I've been listening to the Doors. Last night one of the radio stations played the most recent record in its entirety. LA Woman.
It's strange to hear a white man from Florida singing blues that sprang up from Black people in the Deep South. Music born of suffering, tracing back to the chanting and hollering of slaves working in fields. Somehow sad and hopeful at the same time. Recorded and packaged up in Los Angeles, piped out across the world.
But I have to admit, the songs are really good, and no doubt it'll be the last Doors album.
Now the voice coming through the radio, singing these deep, morose songs, is no more. I have the words of a dead man echoing in my head because Jim Morrison went out like an electric bulb last year in Paris of all places. Jim Morrison, who seemed like two people in one body. Hard and masculine, but sinewy and seductive. Commanding attention and drawing away. Now alive and dead at the same time.
Duality is an enduring mystery. So many things can be divided into halves, each incomplete without the other. Women and men, head and heart, body and soul. We are all doubles.
The mirrors in Gabriel Ortega's apartment are a chore to keep clean, but my reflection makes me feel less alone. And I have to say my double in the mirror looks good. The sisters back home would be jealous if they saw how much my hair has grown out.
Ortega seems to share this fascination with the number two. There're several sculptures in his home that consist of paired figures. One is clearly African and I love it, though I have no idea about the precise origin. It's a kind of mask with two heads. Maybe it's a mask for two people standing close together. I love the way the artist captured the African facial features and body decorations. If only I was that comfortable in my own skin. To grow up among your own, immersed in thousands of years of culture. Even if that meant running around barefoot across the grasslands, I'd trade in a second.