by Ray Manzarek
“I know,” came the sphinx’s reply.
“You do?”
She smiled. “I listened for yours, too.”
Amour, love, romance, sweetness, little fire arrows flying back and forth on the spiritual plane, cupid shooting wildly from heart chakra to heart chakra, hitting bull’s eyes.
“Would you…uhh, do you…uhh…need a ride somewhere, or something? I have a car in Lot C, it’s very close by,” I blurted out.
“No, thanks, I have a car, too.”
Oh, shit, rejection. Come up with something else, Ray, quick. “Where’s it parked?”
“Lot 12,” she said.
“That’s on the other end of the campus.” I had it.
“It’s all I could get. I’m only a freshman.”
My mind raced, unbelievingly. Only a freshman? She was as sophisticated and sphinxlike as this and only a freshman? How could this be? How could she…ahh, who cares? I just didn’t give a damn. Would you?
“Why don’t I give you a ride to Lot 12? It’s a long walk from here.”
“Okay. This is my last class of the day.”
“Me, too,” I said, beaming. I had made it, we were going somewhere together.
“Let me get my things.” She started putting pencils and charcoals into her little tackle box. We all had them to carry our drawing supplies, my instruments of torture and shame. I looked at her sketch. It was good. I flipped a few pages. It was very good.
“Hey, these are good. What’s your major?”
She looked at me quizzically. “Well…art. What else?”
“I was just wondering. I’m a film major myself.”
“Ohhh, the film school,” she enthused. “That’s cool.”
Try to be blasé, Ray. “Ohh…it’s okay.”
“What are you doing in 101?”
I swallowed. “Trying to draw storyboards.”
“Let’s see,” she said as she took my sketch pad.
“No, let’s just go. I’m not very good. I can’t get the hang of it.” I tried to take it back. She wouldn’t let go.
“Come on, Ray, let me see.” She smiled. And I melted. What could I do? She flipped the pages and smirked ever so slightly.
“You probably ought to stay in the film school,” she said as she handed the sketch pad back.
I laughed, half-embarrassed, half-clownish. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I intend to!”
She smiled again. Damned Cheshire cat grin of hers. Wise beyond her years. Knowing things.
“Good,” she said as she scooped up her supplies. We headed to the door, out into the corridor of the art department, through the double doors of the horizon and into the California afternoon. And she took my arm. Wow…Dorothy Fujikawa!
She has wisdom and knows what to do
She has me and she has you…
She lives on Love Street
As we drove to Lot 12, I went for it. “There’s a new Godard film opening this weekend. Would you like to go see it with me?”
“Maybe…who’s Godard?”
Ahh-ha! She doesn’t know everything. “A French director. He made Breathless. This new one’s called Contempt. It’s with Brigitte Bardot. They say she actually acts for the first time in her career,” I smugly added.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Dorothy cutely responded.
“Hey, anything’s possible,” I said, smiling back at her.
“I have seen The 400 Blows,” she said.
“What did you think?”
“I loved it. It was poetry with a camera,” she sighed.
“I agree. Brilliant film.”
“Who was the director?” she asked.
“Truffaut. He’s part of the Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave, like Godard.” I was the grad student now.
“It’s a whole movement?” she asked almost excitedly.
“Yeah…and Swedish films, like Ingmar Berman.”
“I’ve seen The Virgin Spring,” she said.
“You have?” I knew she was hip. “Have you seen Black Orpheus?” asked. “That’s my favorite of them all…”
“I loved it. It was so tragic,” she said.
“I loved the music. That Brazilian rhythm that goes through the whole thing. It was relentless. It never stopped. And the Greek tragedy set in Brazil…just incredible.”
“Those are the kinds of films I like best,” she said. “Something with some thought behind it.”
“That’s the kind of films I want to make.”
“Good for you, Ray,” and she touched my arm. It was like electricity. The “blue spark” that John Doe and X sing about had been set off between us. Ouch! I was burning.
“Here’s Lot 12,” she pointed out.
I stopped and she got out. “Well?” she said.
“Well what?” I asked. Mind on fire.
“Contempt, this weekend?”
I grinned my best Steve McQueen at her. “Wanna go on Saturday?”
She gave me her best Audrey Hepburn. “Okay, I’m free then,” she said. “See you in class on Friday.”
