Chris Balz's Blog
May 22, 2021
The Enlightenment and "End of the Night"
In "Dialectic of Enlightenment", Horkheimer and Adorno describe how a society built upon a framework rationality can yet run amok. Scholars who experienced the monetary currency extremes of the Weimar Republic in Germany, and then witnessed the tragedies that soon followed, they were well-positioned for this task. Writers such as Ferdinand Celine in "Journey to the End of the Night" dramatized the dark irony of democratic republics plunged into war.
Similarly today, we may be interested in the lyrics to "The Doors" song, "End of the Night", which shows influence from both Celine and the much earlier writer, William Blake. Beginning with "Take the highway to the end of the night", the lyrics echo the directness of the American plunge into the nightmare of the Vietnam Police Action, which although even formally defined as merely policing and not a move for victory as in war, is colloquially known as the "Vietnam War".
Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night" highlights the difficulties and insights an individual, such as the protagonist of his book who is a surviving soldier of World War I action, may experience while in civilian society. Similarly, William Blake's poem, "Auguries of Innocence", notes, "Some are Born to sweet delight / Some are Born to Endless Night". It may be said that Celine himself fell into such darkness, perhaps driven mad by his wartime experiences. Nevertheless, no less than Alan Ginsberg of the literary group known as the Beat Poets, a large influence on Jim Morrison's writings, visited Celine in 1958 and wrote much of his inspirations from Celine.
A contemporaneous supporter of the American Enlightenment, the Englishman Blake seems to echo its Declaration's "pursuit of happiness" in, "Some are Born to sweet delight". In "Dreamer of the Day" by Kevin Coogan, we see how evil movements have been born out of frustration in the derailment of societies based on such ideals. Compounding this is the unawareness - so eloquently and definitively described in Herbert Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man" - of the greater world that those in "sweet delight" exist in, utterly magnified by the great scale of mass society to the automatic nature of driving fast on a highway to "the end of the night".
Is there an answer to the conundrum where the ideals of the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment seemingly become endlessly thrown into various dark abysses? I am sure you can figure it out.
Similarly today, we may be interested in the lyrics to "The Doors" song, "End of the Night", which shows influence from both Celine and the much earlier writer, William Blake. Beginning with "Take the highway to the end of the night", the lyrics echo the directness of the American plunge into the nightmare of the Vietnam Police Action, which although even formally defined as merely policing and not a move for victory as in war, is colloquially known as the "Vietnam War".
Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night" highlights the difficulties and insights an individual, such as the protagonist of his book who is a surviving soldier of World War I action, may experience while in civilian society. Similarly, William Blake's poem, "Auguries of Innocence", notes, "Some are Born to sweet delight / Some are Born to Endless Night". It may be said that Celine himself fell into such darkness, perhaps driven mad by his wartime experiences. Nevertheless, no less than Alan Ginsberg of the literary group known as the Beat Poets, a large influence on Jim Morrison's writings, visited Celine in 1958 and wrote much of his inspirations from Celine.
A contemporaneous supporter of the American Enlightenment, the Englishman Blake seems to echo its Declaration's "pursuit of happiness" in, "Some are Born to sweet delight". In "Dreamer of the Day" by Kevin Coogan, we see how evil movements have been born out of frustration in the derailment of societies based on such ideals. Compounding this is the unawareness - so eloquently and definitively described in Herbert Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man" - of the greater world that those in "sweet delight" exist in, utterly magnified by the great scale of mass society to the automatic nature of driving fast on a highway to "the end of the night".
Is there an answer to the conundrum where the ideals of the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment seemingly become endlessly thrown into various dark abysses? I am sure you can figure it out.
August 16, 2020
Interview on the Doors Book with the Wonderful "Not Fade Away" Podcast
Burning The May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison A few weeks ago I had the sparkling opportunity to give an interview with the essential Margo Donohue of the "Not Fade Away" podcast series about salient figures of the recent past in the music and arts.
The interview was on Jim's poetry and my book, "Burning the May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison" ( https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/door... )
Margo has a talent for packing the most value into a 30 minute segment, asking what are in my opinion all excellent questions of me, the interviewee.
The podcast is on your favorite platform, including Apple, but please check it out in its native format on Margo's blog, here:
http://brooklynfitchick.com/2020/07/n...
And for posterity, I've saved the blog post (but not the podcast itself) on the "Wayback Machine":
https://web.archive.org/web/202008170...
I wanted to add a couple additional thoughts to cover a few points in the interview:
On the phylogenetic tree of Jim's poetry, I forgot to mention William Blake. In fusing Blake and Symbolist poetics, Jim managed to keep the vivid, striking experience of Symbolist poetry while adding the interesting aspect that comes with the more prose-like storytelling of Blake's poetry. Jim's poetry is almost equal parts Blakean and Symbolist. It is a diversity of style that is truly remarkable in poetry, and lends a vast breadth to its range.
William Blake was also a studied commentator on empire, something that Jim picked up on and incorporated.
On "What the color green" and related poetry and lyrics such as "Television children fed / Unborn living, living dead / Bullet strikes the helmet's head" (from "The Unknown Soldier"), it should be emphasized that here, only a single aspect of many possible ones of the general subject was being brought to light. The fact that soldiers such as Oliver Stone are such big fans underscores this.
I'd like to invite readers to explore some of the possibilities of images presented in Morrison's poetry, such as (from "All hail the American Night"):
What the color green
When I watch the T.V. & I see
helicopters swirling their
brutal & bountiful sensation
over the fields
...
