“Those who suffer understand suffering and thereby extend their hand.”  – Patti Smith

I’ve used this quote before and I will use it again . . . and again.  Everybody knows the experience of being an outsider, if only for a few brief moments.  There is a silent minority (albeit a larger one than most will acknowledge) of those who have been that way all their life.  Some continually try to fit in and lead an awkward and undefined existence.  There are others who just give up and fade away.  Then there are the ones who feel they have purpose and drive on.  Some of these people become artists, some become quirky entrepreneurs or inventors and some others become just eccentrics.  They become intensely conscious livers (no reference to alcoholism intended).  Maybe not entirely conscious in in the cognitive sense, but of other things.  They observe things and note phenomena others totally miss.  Many of these things are not considered important at the time.  Later on they are acknowledged as important and then forgotten again.

Is this explanation too abstract?  Confusing?  Good!  Because “these things” I talk about are the most elusive of truths.  When you are different, mostly you are shunned or at least just tolerated.  Van Gogh was never acknowledged as a great painter until he was long dead.  Volkswagon makes a commercial with a haunting acoustic song and suddenly Nick Drake is acknowledged as a genius.  I’m sure you can think of many other examples.  This, however, is not an article for Psychology Today or Starving Artist Weekly.

Why is Jim Morrison “the Patron Saint of the Alienated?”  Of course, I don’t mean that in the sense of Catholic saints but he is an advocate, a symbol, a representative of those who look through different eyes, if you will.  The strongest example, I think, is the album “Strange Days.”  From beginning to end it is very much from an outsider’s viewpoint.  You can take the lyrics of “People Are Strange” in their entirety and get a clear vision of the experience.  Never has anyone described it so well.  Jim is like a reporter describing the inside of being an outsider.

You walk down the street and people look at you, or worse yet, through you.  They pretend that you are not there and they become ugly to you.  Rejection is ugly and everything is awkward.  Streets are uneven and women seem wicked when you’re unwanted (you know they tune).  He had written this song with Robbie Krieger when he was severely depressed.  It’s easy to laugh and dismiss this take on the tune.  It’s just a song, right?  No, it means a lot more.  It’s a world.  When Jim wrote this song he was not famous, he was not a sex symbol.  He was not Val Kilmer.  He was looked upon as a derelict (note the comment at the end of this entry) and an intellectual flake.  Ray Manzerek’s friends thought he was out of his mind putting Jim Morrison in his band.  Nowadays, you might say, “Who wouldn’t want Jim Morrison in their band?”  The answer is you wouldn’t.  Jim was not the easiest person to deal with (and that is putting it mildly).  Part of the reason for this was that he was trying explain the inexplicable as well as dealing with a lot of inner pain.  That person you make fun of because they seem a little out step with everyone else may be potential never realized.

As Henry David Thoreau once wrote:

 

“If a man does not keep pace

with his companions, perhaps it is because

he hears a different drummer.

Let him step to the music which he hears,

however measured or far away.”

(This quote has been hanging on the wall in my room since I was 15.)

Or the line in in the 1930’s film “My Man Godfrey”:

“I realized that the difference between a derelict and a successful man is a job.” ( This may not be the exact quote since I usually don’t take notes while watching the movie but it’s close.)  Substitute the word chance for job and you get some of my meaning.

Of course,  I’m not saying that every wino and drug addict is a hidden genius.  But what I’m saying that some people have gifts that our society chooses to ignore.  The function of the shaman was very important to many tribes.  That function seems to be lost on us nowadays.  We are so obsessed with the idea that we have it all figured out that we forget that we don’t.

To be continued  . . .