This is the End

                “This is the end, beautiful friend.” There is only one song that can revolutionize a generation, tell a story, involve Greek mythology, and can freak you out at the same time. That song is “The End” by The Doors. Whereas fast food chains only cater to 4 different types of people, this song is able to branch out to all types of individuals that are in need of something intellectual, psychological, or spiritual. It can create an effect on poets, teens, conservative elderly men and women, educators, hippies, musicians, or just anyone that wants to listen to a song with a purpose. There are several lyrics that stand out among the rest and that could present a different viewpoint. The opening line of the song, “This is the end, beautiful friend,” already causes a huge can of worms to be opened. Is Jim Morrison conveying the message that mankind is now nonexistent? Or is he using this term as a reference to express the extinction of the conservative world and the rebirth of America with him as the poster child of mass chaos and psychedelic poetry that infuses foreign thoughts into the younger generation’s innocent minds that have never been in contact with the Lizard King?

                Let’s look at it from the perspective of a teenager. A young man or woman is tired of listening to Nat King Cole that is constantly playing at the dinner table, so they are more inclined to want to branch out and find a more diverse group of tripped out men that are interested in one thing-the music, and probably the chicks too. That kid has a choice to make. Stay along the primrose path of contemporary living or go against the wishes of the parents and pursue the psychedelic and “dangerous” works of The Doors? It’s clear what the answer was. Now look at the perspective from the same teenager’s father. An army veteran more than likely that is in his forties and doesn’t want his child to see the horrible things in relation to war that he has in his past. He feels that if he can control certain aspects of their life then he can harness their decisions. If his teenager chooses to stray away from him in a way that he sees unfit, then he will more than likely do anything in his power to bring his child back to the “right state of consciousness.” Thus the relationship between father and child could rapidly develop into a hatred that stemmed merely over a music group. If that were to happen, then that would most definitely leave a trace of history that they would never forget. In a way you can’t blame the father, he is only trying to do what he feels is best for his child. In another sense, you can blame him in the fact that it’s not his life to be lived and that his child should find out what the real world is like without his help.

                “Can you picture what will be so limitless and free?” If you think what that question is really saying, it’s issuing the idea that entices you to imagine what the world would be like without any boundaries. No rules. Who would find that statement more offensive, parents or kids? Obviously the parents would find this attitude totally inappropriate and would not tolerate any such kind of blasphemy inside of their home. The teenager would be appealed to this lifestyle because it lets them think for themselves instead of being a slave to their parents’ beliefs and thoughts on how they should live their lives instead of doing what they want. The parent of course wants their child to be free, but only on their standards and only certain people should be able to be granted these freedoms. Sure they trust their child, but trusting their peers is something totally different. What would happen if their child was influenced by someone else other than them? That would be a total bummer.

                This song not only brings out emotions involving the political battle of control, but also the psychological value that could open up “the doors of perception” to potential intellectuals who are keen on discussing poetry and what not. Music sets people apart by our experiences and how we can relate our life to what kind of message we want to set across to others that judge us. Listening to psychedelic rock can send out the stereotypical view of pothead or a dude that loves the acid, but there is much more behind the music than drugs. Jim Morrison was raised in a situation very similar to the template being discussed here. His father was in the military. One of Jim Morrison’s earliest memories was driving down the road in New Mexico and seeing a Native American dead on the side caused by a car crash. From then on he claims that he saw the spirit rise out of the Native American and enters into his soul. Such a traumatic event like that at such a young age could set any normal kid off the tracks. His poetry developed as he grew and reading psychologist’s books became a frequent habit. The music recorded was previously written poems that he chose to express with the psychedelic sounds of keyboard, guitar, drums, and his sultry voice that was wildly untamed with minimal background. Now that I’ve gone off topic by turning this into a biography, let’s get back to the grind.