In the podcast, I touched on the historical usage of the phrase "What the ..." as a condemnation. But I could clarify my point a bit more. "The Oxford English Dictionary" offers us a smorgasbord of ever-fresh examples. So what Morrison has done here is substituted "green" for "the devil", as in the common phrase, "What the devil!"
At the time this poetry was written, the helicopters seen on the TV news coverage of the Vietnam "Conflict" were landing over fields often of tall rice grass. Like the blades of grass bending under the downwash of helicopter blades, nature and indeed all the Earth's surface is bent under the "brutal" military olive-drab green. Green is also a color found throughout much of the land in the world.
So the olive-drab green "devil", here a brutality bountiful in its power, is everywhere, worldwide, much as the U.S., dominating the world's reserve currency and funding its operations by printing money out of thin air at the expense of the rest of the world, has been able to apply raw military power on a hitherto unforeseen scale and depth of worldwide penetration. Here we get a glimpse into Morrison's reaction to the realities of the "police action" in Vietnam in terms of the violence versus the ostensible noble objective, the means versus the end.
Go hunting in Morrison's poetry for images and stories that resonate with you, and post your reactions to them in the comments below!
And finally, I went and checked my guess and the verse that begins with "Dead President's corpse in the driver's car" is in fact from "Not to Touch the Earth". The title "Not to Touch the Earth" is used in the seminal anthropological study, "The Golden Bough" by Sir James Frazier, as a section heading. The book deals primarily with the ritual sacrifice of kings across diverse cultures in ancient world history.
Check out my book, "Burning the May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison", at https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/door...
The interview was on Jim's poetry and my book, "Burning the May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison" ( https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/door... )
Margo has a talent for packing the most value into a 30 minute segment, asking what are in my opinion all excellent questions of me, the interviewee.
The podcast is on your favorite platform, including Apple, but please check it out in its native format on Margo's blog, here:
http://brooklynfitchick.com/2020/07/n...
And for posterity, I've saved the blog post (but not the podcast itself) on the "Wayback Machine":
https://web.archive.org/web/202008170...
I wanted to add a couple additional thoughts to cover a few points in the interview:
On the phylogenetic tree of Jim's poetry, I forgot to mention William Blake. In fusing Blake and Symbolist poetics, Jim managed to keep the vivid, striking experience of Symbolist poetry while adding the interesting aspect that comes with the more prose-like storytelling of Blake's poetry. Jim's poetry is almost equal parts Blakean and Symbolist. It is a diversity of style that is truly remarkable in poetry, and lends a vast breadth to its range.
William Blake was also a studied commentator on empire, something that Jim picked up on and incorporated.
On "What the color green" and related poetry and lyrics such as "Television children fed / Unborn living, living dead / Bullet strikes the helmet's head" (from "The Unknown Soldier"), it should be emphasized that here, only a single aspect of many possible ones of the general subject was being brought to light. The fact that soldiers such as Oliver Stone are such big fans underscores this.
I'd like to invite readers to explore some of the possibilities of images presented in Morrison's poetry, such as (from "All hail the American Night"):
What the color green
When I watch the T.V. & I see
helicopters swirling their
brutal & bountiful sensation
over the fields
...
In the podcast, I touched on the historical usage of the phrase "What the ..." as a condemnation. But I could clarify my point a bit more. "The Oxford English Dictionary" offers us a smorgasbord of ever-fresh examples. So what Morrison has done here is substituted "green" for "the devil", as in the common phrase, "What the devil!"
At the time this poetry was written, the helicopters seen on the TV news coverage of the Vietnam "Conflict" were landing over fields often of tall rice grass. Like the blades of grass bending under the downwash of helicopter blades, nature and indeed all the Earth's surface is bent under the "brutal" military olive-drab green. Green is also a color found throughout much of the land in the world.
So the olive-drab green "devil", here a brutality bountiful in its power, is everywhere, worldwide, much as the U.S., dominating the world's reserve currency and funding its operations by printing money out of thin air at the expense of the rest of the world, has been able to apply raw military power on a hitherto unforeseen scale and depth of worldwide penetration. Here we get a glimpse into Morrison's reaction to the realities of the "police action" in Vietnam in terms of the violence versus the ostensible noble objective, the means versus the end.
Go hunting in Morrison's poetry for images and stories that resonate with you, and post your reactions to them in the comments below!
And finally, I went and checked my guess and the verse that begins with "Dead President's corpse in the driver's car" is in fact from "Not to Touch the Earth". The title "Not to Touch the Earth" is used in the seminal anthropological study, "The Golden Bough" by Sir James Frazier, as a section heading. The book deals primarily with the ritual sacrifice of kings across diverse cultures in ancient world history.
Check out my book, "Burning the May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison", at https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/door...
December 16, 2019
For the Wild Childs on Your List
Yes, you read that correctly: "wild childs", with an "s". "Wild Child" is a song by the rock band from the 1960s and 1970s, "The Doors". Throughout the ensuing decades, their work, and the lead singer's published poetry, has appealed to many of those who felt that something was not quite right with "civilization".
Jim Morrison's posthumously published works of poetry offer a wonderful synthesis of Symbolist and Blakean poetics. What's more, they give us a window into an epic struggle for cultural change, and how it was suppressed.
So for the wild childs on your holiday gift list, please consider my new book, "Burning the May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison".
You can find the book for many platforms at: https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/door...
Jim Morrison's posthumously published works of poetry offer a wonderful synthesis of Symbolist and Blakean poetics. What's more, they give us a window into an epic struggle for cultural change, and how it was suppressed.
So for the wild childs on your holiday gift list, please consider my new book, "Burning the May Tree: The Sacrifice of Jim Morrison".
You can find the book for many platforms at: https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/door...
