Of nerds, stars and romantics

Today's Corriere della Sera, ran a short article about a recent discovery of an early 1960s documentary produced by Florida State University in which Jim Morrison appears as an 18 year old applying to study at the said university. The short video shows a docile-looking Jim Morrison acting the part of a disappointed student who has just received a refusal notice from FSU. The unsigned article rightly observes how different Morrison looks in this documentary to the usual Jim cult-pix we are so accustomed to seeing. In a short interview given to Corriere, the famous Italian music critic Mario Luzzato Fegiz, spoke about how pre-Doors Morrison looked 'just like one of us'. Actually I thought Morrison looked like a perfect nerd.

Like many other Maltese generation-xers I came across The Doors when I was twelve or so through Carlo Massarini's Mister Fantasy series, aired on Rai Uno in the early eighties. For many Sunday evenings I followed the series more devoutly than the Sunday Mass, looking forward mostly to the final minutes of the programme which, for many of its episodes closed with some Doors video clip. It was thanks to Mister Fantasy that I first heard (and watched) "Light My Fire" and "Riders on the Storm". To be honest, though, I never grew into a big Doors fan, preferring back then the politically charged Pink Floyd (which I also got to know thanks to Mister Fantasy) and Zep's blues tunes. In fact, when I went to Pere Lachaise cemetry one extremely hot morning in June 2001, I did not visit Jim's grave - which draws large crowds on a daily basis - preferring instead to visit those of Michel Petrucciani and - obviously - Fryderyk Chopin, both a stone's throw away from Jim's.

I'm sure my very old friend Toni, who is in Malta for a two week visit, would take a look at this Morrison video. I remember lending him a Doors cassette when we were class mates. In his most recent post Toni expressed a certain concern that Malta hasn't changed since he was here last. I'm not surprised by this. There has been so much hype about the dawn of a new era that returning migrants would have sky high expectations. Well, I don't know what these expectations could be like. What I was very surprised with was Toni's reply to one of the comments posted on his blog which urged him to spend some time at San Blas munching on a ftira and enjoying the peasants looking him up and down while strolling towards the bay. The reply contradicts the post. But then again, this is symptomatic I think: on the one hand we expect this country to change and become modern (?), while on the other we are still in love with the romantic depiction of the island and her inhabitants, very much in the style of some Dun Karm poem about sexy, chubby female peasants.

It's like watching Jim Morrison looking like a nerd while expecting to see him looking at you, bare chested like some Classic Greek demi-god.