By
Cory Spiller
The Arizona Summer Wildcat
Editor's Note: Cory Spiller is spending the summer in Paris as part of a UA program.
The Pre Lachaise is Paris's most famous cemetery, but it's hardly haunted. In fact the "Let's Go Guide to Paris" refers to it as a "19th century garden party for the dead." And that would just about say it, if it's most famous resident wasn't Jim Morrison.
The Pre Lachaise isn't just any old cemetery. It's the resting-place of the rich and famous. And if you want to rest eternally amid the likes of Chopin, Proust, and Oscar Wilde, you'll have to pay a pretty penny. Even then you won't be assured eternal rest. Because of the lack of space in the Pre Lachaise, corpses are removed at regular intervals to make room for the next generation of privileged dead.
It's interesting to note that they don't just dig up anyone. In fact, the Pre Lachaise has become a popularity contest for the deceased. They only dig up graves of those who aren't visited frequently. To avoid this fate some rich folks, sensing death at their doorstep, have hired professional mourners to visit their graves. In this sense, Morrison has nothing to worry about; he has the most visited grave in the cemetery.
His memory dominates the Pre Lachaise. Graffiti on headstones point the way to his modest grave. The most common visitors aren't Frenchmen crying over the graves of Balzac and La Fontaine. They are an international brigade of hippies humming "The End," wandering through the beautiful cemetery comforting other hippies who have forgotten the words to "Riders on the Storm," when they should be singing, "People Are Strange."
On July 3, it will be three decades since Jim Morrison was found dead in a bathtub near Bastille. (Note to idiot Americans like myself: you can't visit the Bastille; it's not there, they tore it down a long, long time ago). Morrison died under mysterious circumstances, but I'm fairly confident in assuming that it was some terrible narcotic cocktail that finally did him in. He was quickly buried in the Pre Lachaise, dead and gone, but hardly forgotten.
On the 10th anniversary of his death, that would be 1981, riots broke out at the Pre Lachaise when police turned away thousands of fans and mourners. In the ensuing mle the gates to the cemetery were burned, along with an unprecedented amount of herb. But this year the authorities are ready and the gates are made of thick steal bars with vicious little pointy things on top. I decided to visit Morrison's grave before the riots. I got my fill of needless destruction and violence in Tucson, and honestly, I'm a bit scared of Parisian mobs. I mean, come on, these people know how to riot. I had a hard time finding Morrison's grave at first. I had a map, but the winding roads and trails were impossible to follow. I gave up and decided to follow some hippies, which proved a much better strategy. There used to be a graffiti-covered bust marking Morrison's grave but the authorities took it down. They also cleaned off the layers of peace sings and poetry from the gravestone. Now the gravestone is simple and clean, and fits in with the rest of the meticulous sarcophagi.
Honestly, I was hoping for more. I'm not sure what I expected - maybe a giant granite lizard with a crown, maybe a 20-foot marble bong, I don't know. But there is was, a gravestone with his name and an epitaph: "Kat ton daimona eaytoy," which is ancient Greek for, "he lived like he had a divine spirit within." I was pleased to see some offering in the form of: two Marlboro Lights, a few red roses well past their prime, a charcoal drawing that looked more like Val Kilmer than Jim, and a couple of nicely rolled joints. But after all was said and done, it wasn't much to holler about.
It's hard to say why we feel obligated to come here. It's even harder to comprehend why people would riot on the anniversary of his death. He was a martyr for the young and reckless. He was beautiful, he was exciting, and when he was buried in 1971 I'm sure many felt that a generation was being buried with him. I visited his grave because he is something I know and love in a world of unrecognizable gravestones.
