March 25, 2023

2 thoughts on ““The Crystal Ship” by The Doors

  1. I first discovered The Doors courtesy some older kids who wore camouflage and what they insisted were combat boots to show their difference and diffidence. (This was the Eighties, so they were only seen as weird, not terrorists.)

    It’s difficult to describe the effect The Doors had on me: surreal in the waking dream, outside of time, powerfully sad. I remember The Crystal Ship as a powerful enigma and more haunting than their other songs. Like a kid I tried to make literal sense of the words, but now get he was writing a tone poem with emotions, the words only markers.

    I remember a passage from “No One Here Gets Out Alive” where Jim is described as the perfect Southern gentleman, polite and self-effacing, a charmer to the old folks, which surprised them. He drank and drugged himself stupid and eventually dead, but I think that was only a defense. The kind of love he wrote about was why I stayed away from it then–it’s dangerous.

    His fragile eggshell mind was broken indeed. He could never put it together again.

    Thank you for this remembrance.

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