Thinly Coated With Dishonour?

The quoting of well-known people is a common device of writing across the board. It happens on Pale Green Vortex, and it happens almost everywhere else. A good quote can be invaluable: it may encapsulate in a few fine words what the writer has been struggling to put across in paragraph after tortured paragraph. It may wake up the reader with the concentrated power of a single sentence, or illumine a tricky subject with the use of humour, irony, or paradox. This is all just tickety-boo. But maybe - just maybe - another element can creep in from the shadows.....

There's the matter of having confidence in ones own voice. It should stand alone, its own justification, without requiring the rubber stamp of approval of the rich and/or the famous. Take Pale Green Vortex a couple of weeks back. Let's really make an oft-repeated point about the pernicious power of the media by rolling out a Pale Green Vortex hero in all his flawed magnificence, Jim Morrison. OK, but he has his detractors. Now let's bring on Naom Chomsky, who surely gets the nod from a goodly portion of Pale G. V. readers. And to round it all off, we'll bring out one of the really big guns - hey, it's Adolf Hitler!

So, quotes can be great but, as with everything, they are best received with an attitude of discernment.

Following this proviso, Pale Green Vortex happily presents a bit more from the lesser-known side of Jim Morrison....

'Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings
where we had shoulders round as raven's claws.'

'People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing.... Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it.... If you feel ashamed of (your feelings), and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality.'         

'The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act.... There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.'

Thanks Jim.