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Rating: You should never lend anything, it's terrible to say, but that's how it is. For example, who has my vinyl copy of "The end" by Nico? And who made a filter using the cover of "Juke box all'idrogeno" by Allen Ginsberg?
I dunno, I don't know...I don't remember.
However, I do remember very well who had, and should still have, my copy of a very slim little book that I bought when I was fourteen or fifteen with my small savings.
That little book, from which I recall only one verse about the smell of rain, I lent to one of the most eccentric guys in my town, a percussionist with the loudest laugh I had ever heard up until then.
Already strange in those days, today that guy is one who even in winter goes around barefoot and shirtless and often rides on a custom-made bicycle equipped with pedals for the arms too.
Every time I see him, I think of that little book, but I don’t feel like asking him to give it back.
His eccentricity has led him to be one of the most hated figures in the city, and I don't want to be another person to bother him. Moreover, I think Morrison would be happy knowing that such a person reads his verses.
Oh, yes, maybe I hadn't told you yet, but that was a little book of poems by the old Jim.
Then, if the little book is the first thing, the second is the stairs of Orsetto's apartment, my best friend at the time...the stairs and a rather bouncing sound of an organ/keyboard (besides being somewhat incongruous and quite magical) that came from his room.
And as soon as I heard that sound, my life almost changed. But I don’t know how to explain it to you.
I don't know if Ray Manzarek was a great musician or not, I don't know if he played straight or crooked, right or wrong. All I know is that what he played got inside you without asking for permission.
And I know that happy incongruity musically speaking was the added value of what otherwise would have been just solid rock blues. Solid rock blues and not that kind of cabaret of the soul which had poetry as another main ingredient.
Yes, poetry, that’s why the little book I mentioned at the beginning is important,
Anyway, the imprinting on the stairs was “Soul kitchen.” And "Soul kitchen" talks about food for the soul and talks about refuge, the night refuge.
And if I think about refuge, I think of a place, a place where you feel good, and I think of Giorgio, a very old gentleman who is in a retirement home.
So, Giorgio likes to sit in the large room, next to the white recycling bins (paper, plastic, glass). The bins are two and are placed side by side, so he arrives and moves them, one here and one there, and, happily nestled, he places himself in the middle.
I work in that retirement home, and I have to move him, because, obviously, he can't stay there, but damn I feel bad, because that's his spot, and he's there like those cats that fit perfectly into a shoebox.
You see, this song by the Doors talks about a place. And outside the place is the night with people looking at you oddly and the lights that seem almost hostile.
Outside sucks, but the place is beautiful...there is a warm heater and there is soul food. But, most importantly, in the place you learn an important thing, you learn to forget.
"Soul kitchen" is nothing but a little tavern in the night, one of those you wish would never close...
And maybe it’s also a kind of mother, like the bins for Giorgio. And, believe me, there are much worse mothers than two white bins...
But we must talk about another little gem, which in a rare or maybe very rare forty-five single "Soul kitchen" is the B-side of "Take it as it comes".
And "Take it as it comes" is a fabulous little song of strange and carefree magic. The organ that supports it has, at the same time, something childish and sacred and is the perfect enclosure for a text that brilliantly combines sacred and profane, mysticism and sensuality.
And the “take it as it comes” of the chorus is a perfect slogan, but these are not just words thrown out there. Oh no, they aren't, they really aren't. And, like other memorable Morrisonian verses, they stand at the top of a house of cards that holds itself up with strokes of poetry.
Anyone can make slogans, but it’s another thing when a verse becomes the endpoint of a million roads.
I can almost see our Giorgio humming “Take it easy baby, take it as it comes” while he’s wedged between two bins.
Too bad he doesn't know English.
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