                “Father, yes son, I want to kill you.” Morrison slowly strengthens the intensity of the lyrics by inferring that he went to his brother’s room and sister’s room to kill them. I have a pretty good idea that the vast majority of men who were fathers had a shiver go down their spine after they heard this line. The father would be greatly distraught over the fact that his own son would want to kill him, let alone be so blunt about it as to tell him right to his face. This type of attitude could drastically change the emotions of any confused and possibly psychotic youth of the time to say that they should just blame their father for everything and kill them for it. Since I’ve been talking about only the teenager’s and father’s point of view of all these lyrics, now would be a good time to get a standpoint of an intellectual poet or educator. This series of lyrics in the song is a metaphor for the story of Oedipus Rex who killed his father and had sex with his mother, which is exactly what Morrison states as wanting to do in this song. To be able to reenact such a popular story out of Greek mythology and apply it to pure poetry set to music would probably lead any mythical loving and music craved intellectual thinking about how they went in the wrong direction in life and how they should have stuck with the guitar in the garage with a joint on the side. These powerful and mind-numbing lyrics not only change the feeling of the song, but they also changed the feeling of the generation and future generations wanting to know more about the psychedelic visions of The Doors.

                The second to last line in the song, “The end of nights we tried to die,” can represent a number of things it could be referring to. Extremists could take this line and twist it into a federal case about influencing the youth of the generation to commit suicide. Morrison talks throughout the song about the end of all the plans and hard work that had been conjured up in the minds of great thinkers and the death of freedoms that the rest of the lost souls have been looking for. The song reaches out to those looking for a way out of their everyday mundane lives. Those who are tired of being berated by authority figures and those looking to find an outlet to their inner self that is intrigued and affected equally by the music as the rest of The Doors do. An end to the battle, and end to rules, an end to the so called normal life, that’s basically what Morrison is trying to establish here. This could shape someone into any contorted and distorted shape imaginable, figuratively of course. Psychologically there are ways that someone could take this song and apply it to their everyday life and treat everyone equally, live everyday as if it was their last, be a generous individual, and love. Those seem like pretty good qualities compared to conservative elderly people calling the music a travesty and that it’s not real music unless it’s Miles Davis. “The End” didn’t draw much radio play with its eleven minute and fifty-two second length, but to those dedicated to Mr. Mojo Risin’ it was a culture shock. There will eventually be an end, but it will unfortunately not be described as well as Jim Morrison has done for us. “This is the end.”

Taking Freire to the Bank

Imagine that you could know the most about any subject in the world. Think about how many lives you could change with your knowledge and how you could spread it throughout your environment. Consider the fact that you are the greatest mind of our generation and that everyone else bows down to your extraordinary mind. Now what is it that you want to know the most about: World War II, politics, chemistry, neurology, grammar? I’m sure the majority of us would want to know the most about something that would factor into giving someone a well-rounded education that could serve a purpose to them in the future. I, on the other hand, would choose to be the minority. I would like to know the most about pop culture. It ranges from movies, music, and television. My mind works differently, I think, from others. Freire’s banking principle applies mainly to our minds absorbing pointless knowledge that some of us really wouldn’t give two sh*ts about, pardon my French. Countless numbers of teachers don’t care about how their students are supposed to learn the material presented to them or how well the students can relate to the subject matter at hand when the teacher “teaches” the class.


I know that there was a class my senior year of high school, World Civilization, that my teacher wasn’t too concerned with teaching. He would sit at his desk in the front corner and give us an assignment that had been written on the board all day for his previous classes. The work would usually be a section or two section reviews filled with vocabulary, a few important guys and documents, and then some critical thinking questions that played no factor in my education whatsoever. He would also never take up the homework, so it rarely got done, which means that I didn’t get the full experience that I should have if it had been presented to me in a different way. That sounds sort of bad. I obviously should have done the work so that I would be able to understand the material in a more complex way, instead of using my teacher as a vice. With that said though, I had to work twice as hard when studying to remember the facts because I had to teach myself. If it had been presented to me first, and then studied, it wouldn’t have been the same situation.

