Jim Tosserson

OK, I'm going to just put this out there: Jim Morrison is a: stone. cold. wanker.

I understand the importance of art as much as the next person. Clearly. I believe that the presence of creative endeavour and artistic expression are integral to society, and that the suppression of the freedom of speech is the first step to dictatorship and is a loss of a basic human right.

However. There is a fine line between creative endeavour and self indulgence. Jim Morrison doesn't just step over this line, he snorts it and spews it up on the steps of a fancy New York Hotel.

Why is it always middle class rich kids? Why are they the ones who claim minimalism and wear the same outfit every day but are in reality just doing this because they spend all their money on smack? There is a story in this book about Andy Warhol giving Morrison an ivory and gold French phone, which he promptly throws out the window of a limo into a bin. I know I'm supposed to be impressed at his frivolous attitude to material things, but all I could think of in reality was: if he didn't want it, couldn't he have sold it and given the money to an orphanage or doctors without borders? If it existed then? Seriously.

Because I can handle all the microphone stand humping, the onstage masturbation is just peachy, I'm all for the "Father, I want to kill you"'s in the world, but it's the waste that I can't stand. The mindless decadence of being given a gift for lyricism and believing that the self is more important than the whole. For all his peyote snuffling under Alabama desert night skies, he doesn't seem to have ever looked up and felt insignificant - he probably saw himself reflected in the stars. He never felt himself as part of a whole that he could have made greater, he was just a boring nihilist hippie stoner, given thousands and pissing it all away on himself.

I don't know how much more of it I can handle.