People are Strange

Hi, I’m Kerrin Revell, welcome to my journey of thought, which today is about Jim Morrison, on what would have been his eightieth birthday and how he (along with the Doors) has affected my life, for the better.

People are strange, and they don’t come much stranger than Jim. Well, that depends on how you look at life, so perhaps I should switch it around and say none come more normal than Jim?  At least the normal I feel we should be and from what I can tell, Jim thought so too and lived his life accordingly.

He liked to test boundaries in everything he did and  with other people, including crowds at Doors concerts. Have a listen to the Miami concert, if you need a good example. This has led to Jim being portrayed as a clown or a menace and perhaps sometimes he was, but we’re all guilty of that from time to time. I don’t believe he was doing these things to be provocative for the sake of being provocative but to get people to think and feel and to jolt people out of their comfort zones, which have usually been set up by others.

And this is where my story starts.

Childhood and especially teenage years can be awful, confusing and lonely and that’s at the best of times! This was true for me, and I certainly didn’t have a unique experience when it came to those years. I felt strange and isolated and that nobody understood me (I think we all thought that and the truth is more likely that everyone did understand us, just that we didn’t want to admit it). I definitely wasn’t fitting in though. Being a guy who was interested in acting, art and poetry in a rural school where rugby and farming were the main points of interest meant I certainly stood out and not in a good way.

On one of those teenage days, I was having those exact thoughts and feeling sorry for myself, when I heard the Doors for the first time. I heard Break on Thru and a number of other songs and was excited and intrigued by the fact that the songs seem to be very poetic, floating over a sea of fantastic music. By the time I heard People are Strange, I was hooked.

I had never heard a song that appeared to be speaking directly to me and that whoever wrote it had experienced and felt exactly the same things as I currently was. This started me on a quest to find out who wrote the song(s) and everything about them. I am still on that quest today.

What this also meant was that I realised it was ok to be strange and that, really, we are all strange. Through my research into Jim Morrison I also learned to appreciate knowledge, art and poetry even more. Perhaps, more importantly it also taught me to make me understand my feelings better and to always dig deeper into feelings and knowledge and life itself. I doubt I will ever reach Jim’s levels of that but I can try. 

So, happy birthday Jim Morrison, gone too soon but never forgotten and a fantastic influence on me. I wish you were still around to celebrate your eightieth birthday.

If you’re looking for a good movie or documentary I suggest staying away from Oliver Stone’s The Doors and instead watch When You’re Strange by Tom DiCillo. Tom does a much better job showing who The Doors and Jim are and it’s a lot more entertaining too. Plus you get to see some incredible, crystal clear images of Jim Morrison, expertly shot by Paul Ferrara when he and Jim made a film called Hwy, which is sadly still unreleased. In fact, the images are so good that Tom was accused of using a Jim Morrison look-a-like or Jimitator, as they’re called in the Doors world. 

Another one is Feast of Friends, which is more cinéma vérité than a talking heads documentary. You get to follow the Doors around on tour and watch them hang out, whilst listening to their amazing music. Maybe you won’t learn much but you’ll have a good time.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHaGrZkkv4