P.S. Jim Morrison's Notes and "The Doors of Perception"

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite."--William Blake

Much of Morrison’s art aimed “to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” This was the impulse behind the name for his band. “The Doors” comes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1794):

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.

In this short clip, Morrison’s band mates Robby Kreiger and John Densmore explain the band’s name:

Morrison’s poetry, like his music, was in step with the political and sexual revolutions of the 1960s. The point of art, according to Morrison, was to wake up the audience, to startle them into seeing the world as it truly was. To clear “the doors of perception,” as William Blake wrote. For this, Morrison resorted to violence or sex:

I rely on images of violence, which bring the shock of pain, to penetrate the barriers people erect and defend, not simple defenses; the phony facades people live behind. Blocking their perceptions from coming in, and blocking their feelings from coming out. There are two ways I try to shatter those facades, or at least make a hole where something can get in, to let the trapped feelings out—one way is violence, pain. The other is eroticism.¹

Join me on this exploration of Morrison’s notes from the rebellious, creative 1960s. Witness Morrison cleaning “the doors of perception” and borrowing lines from his poetry notes for “Break on Through.”

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