When the music's over - The Doors

You are advised to scroll to the bottom of this post, play the song embedded therein, and then resume reading the post from here.
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This is my second attempt at transliteration, after the experience that was “Melancholic Ecstasy”. And its REALLY hard preventing the transliteration of a lyrical work from degenerating to a review. But lets see.

Hmmm…
This is another masterpiece by The Doors, that centres on the theme of ‘The End’.
Enough of the globe preview, now to the transliteration!

The start seems a bit casual (yes, strong words indeed!), in comparison with the seeming weight embedded in the title. But of course, as always, the journey to ‘the best part’, is as important, if not more, as the part itself. (Considerations of relative subjectivities are out of the window for the time being,)

So, it starts off telling you to turn out the lights when the music ends. With every passing moment, one feels the burden of meaning and purpose growing on the back of one’s mind. A point worth clarifying here – not all burdens are burdens per se. It (the one mentioned above) may be likened to the sense of sweet helplessness that (I guess) precedes any momentous dive, be it love, life, or death.

So, with the truckloads of meaning getting heaped on one, one looks at the work with an ever evolving view. This evolution continues through the song, and then on repeated listenings, and perhaps from the point on to eternity as well.

One may very easily fall for the Literal Manifestation Error, under which one mistakenly attributes the meanings of every word to every word of a composition of this stature.

Anyhow, returning from the digress!
The familiar unpredictability and general gamut of pure sound that hits one, is very, very beautiful.
The n layers of sound, each try hard to tell their own tale, of heroism, camaraderie, melancholia, inevitability and a gnawing sense of impending nothingness.
In fact, I think the work changes in character, from a haze room anthem, to an all transcending, omnipresent, omnipotent stream of truth realized, and waiting to be discovered. The change occurs at a point that need not be elaborated on, for it is the change that matters, not its embodiment.

It is at that same point, that one sees that growing shadow of a constant inevitability; the tones that underlie the lyrics, speak a million volumes all at once. In that one instant, one catches a fleeting glance of everything; e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

That point on, the work takes you on an elevated journey, where one starts to see enlightenment dawning, whilst the self begins to sink into a bottomless expanse of seemingly opposite darkness.
Of course, perceptions too change over time.

At the point when butterflies begin to scream, one comes face to face with the exquisite insanity that pulls the strings of this piece. Not Jim Morrison, but that which coloured his mind, at the instant this thought took birth in him; or perhaps the light which willed for such a dark luminance to take shape in a form just about humanly expressible. The fact that thoughts such as these are VERY easily lost in the forests in intangiblia; and even if not lost, often left in a state of comfortable suspended animation, while man tends to the niceties all around, is testimony of Morrison’s extreme giftedness.
Of course, LSD, soma, and their progeny might have something to add on that.

Anyway..
There comes a point where our hero hears a gentle yet clear sound. That sequence serves, in effect, to elaborate in detail, on the extremities of light-antithetic darkness that one reaches before the sun dawn.

Soon after that, the sounds combine, regroup, and continue on their march of essential conveyance of the relative intangibles.
But this time, one senses an invisible, but clearly perceptible shift in their gears. Nothing much has changed in the embellishing voice or instrumentals, but one sees an approaching train of finality. One waits for it to arrive, but before one realizes, it speeds up right in front of one, precariously poised, as if to gobble one into its gallows of raw and eternal axioms.
One successfully side steps the raging animal, just about. One is also privileged to identify a hint of super human virtuosity beneath the brash exteriors of the beast.

And just as one starts to get comfortable marveling at the wonders being worked in front of one’s eyes, there flies in a silent knife, from behind a face that you had thought you had got figured out decently well.
That knife pierces the curtains in front of any and everything that was concealed ever.

ANY semblance of a misinterpretation owing to the aforementioned Literal Manifestation Error stands sliced and diced and trashed to where it belongs.
One realizes the infinite openness that lay concealed in the garb of what was one of the most definite lines of the piece.
Thus, the erstwhile pedantic proclamation of music as one’s only real friend, suddenly finds meaning in every hue that colours our lives and beyond.
One realizes the depth of music, in word and in deed. And this one point, reveals to one that which is one’s own music. THE music, that one has immovably and unaboundingly subscribed to. What is revealed to one in that one instant, is in no way smaller in significance to the best of the more tangibles of the world.

And then, everything becomes clear. The knife comes to rest, owing to the fulfillment of its one purpose.
The intriguing layers of meaning and counter-meaning lie in tatters, as one is left to stare into the eyes of a formless, colourless, odourless entity. Very subliminal, yet very, VERY strong in its presence.
The message becomes all too clear.
When one’s music ends, one loses the very spirit that defines one’s purpose; one reaches, and eventually recognizes, the end of all substance and meaning. For all real purposes, one ceases to exist.

What then, will the lonely burning light hope to achieve, when that which was to be lit, leaves the show.

And as all this was being assimilated, one could almost see, from the corner of one’s eye, the carrier of this final message, standing there, breathing heavily, in and out, to fuel the process that it must complete now, and then onwards again and again, for every unsuspecting passer-by that chooses to tread by this path. With a sense of a detached responsibility, it checks your name off of its list, turns around, and disappears into the darkness. And you are left there, all alone, with yourself, and your ‘only friend’ for company.

It is now, as it should be. One, with that which makes one, one.
May we never lose our music. May our music never stop.
May the light remain.