Expert: DK - 4/3/2003

Question
Hi!
I am a 19 years old fan of the band, but some things are not clear for me. As you know the lyrics are quite dark and hypnotic. It is very interesting for me to read the poems and lyrics of the songs, but most of the times my understanding of them is (i think) low because of the symbols used. By example, i am really stuck in THE END, what does the long snake and the blue bus mean? and.. whose skin is old and cold? the west is meant to be california?

Taking advantage of this opportunity, i would like to ask you where can i find or get a copy from the HWY movie?

I appreciate a lot your attention and let me congratulate you for this hard dedication to the band.

Thank You  

Answer
Hi Rodolfo,

When asked what The End meant, Jim replied,
“It started out as a simple goodbye song, it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be.”
So you could ask five different people what any Doors song means, and you would most probably get five different answers….

Before I get to ‘The End', let's take a look at the album as a whole, it begins with Jim probing life as something to be lived, yet always recognising that life is mystical and made of many realities. But living doesn't allow absolute freedom, and people constantly search for sanctuary. Since neither love nor sanctuaries offer security, Jim turns to ‘The End' as his beautiful and only friend.

‘THE END'
Surrendering to a sense of hopelessness so beautifully rendered in the song's opening, Jim takes the hand of his only friend, the end.
The imagery and music then moves on as Jim seeks freedom, riding the King's highway, riding the snake to the ancient lake, going west, and answering the call of the blue bus.
(The Blue Bus may be a reference to a bus that ran through LA to the beach, but on the other hand, it could be a vessel through the underworld, not unlike the boat that ferried the souls of the dead down the river Styx.)
Then the mood shifts to an eerie look at original evil in humans as we take a journey with a killer down a hall in a place no longer a sanctuary – the home. Jim then makes the transition to the philosophical level with the human taking a face from the ancient gallery (something that was done on the ancient Greek stage). But the calmness of the mask is shattered when the killer completes his journey; telling his father he wants to kill him and then confronting his mother….
These are themes of the classic Oedipal story…
“Oedipus, his father's murderer, his mother's lover, solver of the Sphinx's riddle”
Take it as killing the father means killing those things instilled in you but are not of yourself, and sexually conquering the mother means returning to your essence, which can't lie to you.

Jim's message was act now, search later. Life is a journey, but any journey will be painful. Life is pain, love is pain, and fear prevents people from experiencing life, from accepting what The Doors ultimately come to realise,
that we are all just riders on the storm.



Bright Midnight are supposedly releasing HWY officially this year, but at the moment you should be able to pick it up on Ebay.

Thanks for the question Rodolfo,
Search On, Man.
Dan.