Just watched Tom DiCillo’s documentary When You’re Strange.
Dionysos is a tough patron, and he leaves you, as the cowboys would say, “Rode hard and put up wet.”
Or dead.
But no one ever uses your music to sell cars.
6 thoughts on “Wild Child, Full of Grace”
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This.
The scene where he comes out of the courtroom, looking all bewildered, and I can tell that he’s just Jim right then — just himself. And he looks so exhausted and confused and scared. And I looked at my husband and said “He is the God who arrives and departs.”
So are you saying that Jim really evoked Dionysus during his performances? That he was ridden by Dionysus the way folks are ridden by the LOA in a vodou ceremony?
(I’m a Doors fan from way back.)
Lynn: I think he opened himself up to being “ridden,” yes.
And, for what it’s worth, Patricia Kennealy Morrison, who claimed that her handfasting made her his “real” wife, once began an essay about their time together with the sentence, “I married a god.”
So interesting. I guess I never really thought about it in the literal sense, even though I can remember the Doors music and Jim’s words really transporting me places as a little kid — long before I became pagan — what with all the talk of ceremonies in the forest and ghost dances and breaking on through to the other side.
I actually suggested to Patricia that “Been Down So Long” on their album L.A. Woman could be perfectly interpreted as an allegory of Valentinian Gnosticism, just like “The Hymn of the Pearl.”
Thank you for the reference (I had to google it). Gnostic Christianity is one more thing I have it in my mind to delve into, philosophy-wise, someday.