Sunday, December 21, 2008

End of the Night

Take the highway to the end of the night
End of the night, end of the night
Take a journey to the bright midnight
End of the night, end of the night
Realms of bliss, realms of light
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to the endless night
End of the night, end of the night
End of the night, end of the night

Realms of bliss, realms of light
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to the endless night
End of the night, end of the night
End of the night, end of the night




- End of the Night = The song is loosely inspired by one of Jim Morrison's favorite novels, Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-ferdinand Celine. Upon reading the classic novel, it is not difficult to conclude what a profound effect this novel had on Morrison considering that the novel is about Bardamu, the sarcastic and brilliant antihero of the novel. The book addresses almost every base and negative aspect of the human experience: warfare, cowardice, lies, corruption, betrayal, slavery, manipulation, exploitation, perversion, persecution, cheating, greed, sickness, loneliness, madness, lust, gossip, abortion, disease, vengeance, and murder. (A thank you to John M. Lemon) These are all the things that appealed to Morrison; including the fact, the novel is lyrical, hallucinatory, and hilariously scathing toward nearly everybody and everything. It is no wonder Morrison dedicated this song to Celine's famous novel.

- "Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to the endless night." This line is inspired by the William Blake poem, Auguries of Innocence.

The last few stanzas of the Blake poem:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day

- "Realms of bliss, realms of light." = Shakyamuni Buddha taught about a Buddha named Amitabha ("Boundless Light," also known as Amitayus, or "Boundless Life") who presides over a Buddha-realm known as Sukhavati, a realm of rebirth in which all impediments to the attainment of final Enlightenment are nonexistent. This realm, or Pure Land (also known as the Realm of Bliss) is the result of the accumulated merit of the Bodhisattva Dharmakara, who practiced for eons before becoming the Buddha Amitabha.

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