Eyes [or Eye] was actually Jim Morrison's first published poem. Asked to write something by the 'Eye' magazine in 1968, he responded with this dazzling piece, which begins with a fascinatingly poetic evocation of what it means to be a rock performer. The piece then goes more into the territory of his earlier aphoristic Notes on Vision, but remains fresh, giving a myriad perspectives on sight and light - ending with the superb poetic line: 'the eye is a creatire of fire'.
Eye [Oct 1968 - Eye Magazine, USA]
Jim Morrison's first mainstream poetry publication is featured in the October 1968 issue of Eye Magazine, in an article titled Sorcerer of Rock: Jim Morrison Raps. The opening description in the magazine states "Jim Morrison Raps About Eyes And Being Eyed, About Touch And Being Touched". Stemming from an earlier notebook composition, 'Eyes' is a unique collection of 35 poetical aphorisms, statements, and passages pertaining to the optical sense. This collection of writings is not reproduced during Jim Morrison's lifetime and does not re-appear in printed form until 2021's release of The Collected Works Of Jim Morrison.
lyrics
He sought exposure, and lived the horror of trying to assemble a myth before a billion dull dry ruthless
eyes.
Leaving his plane, he strode to the wire fence, against the advice of his agents, to touch hands.
Standing close to appeal his invitation for admire him
worship or weapons.
The constant unspoken interior knowledge,
that his body was target
every public second.
Charged murderous awareness of beasts.
New nerves of sensation flowered on his neck spine garden.
When he looked at you, they said, he stripped back your skull.
Naturally.
For well wishing admirer smiles easily hide
death behind cat teeth.
Not paranoia or beyond grave carelessness, but a fine sensuous knowledge of violence in an eternal
present.
Cyclops. People who resemble primitive lizards have a jewel within their skull. Called the pineal gland, it
is located inside the brain at the juncture of the two hemispheres of cerebellum. In some this third
vestigial eye is still sensitive to light.
The eye resists detached analysis. Realize that the eyes actually are two soft globes floating in bone.
The impressions are seeing me.
Ask anyone what sense he would preserve above all others.
Most would say sight, forfeiting a million eyes in the body for two in the skull.
Blind, we could live and possibly discover wisdom.
Without touch, we could turn into hunks of wood.
The eye is a hungry mouth
That feeds on the world.
Architect of image worlds
in competition with the real.
There are twin planets
in the skull.
The eye is god. And the world,
for it has its equator.
Pluck out the animal's eye in the dark and set it down before an object, clear and bright, a window
against the sky. The outline of this image is engraved on the retina, visible to the naked eye. This excised
eye is primitive camera, the retina's visual purple acts as emulsion
Kühne, following his success with rabbits, was presented the head of a young guillotine victim. The eye
was extracted and slit along the equator. The operation was performed in a special red and yellow
room. Retina of the left eye offers a sharp but ambiguous image, impossible to define. He spent the next
years in search for its meaning, the exact nature of the object, if it was an object.
Windows are eyes of the house. Peer out of your prison body, others peep in. Never a one-way traffic.
"Seeing" always implies the possibility of damaged privacy, for as eyes reveal the huge external world,
our own infinite internal spaces are opened for others.
What is the fate the eyes during sleep? They move constantly, like spectators in a theatre.
The pupils dilate during abnormal states. Drugs, madness, drunkenness, paralysis, exhaustion, hypnosis, vertigo, high sexual excitement.
The eye finding its ocean after the idea of oceans has ended.
Enkidu was a wild man, an animal among animals. One day a woman exposed her nakedness to him at
a watering hole, and he responded. That day he left with her to follow the arts of civilization.
Mates are chosen first by visual appeal. Not odour, rhythm, skin. It is an error to believe that the eye can
caress a woman. Is a woman constructed out of light or of skin? Her image is never real in the eye, it is
engraved on the ends of the fingers.
In the Ars Magna, Great Work, the Alchemist creates the world in his retort.
The eyes are the genitals of perception, and they too have established a tyranny. They have usurped the
authority of the other senses. The body becomes a thin awkward stalk to support the eye on its rounds.
Why should the eyes be called "windows of soul" and key to deepest human communion, and touch
denied as mild collisions of flesh.
The body is not the house, it is the inside of the house.
The blind copulate, eyes in their skin.
The eye is "light at rest".
(Do we create light in the eye? Is light our own, or from the world?)
In Egyptian mythology the eye is symbol of Osiris, Isis, Horus; and the sun god Ra.
Ptah gave birth to men from his mouth, the gods from his eyes.
City-temple of Brak (3000 B.C.). Discovered thousands of small flat human faces of black and white
alabaster, without nose, mouth, ears, but with engraved and carefully painted eyes. Called the Eye
Temple: to house these offerings to a divinity.
Oedipus. "Reality" of her naked breasts. Her body. "You have looked upon those you ought never to
have looked upon". Eyes gouged with a broach from the dress of dead Jocasta.
Punish the eyes. Shrivelled breasts of an old woman. He is led from village to village by a young boy. And
everywhere they wait on his words.
Tiresias, said to have spent seven years as a woman, came upon Athene in the forest, bathing. She
darkened the intruding eyes.
Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. Blindness elevated him to St. Paul.
Why is blindness holy?
Alchemy offers man an original heroism.
The Mani taught that man was created as a helper by the messenger of Supreme God of Light to assist
by his life and efforts in gathering the scattered, thereby weakened, atoms of light and lead them
upward. For light has shone into the darkness and wasted itself and is in grave danger of being
swallowed wholly.
Man can assist in the salvation of light.
The process of transforming base metals into gold is called "projection".
In dim light, form is sacrificed for light. In bright light, light is sacrificed for form.
Code of light. The eye is sick. Pluck it out. The doctor removes the eye to save the body. To do this, he
must sever the optic nerve connecting eye with brain. Before anaesthesia, it was often reported that
the pass of the scalpel created light instead of pain.
Gradually, objects are constructed outside the body.
The eye arises from light, for light. Indifferent organs and surfaces evolve into their unique form. The
fish is shaped by water, the bird by air, the worm by earth. The eye is a creature of fire.
credits
from The Words of Mr Mojo Risin,
released March 22, 2023
Words by James Douglas Morrison
Sounds and music by Bill Boethius Osborn
Straddling the threshold between studio performance and digital technique; the NYC artist applies "fake jazz" principles to synthpop. Bandcamp New & Notable May 2, 2024
A collection of tracks from the singer and multi-disciplinary artist's 111 collaboration series, featuring KMRU, Laraaji, and others. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 25, 2024
