Jim Morrison's Book From 1969 Feels Like It Was Written in 2025
Quotes I saved from this rare, privately printed book, The Lords: Notes on Vision:
“Look where we worship.”
“The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time.”
“We are content with the 'given' in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosised from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.”
“The body exists for the sake of eyes; it becomes a dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable jewels.”
“More or less, we’re all afflicted with the psychology of the voyeur.”
“There are no glass houses. The shades are drawn and ‘real’ life begins. Some activities are impossible in the open. And these secret events are the voyeur’s game.”
“Camera, as all-seeing god, satisfies our longing for omniscience. To spy on others from this height and angle: pedestrians pass in and out of our lens like rare aquatic insects.”
“Film spectators are quiet vampires.”
“A mood might overtake a people burdened by historical events or dying in a bad landscape. They seek deliverance from doom, death, dread. Seek possession, the visit of gods and powers, a rewinning of the life source from demon possessors. The cure is culled from ecstasy. Cure illness or prevent its visit, revive the sick, and regain stolen, soul.”
“The spectator is a dying animal.”
“I can construct a universe within the skull, to rival the real.”
“Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts.”
“Each film depends upon all the others and drives you on to others: Cinema was a novelty, a scientific toy, until a sufficient body of works had been amassed, enough to create an intermittent other world, a powerful, infinite mythology to be dipped into at will.”
“Films have an illusion of timelessness fostered by their regular, indomitable appearance.”
“The Lords appease us with images. They give us books, concerts, galleries, shows, cinemas. Especially the cinemas. Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent.”
“The prisoners built their own theater which testified to an incredible surfeit of leisure.”
“You may enjoy life from afar. You may look at things but not taste them.”
“You cannot touch these phantoms.”
“Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to enslave others.”
“The idea of the 'Lords' is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances.”
“The Lords have secret entrances, and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance.”
“When play dies it becomes the Game.”
“He dealt himself a hand. Turn stills of the past in unending permutations, shuffle and begin. Sort the images again. And sort them again. This game reveals germs of truth, and death.”
“The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet possibly finite, card game. Image combinations, permutations, comprise the world game.”
“The eye looks vulgar
Inside its ugly shell.
Come out in the open
In all of your Brilliance...”
These quotes are from my copy of The Lords and The New Creatures.
The Lords: Notes on Vision was originally limited to 100 copies, but this combined edition can still be found in libraries, used bookstores, and online.