Books like The American Night: The Lost Writings, Vol. 2

Jim Morrison was a philosopher-poet, a mythopoeic visionary in the tradition of Blake, a Dionysian wild child who died before his time. The two volumes of poetry published posthumously as Wilderness and The American Night reveal the growth of Morrison’s poetic voice and his creation of an American mythos that is dark, hypnotic, and transgressive.The American Night combines performance pieces from The Doors’ discography with previously unpublished poems from his notebooks. The collection begins with An American Prayer, the last of Morrison’s three self-published books of poetry and one of the performance pieces recorded between 1969 and 1970. Here he announces his poetic project:“Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages” (3)The West is the BestThe landscape of his new mythos is the desert of the American southwest. The development of this imagery can be traced back to his second self-published volume of poetry, The New Creatures, but it appears here in a more mature form in the poem, “The Desert.” “The Desert —roseate metallic blue & insect green blank mirrors & pools of silver a universe in one body” (23)The god of this universe is the Lizard King, with his leather pants, his tousled mane, his deep bluesy voice, and that boyish charisma that could found a cult. In “Celebration of the Lizard,” Morrison tells a story that he has been developing since The Doors’ first album. Here the Oedipal drama of “The End” reaches its climax. He is omnipotent. “I am the Lizard King I can do anything” (45)This story ~ Morrison’s modern myth ~ follows a hitchhiker named Billy who murders his way across the American landscape. In “The End,” the killer murders his own family. In the screenplay for “The Hitchhiker,” he kills motorists, a sheriff, and a young woman who has sex with him. After he is executed, he walks off into a surreal desert landscape to join a bizarre trio of “hobos in Eternity” (80). In “Celebration of the Lizard,” the desert imagery becomes completely hallucinatory.“One morning he awoke in a green hotelW/ a strange creature groaning beside him.Sweat oozed from its shiny skin” (39). Morrison’s universe is one in which “all the children are insane” (111). Thus his hero ~ his antihero ~ is an outlaw, a hitchhiker, a killer, someone who exists on the boundaries of society, someone who dwells in the liminal places between real and unreal, good and evil, life and death.The highway is another such liminal place. On the posthumously-released album An American Prayer, Morrison shares a formative memory from his early childhood. He begins with two lines from “Peace Frog.”♫ Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleedingGhosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind. ♫Then he describes being four years old. His family was driving through the desert and he saw a group of Indians whose truck had been in an accident. They were bleeding to death on the highway. This memory seems to have contributed heavily to Morrison’s personal mythology. This vision of death is the one most often met with in his poetry ~ violent, surreal, and meaningless. But for all his bacchanalia, Morrison is not at home in a meaningless universe. Like the Nietzschean superman, he seeks a revaluation of all values. And the creation of new values means the destruction of the old. Sex and death. This is expressed most explicitly in “Lament for the Death of My Cock.” “Death & my cockare the world” (60)Some matters are so grave that they can only be approached with humor. And the meaninglessness of sex and death is indeed a grave matter. So Morrison looks to religion, for religion has traditionally given meaning to sex and death. Cancel My Subscription to the ResurrectionThe most famous exposition of Morrison’s views on his WASP heritage appears in “The Soft Parade.”“When I was back there in seminary schoolThere was a person there Who put forth the proposition That you can petition the Lord with prayerPetition the Lord with prayerPetition the Lord with prayerYou cannot petition the Lord with prayer!” (49)As a performance piece, this is powerful stuff. Morrison could have been a preacher if he wasn’t a rebel. His performance pieces are ecstatic rituals, mythic rites in which the audience participates. This is a theme that goes all the way back to his first self-published volume of poetry—The Lords. In that work, he deplores the fact that spectatorship has replaced participation. He remedies this in “Celebration of the Lizard.” “Is everybody in? (3)The ceremony is about to begin.Wake up!” (39-40)He exhorts his audience to participate. He calls to them to join him.“Brothers & sisters of the pale forestO Children of NightWho among you will run w/ the hunt?” (45)In his search for meaning, he rejects his Protestant upbringing. In “I Want to Tell You,” a variation on LA Woman’s “The WASP: Texas Radio and the Big Beat,” he subverts his religious tradition. “no eternal reward willforgive us now for wasting the dawn” (126)And in “Celebration of the Lizard,” he perverts it.“The minister’s daughter in love w/ the snake” (43)In “Always a Playground Instructor,” he plays with Catholicism ~ an aesthetic and visceral faith compared to Protestantism.“The dark girl begins to bleed. It’s Catholic heaven. I have an ancient Indian crucifix around my neck. My chest is hard& brown. Lying on stained &wretched sheets w/ a bleeding Virgin. We could plan a murder, or Start a religion” (124) But Morrison needs something more primitive, more primal. He needs wild abandon, savagery. He needs drums and dancing. And so it is to the religions of indigenous peoples that he turns. To the Ghost religion of the American Indians. To the tribalism of Africa. And to the revelry of the rock concert.Stoned ImmaculateIn “The WASP: Texas Radio and the Big Beat,” Morrison combines verses from the poems “I Want to Tell You” and “Now Listen to This” to create a church of psychedelic blues. He has moved beyond the questioning and criticizing of religion. Now he offers something. He creates something. It begins with rhythm. ♫ I want to tell you about Texas Radio and the big beat It comes out of the Virginia swamps Cool and slow, with plenty of precision, and a back beat Narrow and hard to master ♫Then it all comes together: the death of God ...♫ Listen to this and I'll tell you about the heartache,I'll tell you about the heartache and the loss of God ♫... the sermon delivered in the booming preacher’s voice ...♫ Some call it heavenly in its brilliance Others, mean and rueful of the Western dream I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping This is the land where the Pharaoh died ♫ ... the rebirth of the phallic snake ...(On LA Woman, this performance piece is preceded by a cover of the traditional blues song “Crawling King Snake,” a song most associated with bluesman John Lee Hooker.)♫ I’m a crawling king snakeAnd I rule my den ♫... and salvation.♫ The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered And they are saying, “Forget the night! Live with us in forests of azure. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars Out here we is stoned—immaculate. ♫I consider this to be Morrison’s masterpiece. Here he brings his vision of a new American mythos to fulfillment. He confronts “the loss of God” and the failure of “the Western dream.” In place of what is lost, he offers primitive innocence and ecstatic revelation. This brilliant poem also sketches a history of American music.He uses the familiar imagery of the Exodus to rouse his congregation, to inspire their own escape from enslavement to a foreign god, but this verse also recalls the spirituals and gospel songs of the American south as well as the rhythmic music of the preacher’s sermon.The use of “Crawling King Snake” introduces American blues and reinforces the relationship between American music and its African roots. The “brightly feathered” natives in their “forests of azure” are the ancestors of American bluesmen, as blues is the ancestor of rock & roll. When the Music’s OverMorrison never got the chance to reach his full potential as a poet, but reading his poetry ~ from the early pieces of The Lords and the New Creatures to the lyrics he wrote for The Doors to the more polished poems on the recording An American Prayer ~ one thing is clear: Morrison was more than just the shaman of psychedelic blues, more than just the patron saint of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, more than just the rock god worshiped by thousands of adoring fans. He was a true poet.