SL-WEEK 23: Narrowmost

It has been known for some time that today is the day ISIS had chosen to attack Roma. For today the Jubilee Year was launched in Vatican.

No no, can’t be today, I thought. Today, as every year, is special for three other things.

This is when I jump on Sylvain’s narrow challenge. Watch me.

First, the last time I saw my friend who celebrates today, it was a narrow escape. Our bestia loves her like I do, just a little too much. 😀 Hey, Darja, happy birthday and looking forward to pouncing on you again!

 

Second is a bit related considering how much she had to listen to the Doors in her car on our way to Paris (and to me singing every note along every instrument). AND she went to see the Oliver Stone movie with me, in Paris. AND to the grave. So nice of her.

Jim Morrison was born on this day back in 1943. I chose this song because it is

cool and slow with plenty of precision
with a back beat narrow and hard to master.

Additionally, it includes one of my favourite lyrics in the world that also applies to my blogger friends. Hey, Jim.

I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft

And the third, sad event: today John Lennon was shot in New York 35 years ago. I was ten. This was the first time that I realised that the world WILL kill some people off. And not even burp.

This song begins:

I’m sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

And we will never know just how much truth is out there to give, and take. Hey, John. Long live truth-seekers.

Since amore works in Roma, I was a bit uneasy as today approached. And then yesterday he informed me that today is holiday in Italy! So we had a wonderful, peaceful, unexpected day off. Hail Mary and your immaculate conception. (And all calm in Roma too.)

And to bring the word narrow to its narrowest meaning, this is a photo challenge after all, here is Piran, Slovenia, and its narrowness.

Hey, Žak!

Photo: MM

For Sylvain Landry’s SL-WEEK 23: Narrow

WPC: The Doors are for afterwards

… when your mind is already gone, said a critic. I must say that I love both The Doors as in the band, and taking photos of various doors, especially here in Italy.

Every Thursday I post a few for Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors challenge (here are all my entries and the featured photo is from one of them) but I liked posting doors (and windows) even before I’d learnt of it.

And before having this blog, I assembled so many Pinterest doors that I had to put them onto a dedicated board, together with arches, windows and stairs (none of these are my photos).

I embrace this opportunity to post all my recently taken doors photos for this week’s WPC so that I’ll take new ones even more gladly.

And since it’s today that Jim Morrison died in Paris 44 years ago, I will sprinkle my favourite Morrison lyrics abundantly around like you wouldn’t believe. You did ask for it. 🙂

Words dissemble
Words be quick
Words resemble walking sticks

Plant them
They will grow
Watch them waver so

I’ll always be
a word-man
Better than a birdman

Roma

I see you live on Love Street
There’s this store where the creatures meet
I wonder what they do in there
Summer Sunday and a year
I guess I like it fine, so far

Bomarzo, Monster Park, the Leaning House

We’re perched headlong on the edge of boredom
We’re reaching for death on the end of a candle
We’re trying for something
That’s already found us
—
Give us a creed
To believe
A night of Lust
Give us trust in
The Night

Montalto di Castro

The music and voices are all around us
Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream come with us
Everything is broken up and dances

Montalto di Castro

Wow, I’m sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain
South
I’m sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the T.V.
Tower. I want roses in
my garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
must now replace aborted
Strangers in the mud

Montalto di Castro

Morning found us calmly unaware
Noon burn gold into our hair
At night, we swim the laughing sea
When summer’s gone
Where will we be

Isola del Giglio

I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft
—
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant family

Photo: MM
Lyrics: Jim Morrison / The Doors

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Door.”

When your mind is gone

December the 8th is a peculiar day. Not only is it the birthday of a great friend, but it also marks the occasion of one birth and one death in the realm of music and life as such. Both have left quite a mark.

Not only me, even my parents were non-existent when the first thing occurred, namely the birth of Jim Morrison. I will not repeat his life story, read No One Here Gets Out Alive, and believe it or not, as you prefer.

“The Beatles and the Stones are for blowing your mind; the Doors are for afterwards, when your mind is already gone,” said critic Gene Youngblood back in the day. We shall see about that, but my 18-year-old self was digging that shit. I collected all of their music (with the help from a friend of my parents), I was at Jim’s grave (with exactly the friend who is celebrating today), I saw Oliver Stone’s film in Paris with her, and the next time I was in Paris I took my family in search of the house where he died. So understanding they were 🙂

Here is my favourite track (I saw that some people say Nirvana ripped it for Smells Like Teen Spirit):

When I was ten years old, “STOP”, the magazine that was in our home all my life, had a man on the cover with a black ribbon in the corner. I barely knew who he was but could feel that something major occurred. One of the things that you can’t really believe just happened and nobody does anything about it, sort of like NATO bombing Belgrade, or when they added the ninth year to compulsory primary school (I mean, really, children, no revolution?).

But yes, John was dead, shot, in front of his New York home (and Denis Leary would add: “And Yoko stood right by him and nothing”).

White is the colour of my favourite album and this track is pretty much mind-blowing all on its own (no matter what critics say and no need to be performed by any Nirvana members with Paul McCartney):

But I wish to finish with a song by John Lennon which brings many happy memories. Now you can rest in peace, John.

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