Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller

Admiral George Stephen Morrison, father of rock star idol Jim Morrison. He was commander of the US Naval forces during the farce known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that helped escalate the pillaging, murdering, and utter destruction in Vietnam.

pictured with the clean cut Jim, patched cardigan and all, on the Bon Homme Richard in January 1964.

He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please

— “Come Together”, John Lennon, released 1969

Jim Morrison as photographed by Gloria Stavers in 1967.

i’m always amazed when i hear people tell me to not think too deeply about popular music — the music that forces itself into our ears and minds nearly anywhere we go. “it’s just a song”, “if you don’t like it, ignore it” etc etc. of course it doesn’t force itself upon us by its own will as these answers can lead one to believe. it’s carefully crafted, produced, and made available by people with specific reasons to do so — and one of those includes imbuing it with qualities that make it virtually impossible to ignore. the body records and takes in certain messages that aren’t necessarily consciously realized. the people who perform are deemed special and above the rest of us. we are conditioned to believe that only a certain set of people have gifts worthy enough to spread on this massive scale.

in turn the avatars performing these acts are viewed as individuals without huge budgets and production teams behind them. whatever politics they are thought to have are marketed in such a way that those processes remain conveniently behind the curtain. we live in an environment where debates over this or that video, awards show, misstep, or assumed liberatory messages overshadow production so much that dissecting what functions these avatars serve is deemed anti-feminist and racist by those bought into revolutionary politics as commodity.

with ruling class avatars in mind, those so-called individuals directed to perform at their behest via the media they own, here is an excerpt from one of my drafts that i wrote with a mess of such ideas in mind:

we are sold the lies that we are each special, unique individuals, but! we can only realize these qualities via mediation on their terms, through their media, through their co-option and appropriation of the forms of life we create. we are sold the false notions that these are the only ways to realize ourselves as humans. we are told: only we can represent you, while they would not have anything to sell back to us without our hard work and our sacrifices. our death that only arrives after we have worked a lifetime in servitude. and the deaths of scores of others are “worth it” for their security. they are a perfected version of us, these would-be devils would have us believe, holding closely their masks that disguise the putrid ambitions that possess them.

as long as they have the masks and the veils to make the circus seem relatable to what we are groomed to keep on doing, smiles, nods, adjustments — false promises all, the illusion remains. the illusion being that we can see ourselves cast in the shadows of their game only meant for their gain. reduced to chasing images scattered into a dizzying, well-crafted yet hypnotically chaotic display one might view through a child’s kaleidoscope. they never form coherently, though — keep twisting and twisting with a lifetime lived not for living’s sake, never coming into focus, for the searching and surviving only.

i am not satisfied with ignoring music that is mass marketed with the goal in mind of keeping consciousness safely in its grasp to aid in the fascist, imperial project of making people so stupid to not even question the dire reality of their material conditions. these things have never been “just songs” that an entire music industry has built itself on. just the phrase — music industry — i know i am not the only one eternally pissed off that such a thing exists. i find myself speaking with others about this or that “new” industry making commodities out of human activity that has not been channeled in such a way before, but i don’t know that i truly appreciate the full scope of what this standard means.

so for that reason i am going to be creating more posts based on not only looking more closely at the messages our modern day airwaves inculcate in us on different levels but also the production behind them, the whos, whens, wheres, and whats, to the best of my ability. i don’t view this as a matter of killing idols when they have never really existed in the first place.

by the way — i have no idea if that Beatles song can be literally matched to Morrison’s “breaking through”. a couple of things i do realize about the entire milieu during that time is that these artists were all touched, in some way, by the same forces that wanted young people to look the other way and chill out, do drugs, and drop out so that that century’s fascist wing could advance unfettered while drowning out any radical currents. i like to compare this process to the spools of thread i use to make my beadwork — just one spool can do so much, weaving through hundreds and thousands of different beads to create numerous distinct pieces that yet have the similarity of the thread and my handiwork throughout.

many of The Doors’ songs seem nonsensical lyrically and the chords and progressions they are attached to were meant to give off a psychedelic effect. having read David McGowan’s research on the various intel and military connections these icons had, some are given new, absolutely frightening meaning:

Well, show me the way
To the next little girl
Oh, don’t ask why
Oh, don’t ask why

Show me the way
To the next little girl
Oh, don’t ask why
Oh, don’t ask why

For if we don’t find
The next little girl
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you, I tell you
I tell you we must die

yes, remember not ask what role his father played to engender sex slavery and drug trade in seemingly far off lands whose inhabitants “deserved” such fate while his son was fashioned as rebel hero. these are actually serious questions to be asked that don’t get enough attention. and i maintain that much of this real life, material meaning can be determined in part by carefully studying messages they portray in context with other intel fueled methods of production. a question i often get is why would anything be revealed for public consumption? i ask: why not? and for my next post i hope to start to dig into how these themes work to reinforce not only the public’s attitudes towards this regime but the masters’ reasons for continuing on their path.