And she was gone. Dorothy Fujikawa. Man!
To support ourselves through UCLA, Dorothy had fifteen dollars a week in child support money from her parents’ divorce settlement and I had thirty dollars a week from my weekend gig as “Screaming Ray Daniels,” blues singer, with my brothers’ surf band, Rick and the Ravens.
My two younger brothers, Rick and Jim, those pups from Chicago who were now living in the South Bay—Redondo Beach, to be exact—had formed a rock band in the then-prevailing style of surf music. Music for the riding of the wild surf, for the hanging of ten, for the crying of “Cowabunga!” Music of the early sixties. Pre–British Invasion. And they had a gig at a beer bar with the ridiculous name of the Turkey Joint West, one block off the beach in Santa Monica. Dorothy loved to ask, “Is there a Turkey Joint East somewhere? Perhaps in Boston?”
Most of the heads from the film school lived near the beach, in Venice and in Santa Monica. Rents were cheap and it was all appropriately funky. Because I was playing and singing the blues with a surf band—everybody’s favorite music at the time, blues and surf—a bunch of the guys who lived close by would come down on a Friday or Saturday night. They would bring dates, get drunk, and howl at the moon. Knowing me, the guy on the stage, somehow gave them license to get rowdy and leap out of their normally cool, artistic, Beat personas and into a Dionysian state of goofy revelry. And Jim Morrison was one of them. Mr. Goofy. A funny, loud, and rowdy drunk, along with Paul Ferrara, DeBella, Dave Thompson, and Frank Lisciandro and his new bride, Kathy, the Madonna from Manhattan. (They were a cool couple. We dropped acid together, and you didn’t do that with just anybody.) And when Jim got loose he would shout out song titles at the band, mainly “Louie Louie.” We could always hear him barking from the back of the room: “Play ‘Louie Louie’! We wanna hear ‘Louie Louie’!” And the other assembled reprobates would follow his lead, laughing and sloshing and calling out from their cups. And Jim was in his element, loving the rowdy camaraderie of the whole thing, with his friend Ray onstage singing Chicago blues tunes and his other friends from UCLA blitzed all around him. It was good and raucous fun. We all loved it.
And one night I had the inspiration to announce to the audience, as Jim and the film guys were shouting out requests: “Ladies and gentlemen! We have a special treat tonight. A guest in the audience who just happens to be a very fine poet and a man I’d like to bring onstage and have him help me out in a special version of ‘Louie Louie.’ Jim Morrison!” And the heads started applauding and whooping like crazy. So did the rest of the crowd. Hell, they didn’t care; special treat, why not? Jim looked around, gulped once, took a deep breath, and then bounded to the stage. He was ready to rock. All loose and oiled and emboldened. Ready to give it a try.
“Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. Direct from the UCLA Film Department…Jim Morrison!” And I handed Jim the mic. And my brother Rick kicked in the opening riff of “Loui
e Louie,” and my brother Jim smash-joined him on piano chords; the drums and bass surfer-stomped the rhythm, Jim let out a bloodcurdling war whoop, and the Turkey Joint West went Dionysian. The fucking place exploded! People hit the dance floor and Jim and I shared the mic and began to sing “Louie Lou-eye, ohh baby, we gotta go!” He was good. And he loved it. He bopped around and sang himself hoarse, what with his whoops and yells and screams and shouts and his untrained vocal cords. But he loved it. I loved it, too. And, man, we had fun that night!
After the set, I joined Jim and the film school regulars at their back table and we laughed and drank ourselves blotto. Jim was so hoarse he could barely talk. His voice was no more than a whisper but he was beaming and making little “heh, heh, heh” laughing noises as we all slapped him on the back for a job well done. That was the first time Jim Morrison ever sang onstage. Who knew it would be far from his last. Maybe only destiny.
the beach and LSD
It’s late May of 1965, and Raymond Daniel Manzarek and James Douglas Morrison are now college graduates. We have finished our course of studies. We have matriculated into the school of life, from the shelter of academe into the jungle of reality. Expelled from the warmth and security and fantasy of the womb of Westwood into the howling, squalling, riotous, dangerous, psychological madness known as adulthood. What a place to have to spend the rest of your life.
