âmes pétillantes ~ classic rock imagines

• Jim Morrison •

You always loved the studio late at night. When the prima donnas and eccentrics had sashayed off to their parties full of people who would disappear as soon as the stars fell from grace, the building was a ghost town. Just a few dedicators running on coffee, cigarettes, and anything else they could get their hands on down the darker alleys.

You were sat by the window, where you'd sneakily suggested they set up the mixing desk, working when the mood took you, but spending most of your time sketching, writing and admiring the frenzied sky above. With the window pushed open, the night time breeze drifted through your hair and the songs of the L.A. nightlife flourished joyously. It was peaceful. Just you, the never-ending sky, and Jim's voice.

The headphones were dicky - John had sat on the plug and bent it just slightly out of shape - so you had to prop it up with your sketchbook when you wanted to work. If any little thing moved even an inch, the sound would go fuzzy and everything had to be readjusted until you found that sweet spot again. That was always your excuse when they wondered why so little was done on nights you hung back, yet somehow it stayed miraculously in place during the day.

The boys hadn't set up much for their next album - a name, a release date, a concept - but the unshakeable urge had overtaken them and they'd wound up back in the studio stitching together unnamed masterpieces from scraps of poetry and instrumentals. It was your job to help them pull it all together.

Your heart and mind just weren't in it that night, though. Your heart and mind just weren't in anything that night, actually. You were wide awake but unable to focus on anything. Whether it was the long hours spent on the songs, or maybe the humidity that still clung desperately to the city, you couldn't tell. Maybe you were just too distracted by your imagination.

There was a cigarette flaming in your hand, your other cradling your jaw as you stared out of the window with the headphones perched on your head. The studio was far away from the main strip, miles away from the sea in a business neighbourhood that encouraged silence with the threatening height of gloomy grey buildings and the eerie quiet that blanketed the streets. Since it was mostly empty after sunset, you could see the glimmering sky almost every night.

Though you didn't know the constellations by sight, you enjoyed tracing the shapes in the sky, like watching sparkling birds migrate into the inky blackness. Some of the images you could put together in the night were amusing. So far that night, though, nothing had really taken shape. You couldn't tell if that was the skies fault, or yours.

You blinked your dazed thoughts away as best you could, determined to focus on something to avoid a whooping the next morning. Laid out before you was the mixing equipment, an 8-track tape recorder rolled with tapes of Jim's vocals that he'd recorded alone that morning and sheets of music scribbled with his instructions piled haphazardly beside it. It was up to you now to sort out the harmonies he wanted so they could add in the instruments the next day.

Wiggling the headphone plug for good luck, you pressed play to listen to his voice once more. It was a good song, unnamed as of then, and as you read through his scrawl, you could envision the final product the way you imagined Jim could as he was writing it.

He really was out of this world. The way he spoke, the things he talked about, everything he saw, the songs he could envision - there was nothing about him that you were certain you couldn't find in the sky you so loved.

It wasn't much of a secret between the other band members that you harboured fond affections for Jim, and you were constantly at war with yourself trying to understand if that was a blessing or a curse. On nights like that, when you could picture his lips pursed behind the microphone as you listened to his poetry, the answer was fairly simple.