On Easter Sunday morning, we went back to the same Halal Bakery and Butchery and then went to Père Lachaise Cemetery to find Jim Morrison’s grave. Finding a grave cam be a little more complicated than you might imagine because it’s hard to plan ahead and keep everything alphabetical.
This guy came and flopped down as we walked past, opened his shirt and there were EKG studs stuck all over him. They weren't hooked up to anything. Moving on!
We’ll skip over the part where Bear thought we were looking for division 30 number 6 and it was division 6, number 30. No need to mention that’s nope, none at all. But we had a lovely tour of the cemetery. It was really gorgeous and along the way there was Murat, Seurat and Oscar Wilde and some very nice America school kids on spring break who had a map. Gotta love a map.
One of many roads a man may walk down...wait, that's Dylan
Even though I do enjoy some of The Doors’ music, just basic hits really that you can’t escape having heard at some point, my interest in Jim Morrison’s grave was a little further off the beaten track. One of my favorite singers in the 80s and early 90s was Steve Taylor, a somewhat off kilter, clever, satirical songwriter who took aim at his own faith but without being insulting to the faith itself. But God help you if you were a televangelist, a hypocrite or got into the media for all the wrong reasons. Most famously he had a song (“Colour Code”) regarding the Bob Jones University policy of not allowing interracial dating , a policy which has recently been repealed. But back in the 80s, when it was still in effect, Taylor would call up the university before the start of each tour and inquire if the policy was still in place and then keep playing the the song until finally the policy was repealed, probably more because of media attention than his efforts alone, but hey good for you man!
I had this poster on my bedroom wall plus the t-shirt and an autograph too.
My favorite Steve Taylor album was I Predict: 1990 and when I was in high school I managed to talk my dad into driving me four hours to see Taylor play at the first stop on his tour for the album. It was at the Tampa Fairgrounds and the conditions came together perfectly for an outdoor concert. He went on stage at 10 p.m. and the wind had just cooled things off when the man absolutely exploded into the stage with “Jung and the Restless”, a scathing indictment of a misguided psychoanalyst, then went charging through the catalog and winding up with an encore of “Jim Morrison’s Grave,” a song about the perils of seeking immortality through celebrity.
I get weary, Lord I don’t understand
How a seed got strangled in the heart of a man
While the music covers like an evening mist
Like a watch still ticking on a dead man’s wrist
Tick away
Ironically, that concert was the night before Easter, so it seemed really fitting that we be here in the cemetery on Easter now, seeing the actual grave, where Steve Taylor had filmed the video, surrounded by reminders that fame and renown in this world are fleeting at best and while the pieces may remain, like a watch still ticking on a dead man’s wrist, that life and resurrection aren’t found in these monuments of stone.
Jim Morrison's grave
We made one more stop at a bakery on the way out of town, taking a different route up to Calais to catch the ferry back to Dover. We stopped for lunch at a cafe in Calais and I’ve learned that my standby food in France will forever be a cheese omelette.
Pondering the Resurrection...and why I ate so much
We also learned that if you show up really early for the ferry and there’s not many people on board that they’ll just shove your butt on it two hours early without even asking how you feel about it. In this case, I was really happy but it was a little unnerving too.
A word about ferries. They’re cool and this one was much nicer than the crossing to France. It was a much newer ship and no large groups of hyped up school children. We had a tea from the Costa coffee bar, sat down in comfy seats, I read my book, Bear had his iPod, and it seemed like no time at all before we were driving off and back into England which looked no worse for wear since we’d left it. And yet somehow it looked a bit less cool because we were used to it and we were heading back to work and worst of all, Baby Juliet was at the cattery for another day so we didn’t even have her to greet us.
That aside, Bear has evaluated this as the best birthday ever, even surpassing #27 when he got front and center seats to Van Halen and got to meet them backstage (turns out he’s much, much taller than they are), so I think my work is done here and I can rest on my Wife Laurels for at least a week or two.
Cambridge Chipmunk 