like hours. I went, sat beside the tombstone, took some pictures, read the graffitti, then went on to see the other grave sites. In the movie eponymously titled "the Doors" directed by Oliver Stone with Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison's character, the Lizard king was portrayed as a wild child of the 60s. Indeed he was. Val Kilmer himself never personally liked the Lizard King, calling him a drug addict. Which wasn't false. But if one had to take drugs to be free, as so many other rock stars then and now do, it is a tragedy. Millions adore them and yet perhaps to release their artistic talent to the fullest they had to indulge in mind-altering drugs which ultimately destroyed them. What price creativity? What price freedom? Certainly not to die at age 27 years old in the bath tub after ingesting heroin, as Jim Morrison did. Fans mourned the passing of Rock's God. I mourn the loss of a life so young and so talented. One who was able to tug at my heartstrings in the most profound way possible as no one knew how. Mine and millions of other heart strings tugged at and broken when the Lizard King took his last and final trip through the Doors of Perception.
Jim, may you rest in peace. Wherever you may be.