MYTHICAL PLACES

Located in Alexandria, Virginia, the "George Washington High School" is a place closely linked to Jim Morrison...

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Jim spent part of his adolescence there when his father, a rear admiral in the navy, was stationed at the Pentagon. The family lived in Arlington in the early 1950s before moving to Woodland Terrace in Alexandria where Jim attended George Washington High School.

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There, Jim lived in a basement room, which his period friends remember as being filled with books, original poetry, and artwork. By all accounts, he was an avid reader, writer, and painter, but not yet a musician or singer. During his high school years, Jim never once mentioned singing or playing in a rock and roll band. "It was a complete shock to me when he became a musician because all the time I knew him he never sang a note," Morrison's childhood friend Jeff Morehouse said. "In high school, the best he could do was start humming in the city library, just to drive the librarian crazy. That was probably the only time I heard him sing anything."

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However, the young Morrison frequented bars and cafes in the district to listen to bands and once gave a poetry recital at a beatnik gathering place known as Coffee 'n' Confusion (925 K St. NW). It was apparently one of his first public performances...

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Since reading the classic "On the Road (Sur la route)" by Jack Kerouac, whose character Dean Moriarty had a strong impact on him, his appetite for reading has not waned, his interest has been in literature and poetry, James Joyce, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, to the "beat" poets Allen Ginsberg,

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and especially Michael McClure, with whom he became friends in 1968, but also for ancient history (he was passionate about Plutarch's Parallel Lives) and for philosophy, especially for the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche who mark considerably. His results, his centers of interest, but also the status of his father, earned him the approach of several important fraternities, which he always refused to join, with disdain. He remains distant in all his social relations, rarely participates in parties, does not belong to any club.

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Jim had indeed the reputation of being a rather lonely young man during this period of his life. Nonetheless, he enjoyed psychologically testing those he considered narrow-minded or reserved - an "activity" the future DOORS singer developed as a teenager and continued until his death. For several of his friends "there was nothing accidental about this behavior, everything was calculated. It was a way of experimenting with others and evaluating their reactions, just like a social scientist would. There's no real rational reason for it, but he enjoyed it."

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After graduating from this high school in 1961, Morrison distanced himself from his family and friends in Alexandria. He never showed up for the graduation ceremony and went to stay with his grandparents for a while to take classes in Florida, his native state, before later moving to California to start a university course in cinema. where he met keyboardist Ray Manzarek (who died in 2013), drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger. Together they formed The DOORS...