Jim Morrison - book

Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend, by Stephen Davis (Gotham Books, 2004)

The last time we saw Paris (four or five years ago), my son insisted he had to visit the grave of Jim Morrison. It seems his grave is now the third biggest attraction in that lovely city, after the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. I confess I did not understand this. In fact, I had never heard of Jim Morrison or the Doors. I guess I am too old to be of the sixties generation and besides, I think I was in New Guinea during the greatest popularity of the Doors. Anyway, my son recently gave me a copy of Morrison’s biography. I have been trying to read it for two months. I am sorry to report, I have failed dismally. After I read the first two chapters, the first thing that popped into my head was a great line from one of Dorothy Parker’s book reviews, “This book should not be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force.” I was prepared to do this, but my son insisted I should read on as it would tell me a lot about the 60’s. I was not certain I wanted to know more about the 60’s than I already knew, but I soldiered on. Soon I was again ready to give up, but my wife (who is much younger than I am) insisted that some of the music and lyrics were not so bad. So I continued on, but not for long. I have failed to read this book. My mother taught me, “If you can’t say something nice about someone or something, don’t say anything.” So I am not saying anything.

I see that Greenspan has suggested that perhaps we should break up the big banks into smaller ones. Too bad he didn’t say so several years ago before they were “too big to fail.” I think it is a splendid idea and I am all for it. But why stop at banks? I think we should break up all the huge corporations which now basically rule the world. We should especially put a stop to corporate farming, but also corporate ownership of our primary means of (mis)information, the major news outlets. And along the way we should break up the big oil conglomerates, the telephone and energy ones, especially the food giants like Monsanto, the gigantic cattle lots, pig and chicken (fake) farms that pollute like crazy and bring us chemically loaded meats, and anything else that is claimed to be too big to fail. Walmart, Home Depot, and the other big box stores should also go. Think what this would do for unemployment, all those smaller businesses that have been put out of business would return, the quality of food and service would improve immensely. We would not be at the mercy of greedy hungry companies that are willing to provide us with terrible genetically modified foods in order to increase their short term profits at the risk of our long term health, acquire a monopoly on our seeds, and so on. Smaller farms would mean much better and healthier food and also using the land in a much more sustainable fashion. The costs of transporting food would go down and with it prices that are now approaching levels no longer possible for many to afford. I do not believe nature intended us to live the way we are now. We should be much closer to the land and our resources and nature in general. When was the last time you saw the stars? Do your children even know where their food comes from? Yes, I know this would mean turning the clock back a bit, interfering with “progress,” and returning to our agrarian roots, but so what, it would be a good thing. Why is it that Norway has the happiest citizens? We don’t have to go back to using digging sticks and clubs, but there must be a balance somewhere between technology and human needs and requirements that does not demand the physical destruction of the world we have to live in. Do we really need one or two thousand pounds of metal to take us singly to our petty destinations? What is wrong with trains and buses, even bicycles? Does every small town need massive storage facilities so we can store the stuff we acquire so rapidly we can’t even use it? Must we manufacture more things to kill each other than things that would improve the quality of our lives for everyone? There is something very wrong with our culture. Much of it can be summed up in the phrase “free-market capitalism.” As we experience it, it seems to mean simply that you never plan for anything, you just depend upon the market to take care of it. From a basic human perspective this is an idea so stupid it should never have been allowed. You like it, you live with it, you are.