Pic(s) of the Day 05.29.09

On my second birthday, my aunt bought me a walkman. She’d noticed that anytime I was around music my face lit up and I’d clap like one of those little windup monkey toys that slap symbols together with clenched hands. This was 1987, mind you, so this walkman looked more like a VCR and it only played cassettes. My cousin, 10 years my senior and always a musical influence, bought me my first two tapes – Guns ‘n’ Roses seminal album Appetite For Destruction and a “Best of” compilation by The Doors.

By age five, I knew almost every Doors song by heart. I’d walk around the house clutching my walkman and putting on impromptu performances of classics like “Break On Through” or “Love Me Two Times” or “Five To One.” Most times I end up writhing on the floor just like lead singer Jim Morrison (whose headstone is pictured above) used to do at the group’s live acts.

In ’91, when Oliver Stone’s Doors movie came out, I begged my parents for a month to take me to see it. Eventually they relented and took me – it was the first R-rated movie I’d ever seen.

In eighth grade I tried to read Nietzsche’s “Birth of Tragedy” because he’d been one of Morrison’s favorite philosophers. I didn’t really understand it.

When I got to high school, Morrison’s love of LSD and assorted hallucinogens was influential in my own experimentations.

To make a long story short, which I guess is too late at this point, Jim Morrison has been significant figure in my life. Sure, that sounds a bit silly – fruity, if you will – but my idolization was an unconscious decision made by my two-year-old brain.

So, when I found out I was going to Paris for a couple of days, my first ordr of business was predetermined – I would visit Morrison’s grave at the famed Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

It's said that Morrison's grave is the fourth most popular attraction in Paris. People come in masses to see “the Lizard King” and until recently, the grave was a nighttime party spot – now there are two guards stationed at the headstone almost 24/7. Individuals with family interred nearby asked that the traffic-attracting and oft-grafitti desecrated grave be moved when its 30-year lease was up in 2001, but Paris officials decreed that Morrison would rest permanently at the Pere Lachaise.

The cemetery, which is absolutely gorgeous and kind of reminds me of Central Park with grave sites, is home to a who’s who of prominent individuals, including Oscar Wilde, Honore de Balzac, Edith Piaf, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, Frederic Chopin, and Auguste Comte.

Still, Morrison’s resting spot is by far the most visited of all the famed graves. When I finally navigated my way to it, the site was littered with tourists. I waited several minutes and finally made my way to the front of a barricade about 10 feet in front of his grave. I paid my respects. I’d promised myself I’d do this ever since I saw his headstone at the end of the Doors movie. When taking pictures of the grave, I noticed a Greek inscription under his name. I didn’t know what it meant, but I looked it up: “True to his own spirit.”