When the Music's Over
More time, as mentioned, is required to complete a full tour of Père Lachaise and that will certainly be on my agenda when next back in the great city. Besides the graves, I missed but wanted to see and those I wasn't looking for, yet came across, it was with consummate ease that I located the one I was truly there for; James Douglas Morrison.
Firstly, of all the interments in the cemetery, Jim is the only one with arrows and pointers, as marked and mapped out by fans, in order to help other followers pinpoint his sacred shrine. It is also rumoured that Jim's grave is the fourth most visited site in Paris, after the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Pompidou Centre.
It wasn't a difficult find.
Unlike Jim's death, which was shrouded in mystery, inclusive of some tragic circumstances (most likely as he would have wanted it to have been). It was certainly not prophetic, yet, in great irony, he himself visited Père Lachaise with a friend less than a week before he died, supposedly expressing a desire to be buried there. Spooky.
His burial on July 7th, 1971 - 8:00am in the morning, laid to rest 4 metres deep - was akin to that given a pauper and was described as 'piteous and miserable' by a certain Madame Colinette, who watched the funeral. Jim's long-time partner, Pamela Courson, paid only 366 French Francs for the most inexpensive veneered coffin the mortician had to offer. It cost just 878 Francs in total for the entire burial.
Madame Colinette has stated that the procedure of putting Jim in the ground took about 10 minutes. No priest or minister was present, no prayers were said. Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist, Agnes Varda, said a few words. Everyone left in a hurry and never returned.
After he was buried, nothing was left but a small mound of mud. A few days later, some shells were placed around the unmarked grave. They were stolen, as was the black shield the cemetery officials erected in August 1971, which read; "Douglas Morisson, James 1943-1971".
In 1972, another shield was erected, made of stone, with the same strange, French spelling of Jim's last name. This too was stolen, in late 1973. The grave remained unmarked until July 2nd, 1981, when a beautiful white bust, sculpted by a Yugoslavian fan, was erected. The remaining Doors came to visit the grave the next day, marking the l0th anniversary. The new bust, presiding over Jim's bones, proved very popular, until some over-zealous fans cut off the nose, painted on it and filled it with graffiti.
Eventually the bust was stolen, by some young Parisienne's, sometime during the night of May 7th/8th, 1988.
The grave returned to it's unmarked state for three years, until Jim's parents, Admiral George and Clara Morrison, erected a stone monument bearing the Greek inscription; "Katá ton daímona eaftoú". There are different translations available for this Greek saying. The most appropriate seems to be from the New Greek, which translates as: "Against the Demon within thyself".
Had the trail of Jim come to an end for me?
Obviously, I knew that I was finally about to visit his grave, after many years of hearing the tales of those I'd met who had made the pilgrimage, but standing beside it was perhaps not as surreal as I'd hoped it might be. It was wonderful to be there and Père Lachaise itself is such an epic journey through human history, but is was as significant as it was meant to be, just a moment in one's lifetime. A moment of impasse.
"We live, we die and death not ends it," Jim's words from his 'American Prayer' album. That's how I felt. It was his resting place, but not the final solution. He was not bound to the mortal coil and therefore time or sequence of events was not altogether pertinent. But like any tomb seeker throughout eternity, to be able to pay homage to a man whose poetry and music had given me, personally, years of pleasure, was richly rewarding.
So the few minutes I spent (never knowing when the exact moment was to let go my reluctance and leave his side) standing beside the monument and soaking in the atmosphere is treasured. As is the chestnut that I uplifted from the cemetery and somehow managed to get back home without the hindrance of a customs intervention.
I was disinclined to leave, but knew it to be a formality. An American guy from Idaho, one of only about a dozen of us pilgrims, who now share the same moment in time, mentioned also that he felt difficulty in motioning his body to actually leave and continue his cobblestoned journey to Boulevard de Ménilmontant.
But soon too, I was down in the subway at Père Lachaise and heading back to my digs. I stopped for a beer and some Chilaquiles further down Rue Poissonnière, at a Mexican restaurant, Zicaltela Rex. The heat of the Parisienne day had sucked the energy from my being, so I decided on a quiet night and caught up on some reading. There would be more Morrison location trophy hunting to be had on the morrow.
The first time Jim visited Paris was about a year before he died, without Pamela. He moved into the Hôtel George V (31 Avenue George V: Metro: George V) along with the Doors' financial manager, Leon Barnard and Leon's friend Rick. They led the life of normal tourists visiting Napoleon's grave, the catacombs, and Montmartre Hill. Jim wrote poetry while sitting on the stairs of the famous Church of Sacre-Coeur. After three days Leon and Rick left for Copenhagen and Jim ran into his old friend, Alain Ronay, by accident. Neither of them knew that the other was in Paris.