No more leisurely strolls through the sculpture garden debating the fine points of Eisenstein’s theory of montage. No more idle hours at the outdoor snack stand—the Gypsy Wagon—in animated discourse on the superiority of Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks to John Ford’s The Searchers. I always found it incomprehensible how USC people could actually prefer The Searchers to One-Eyed Jacks. Some UCLA students were also afflicted with this lapse of aesthetics. They, of course, were squares, certainly not poets. However, they were entitled to their opinions, even if those opinions were, well…lame. And, Lord, how they defended them! With vehemence and ferocity; proclaiming their lack of hipness into the soft afternoon air. Unashamed, unembarrassed, and unrepentant. “I like John Wayne better than Marlon Brando.” “He’s got a rod up his ass,” we retorted. “His walk is ridiculous. Brando flows and glides; from the hip. Wayne lumbers.” They were undeterred—“It’s John Wayne’s best movie!” We snorted in derision, “John Wayne never even made a best movie. He’s a racist jock. He’s a friend of Ronald Reagan’s for cri-sake!” Their witty rejoinder, pressed to the limit of their critical abilities—“He’s an American, a patriot!” We laughed. “Boo, hiss. Why don’t you go to USC, where you belong, fascist!” That always hurt them. We knew that the phrase “true American patriot”—add “Christian”—was really unspoken code for fascist white supremacist. And they knew that we knew. And there was nothing they could do about it except to call us “Communists!” Morrison always laughed at that one.
“Hey, I love this country,” he would say. “I’m proud to be an American. I’d die for this country if I had to. Would you?”
And then he’d get in one of their faces, nose to nose, Marine-style. “Would you die? Would you die right now? Huh, would you?” Eyes blazing, intense as hell. He was running a number, a put-on.
Or was he? He was so damn sincere. So over the top. So on fire, so hyper that people thought he was ready to die. Right there. No brag, no excuse, no quarter.
“I’ll die, will you?” The other guy always backed down—hell, wouldn’t you?—and then backed away. “Fuck you, Morrison,” was the only thing left for him to say.
We’d toss lines from One-Eyed Jacks at the retreating figures. “Scum-sucking pig. I’ll tear yer arms out. Big tub ’a guts.”
So we were graduates. An M.F.A.—a master’s degree—for me and a bachelor’s degree for Jim, both in cinematography.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked Jim.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I been thinkin’ about going to New York City.”
I felt a slight sinking in my gut. I was enjoying our new friendship. It was just beginning to blossom. He was witty and funny and smart and hip and very well read. And now it would be over. Chances of our meeting in New York were very slim. Chances of our never seeing each other again were very good. And that made me sad. Jim was cool and I valued our too-brief association. I was going to miss this pothead, this avant-garde stoner, this rebellious psychedelic poet pal of mine.
“Too bad,” I said. “I’m gonna stay here in L.A.”
“I thought you would,” he smiled. “You’re the golden boy. You couldn’t leave the sun.”
“You’re right,” I laughed. “I love this weather. I can’t leave it now. Hell, I just got here. Besides, I want to see what destiny has in store for me in Southern California.”
“Destiny can be pretty demanding, Ray,” Jim said knowingly. “I wouldn’t ask too much of it if I was you.”
“Shit, man. I’m in charge here,” I replied in my puffed-up, “master of fine arts” hubris. “Destiny is an old friend of mine. I’m here in L.A., aren’t I? Hell, you’re here, too. We made it all the way out to the end of the West…didn’t we?”
His voice softened and saddened ever so slightly. “I won’t be here much longer, though.”
And a darkness crossed the bright L.A. light. Destiny was already extracting too steep a price; a separation of friends before a friendship had fully developed. I tried to plant a seed of doubt in his plan, hoping I could dissuade him. “What the hell would you do in New York, man?”
A long pause…“I’m gonna try to get together with Jonas Mekas, from Film Culture. Make some poetic films like I did for my student flick.”
I said, “Well, good luck to you, Jim. I’m gonna stay here and see if I can become a director in Hollywood. Make some features…the way I want to make them.”
I tried to lighten the mood, and laughed. “It’s my destiny.”
Jim smiled. “Then good luck, to you, too, Ray. I’ll see you around, man.” And he was gone.
