Entry #1 The Crystal Ship (The Doors)

Entry #1

       



The Crystal Ship (The Doors)  -  Lyrics

Intro: Fragment of 'Ghost Song', written and recited by Jim Morrison 

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it's quiet side.
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the woolly cotton brains of infancy.
The music and voices are all around us.


Before you slip into unconsciousness
I'd like to have another kiss
Another flashing chance at bliss
Another kiss, another kiss

The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We'll meet again, we'll meet again

Oh tell me where your freedom lies
The streets are fields that never die
Deliver me from reasons why
You'd rather cry, I'd rather fly

The crystal ship is being filled
A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time
When we get back, I'll drop a line.

Source of the video: YouTube 
Source of lyrics: Songfacts.com
In both cases, last visited May 6, 2020

This song has been recorded in Los Angeles (California) in 1966, and released the following year in The Door's debut album (also named The Doors). I could write for hours, even days, about this band that has so well comforted me, back in my teenage years. But such is not the purpose of this post, so I will conclude this brief informative introduction by saying that its lead singer, Jim Morrison, died at the age of 27 in a bathtub in Paris, victim of his addiction to drugs and alcohol. 

An endearing connection between The Doors' art and me was originated as a sudden spark that immediately took all that was there to be taken: my whole teenage being fell under their spell.  I was captivated by the mischievous Jim, his dexterous and picturesque fellow musicians, and all that poetry pouring out from their songs, blooming for me, to whom everything was new; the souls of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Blake, embracing mine through this gifted singer who acted as a medium with his rough, still sweet voice. Discovering The Doors was for me the reification of a whirwind of previously diffuse emotions and fantasies about love, life, beauty, excess and death. I watched their videos (in VHS, it was the 90's) and eagerly listened to all of their records, including low-fi recordings of some of their gigs. So earnestly did I seize these songs, that I still consider them a remarkable part of my formation. Nevertheless, I could not assert that they represent a moment of my current life, since three decades have gone by from the moment I first heard of them. But, after all the music I have devoured -and it has certainly been a fair deal- I cannot help but go back to them, if asked about a transcendental rock band in my life. 

The Crystal Ship merges sadness and joy (or finds joy in sadness?), it is dark but bright. "The days are bright and filled with pain...", in the second stanza, is an unpretentious oxymoron that condenses a two-sided perception of things. Whereas, in the final line of the last stanza, "When we get back, I'll drop a line", a goodbye is announced and a promise of return is sealed, at the same time. How ravishing it is to find an equivalent image, and may the comparison be condoned, in Robert Burns' celebrated poem A Red, Red Rose: "And fare-thee-well, my only Luve! And fare-thee-well, a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile". Now I wonder if teenage years are not precisely about that, a farewell to infancy and a preparation for adulthood. I see this song as a passage. Everything in life is a passage, an entrance, a door to something else. I hold in high regard this idea of being in transit, of seeing oneself as a pilgrim embarked in a personal search. There is plenty of poetry and life in it.

The video that accompanies this song is a true jewel to me: it displays documentary images of young people sporting carelessly in a river. Bucolic and naive, they represent a whole generation: the Flower Power counterculture -even though Jim Morrison's artistic and cultural formation owes the poètes maudites a great deal, them who had not much in common with the hippie worldview. And this is exactly  another feature of this artist that stands out: his multifaceted personality. He would not content himself with following a single line of thought, but grasped from here and there. Probably I am a bit like that too, I can mirror myself in that attitude towards life. But I will definitely not jump on a crystal ship to collide with the rocks. Shamefully, he did. 

 Jim (lead singer of The Doors and poet) and his girlfriend, Pam.

Source of the picture: 60sblog.com (last visited May 6, 2020)

I have visited Jim's sepulchre twice, at the legendary Cimitière du Père-Lachaise, in Paris. Although someone took a picture of me sitting on the ledger stone (ah, those indomitable 15 years old...) the file which contains that image behaves furtively at this height of the night. Hopefully, I will find it soon and post it here.

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Because a promise made is a debt unpaid, here is the picture.

Visiting Jim. 1990.

And also a (very awful) close-up of the epitaph, worth posting for its message in ancient Greek 

James Douglas Morrison
ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ,
literally meaning "according to his own daemon" or "true to his own spirit"

The Doors were named upon Blake's phrase

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 

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Metacognitive Analysis #1

To work with a song is an awesome chance to analize a poem and all the imagery that it brings along. To work with a video of a song is even better, considering that there are tangible images to include in the analysis. To work with a video of a song of our choice is unbeatable: it intermingles the two previous possibilities, and adds a very special feature, one's personal engagement. 

Songs have always been a great source of input for second language learners. It is enough to look back at our childhood/adolescence years to find sufficient proof. Even the least music lover remembers a song in English, and has grasped something -at least one lexical item- from it. Music is a natural vehicle for words, in any language they might appear. And infants, as well as teenagers, adore working with a song. They perceive it as a break from those rigid and lonely drills, that unfortunately still persist in a classroom. 

Finally, I hold that the analysis of a song of our free choice is a lovely invitation to speak about ourselves as individuals. The way we behold art, the way we express our emotions, and the most important things in our lives, will surely be revealed in that analysis.