I think our minds learn what they want to learn. If you try to teach me rocket science with a side of calculus, you’re wasting your time; on the other hand, if you give me the Rock n’ Roll Encyclopedia I would be much more inclined to read and learn interesting things about each topic. Yes, the banking system will be used. No, it wouldn’t be a chore to read something that interests me. What would be the perk of beating ourselves useless knowledge into our brains, if we are only going to forget it by next weekend when we go see a movie and understand the plot of ‘Inception’? That movie took a couple years off of my elementary education. (SPOILER ALERT! Who saw that top coming at the very end?) Anyways, the point of that is that we learn what we want to learn.

I remember one day in class my teacher started getting pissed off at us and decided that the next review was going to be taken up for a grade, so naturally fearing our lives we all did the review. What happened next class? He doesn’t take up the review. Yeah, we were royally pissed at the man. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m sure that we all could have done something better without time than to do a review that wasn’t going to be graded or be relevant to the test over the chapter. For instance, there was probably an episode of 24, Lost, or American Idol that I had to miss because I had to learn about how Napoleon Bonaparte was a bastard. It may seem that I’m bashing education, and I partially am, but in a way it’s important that we see both sides of the importance of knowing about the French Revolution and how to configure chemical reactions. Honestly, I have no intention to do anything close to resembling math or science when I grow up, or who the king of England was in 1054. If you know who the king was…awesome, if not…good.

We all have dreams. We all have aspirations of what we want to be or do. So who wants to bother with other events that only seem to derail us from our overall goal someday? If I were to be a mailman for the United States Postal Service after I graduate from college, then that would probably be a waste of time and money to have spent on an education. If I end up deciding I want to be a businessman and end up running Apple by the time I’m 38, then learning all that I could have in college would be highly appropriate. Then again any one of us could drop dead tomorrow, which would be quite a tragedy. Sorry for taking it to a dark place, I’ll try not to lead you back down there.

Have you noticed I’m trying to bring up how education might be a good thing? Education is obviously the cornerstone of our society and civilization as we know it. How cliché is that, right? But for real, if we didn’t have the capability to comprehend certain principles and functions then we would be nowhere as a creative being. There would be nothing but grass in the fields because we would be too brain dead to come up with anything, such as a house. I’m getting pretty off topic, I know. And for that I apologize, feel free to haze me with hate comments. Just don’t taze me, bro! This is slowly beginning to become non-educational, maybe I did that on purpose.

Going back to sitting up against the heater next to the window on the bottom floor of Owensboro Catholic High School, I begin to wonder what the teacher’s perspective was of his students. We thought of him as a lazy dude who just wanted to have fun with us and be Mr. Chill, but I’m sure he saw us as diligent and hardworking students who should be interested in Napoleon Bonaparte and the king of England in 1054. I now ponder if he ended up being disappointed in us when we failed to do the review for him that he said was for homework and actually was for homework. He has every right to be angry. That’s his job. His vocation as a human being is to mold young minds. If we don’t respect his and every other teacher’s goal then we are declining our minds for the growth of education. We need to appreciate the fact that these people have dedicated their lives to teaching our generation because education is the future of civilization for our country.

I never would have imagined that I would use my high school teacher who wasn’t a great example of teaching as the center for a college paper, but I have now realized that all of my past experiences have become pre-requisites for my future learning. One of my friends who is still in high school mentioned to me that everything I have ever learned or achieved has gone completely out the window, but I disagree. Even though she is a great friend who I love that I always agree with, I had to go out on a limb. All of the information that I have compiled over the years has been crucial to my study habits and pursuit of happiness…yeah that was a Kid Cudi/Will Smith reference. I would like to feel as if everything that has been accumulated and pounded into my brain over the past eighteen years of my life has been for a purpose. I’m not positively sure what the purpose is, but I have a feeling that it is for my best interest and will serve me well as I grow into full adulthood with my wrath of education.