Smash cut to forty days later. I was at the crossroads. I’m sitting on the beach, down from Fraser in Ocean Park, middle of July. Dorothy’s at work. (She had a little job at that time, cleaning computer tape. Big reels, two inches thick. Shuttle back and forth, spewing bits, picking up data, then processing data, then erase the tape. Bits of gunk remain on the supposedly erased tape, need to be immaculate; calling Dorothy Fujikawa. Clean that tape, honey.) She was the only one of us able to get employed at anything. What a profligate bunch we were. Talk about slackers. Man, we were the originators of Generation X-dom.
So we’re living on Fraser, Dorothy and I, nice little place above the garage of a California bungalow. One bedroom—rent, seventy-five dollars per month—overlooking the rooftops of Venice; looking out to the beach, the Pacific Ocean, the setting sun, and, ultimately, Asia. An idyllic student apartment. Great times were had there. Great lovemaking, moviemaking—Evergreen and Who and Where I Live—my design project, which also made it into the Royce Hall Screenings (featuring a lithe and nude Dorothy Fujikawa superimposed on our little apartment. It was shot on outdoor film brought indoors, to give it a golden glow. A most effective look on Dorothy’s beautiful body and a color that just caressed her lovely, soft skin). Great conversations were had there with Jim Morrison and John DeBella and Phil Oleno and Paul Ferrara and Dave Thompson and Bill Kerby and a host of heads, and some great acid trips were had there, too.
She’s at work and I’m on the beach, working on a tan. Big, lazy guy from the frozen tundra of Chicago is soaking up the rays of that great Aten disc in the sky and having an existential crisis. I’m at the crossroads. My brain is racing. What am I going to do with myself? Here I am, I’ve got a master’s degree in film from UCLA, I want to be a filmmaker—a director—I love making movies…and I don’t know a single person in the film business! How the fuck am I going to break into this closed circle of Hollywood? The worry continued: I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in economics from De Paul University in Chicago, an M.F.A. from
UCLA, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I don’t know how I’m going to make a nickel to support us. I want to ask Dorothy to marry me, but I’m flat busted broke. No jack in the bank and no real prospects. Shit!
I began to walk along the ocean. And everything around me was moving in slow motion, even the waves. And in silence. I couldn’t hear a sound except for the high whine of the ghosts that appeared when I entered the crossroads. The ghosts that were now accompanying me on my walk…hovering…whispering to me…telling me about what the future might be. Trying to instill the fear into me. Trying to panic me. They were insidious and evil. They had turned off the sound on the entire ocean and allowed only their high-pitched squeals to enter my mind’s ear, sending cold shivers down my spine. And they swarmed about my head, blotting out the light. But they were also ephemeral. They could be chased away with the blink of an eye, the wave of a hand, and a hard, clear thought. So I swallowed hard, shook my head, splashed some Pacific Ocean on my face, and they were gone. The waves came back up to speed and the sounds of the day switched back on. And, hell, man, the sun was out. It was a fine day and I was no longer afraid. The only decision was, What am I going to do with the rest of my life? And I turned it over to the energy. I thought to myself, I’m in no position to make any decisions. I’ll let the energy of the sun guide me. The divine energy. The all-healing, all-encompassing, all-nurturing, all-supportive energy. I went back to my beach towel and just plopped down.
And there I was, just sitting in the sun, being a bum, smoking a joint and trusting in the energy. And who comes walking down the beach, but James Douglas Morrison. The sun is streaming in behind him, the water is glistening, and I see this silhouetted figure walking along in the shallows, the shore break, kicking up water. I can’t quite make out who it is, but as he’s kicking at the water, diamonds are materializing all around his feet. He’s like an Indian deity, like Krishna—the Blue God—creating a field of diamonds from his footsteps, like Sai Baba, a popular guru of the time, materializing ashes from his fingers, but this human figure is producing glittering, ephemeral, now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t jewels. He’s making diamonds because of the way the sun is hitting the water from behind. It’s called backlighting. It gives everything a halo of light; it makes translucent objects shimmer with an inner fire. And the sun is coming in low and hard. It’s the beginning of eventide. The great orb is beginning its descent into the waters of the unconscious, into the underworld, where it will pass through the darkness, battling the negative powers, and rise triumphant at the next day’s dawning.