I have been tossing around this idea for awhile, but haven’t written much about it because I haven’t really done the research to write something good, something that will capture the idea that is looming in my head. But I want to jot down the idea now. Later on I will flesh it out.
It has become increasingly apparent to me that Dionysus is the god of rock and roll, and that Jim Morrison is his prophet. What is rock and roll if not rebellion, liberation, and ecstasy? Rock and roll is not Apollo’s music. It belongs to the Liberator. Real rock and roll, not the complete shit that gets peddled as rock nowadays, but real rock and roll is a thing of incredible, monstrous power. It channels a spiritual well that is overwhelming and intoxicating. Real rock and roll is awesome. It is mystical. It is a kind of black magic. And it belongs utterly to Dionysus.
Jim Morrison was posessed of something. He was a classic tortured genius, and he was in touch with something that was too intense for him-for any human being-to handle. It was like he was taking a drink from a power main, and there was only so much he could do with it before it used him up. In the end, it was so powerful that it devoured him and left him dead in a bathtub in Paris. But while he was alive he was a shaman, a prophet. He knew that rock was the purview of Dionysus–he said as much in his own writings and poetry.
Dionysus is the god of rock and roll, and Jim Morrison is his prophet. Wherever he is now–in the land of the dead, in Elysium, or wherever he has been taken by the god–he is reaching out to us, and inviting us, calling us to “meet him at the back on the blue bus.” We listen, we let it posess us, and we invite the god in to bring us into a new kind of life, if only for a few moments.
Sailing to Byzantium 