Jim Morrison Essays - Counterculture Of The 1960s, Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison " The Doors. There's the known. And there's the unknown. And what separates the two is the door, and that's what I want to be. Ahh wanna be th' door. . ." - Jim Morrison Jim Morrison is often thought of as a drunk musician. He is also portrayed to many as an addict and another 'doped up' rock star. These negative opinions project a large shadow on the many positive aspects of this great poet. Jim's music was influenced heavily by many famous authors. You must cast aside your ignorance and look behind the loud electric haze of the sixties music. You must wipe your eyes and look through the psychedelic world of LSD. Standing behind these minor flaws, you will see a young and very intellectual poet named Jim Morrison. Jim Morrison's distraught childhood was a contributing factor to Jim's fortune and his fate. As a young child, Jim experienced the many pains of living in a military family. Having to move every so often, Jim and his brother, and sister never spent more than a couple of years at a particular school. Jim attended eight different schools, grammar and High, throughout his schooling career. This amount of traveling made it hard for a young child to make many friends. In high school, Jim had an especially hard time, "The only real friend he made was a tall but overweight classmate with a sleepy voice named Fud Ford " (qtd. in Sugerman 9 ). Although there seems to be many negative aspects of Jim's child hood, many positive did arise. II The traveling done by the Morrison family brought Jim through may different experiences and situations. For instance, while driving on a highway from Santa Fe with his family, he said he experienced, "the most important moment of my life" (qtd. in Russel 6 ). The Morrisons came upon an overturned truck of dying Pueblo Indians. This moment influenced Jim and later became the basis of many of his songs, poetry, stories, and thoughts. Jim Morrison's estranged childhood was the root underneath his bizarre and eccentric personality. The negative effects of his upbringing helped to mold the Jim into the person he would later become. Jim Morrison's strange sense of humor and sickness were just fractions of his very intellectual mind. Jim and his family moved to Alemeda, California. This is where he would start first year and a half of his high school journey. Morrison's creativeness and infatuation with Mad Magazines led to the horrification of many. When he would arrive late to class, he would tell elaborate stories to the teachers about being kidnapped by gypsies. Jim's subtle and bizarre personality was now starting to form. Jim's wild imagination begin to produce hundreds of scatological and sexually explicit ideas in the form of pictures and make believe radio commercials. The deranged pictures that Jim created, were ones with quite an abnormality. For instance, the picture Jerry Hopkins describes, "a man with a Coca-Cola bottle for a penis, a mean looking can opener for testicles, one hand held out and dripping with slime, more of that slim dripping from his anus." III All of Jim's and Fud's focuses again were sexual, or scatological, but they were imbued with sophistication and subtle humor unusual for someone only fourteen. No doubt, Jim's sexually demented mind was now partially formed. The once young and innocent Jim Morrison was now older and more harmful. Late in his sophomore year, Jim moved to Alexandria, Virginia. Her he met Tandy, his first girlfriend. Jim now ill-mannered, constantly horrified others, especially Tandy. He would make public scenes by kissing her feet or asking her to do ridiculous acts out loud. Tandy though, was not the only one subjected to Jim's "Tests", his teachers suffered as well. " I asked him why he played games all the time, " Tandy says today. " He said, ' You'd never stay interested in me if I didn't." Indeed that was the case not only with Tandy, but also at school. Jim was now looked upon as the ring leader by his peers. Everybody wanted to be like Jim, they all competed for his attention, "Jim's magnetism was becoming obvious" (Surgeman 16 ). Right down to his expressions, his peers mimicked all of his actions. But Jim never led them like they wanted to be led. Jim once again started taking Death defying risks that he would also subject his brother to. He forced Andy to walk along an edge that hovered fifty feet above the