Who is Emily?

We watched the Doors movie by Oliver Stone, and if there was every a movie designed to give you an earworm, it's that one. (Okay, Walk the Line gave you an earworm too, I spent weeks with "Jackson" in my head, great song, love June) So I've got "Riders in The Storm" in my brain with it's repetitive little doo doo doo doo rhythm. And the words "Girl, you gotta love your man. doo doo doo doo" He repeats that twice, so I guess it was important to him. But anyway, aside from the drug induced, pseudo-shaman gestalt of the entire song, who is Emily and why does she have to die? "Sweet Emily will die." Jim sings. He sings it seriously and with belief, because he's got this non ironic pseudo shamanistic gestalt thing going down. So Emily is a goner.

Last Friday we drove into San Fran and had the iPod shuffling and it decided to play The Band. That song where the devil and Carmen are walking along, and then she has to go leaving you with the devil, and Fanny needs help so you have to take a load of Fanny and put the load on me. That song. Cassandra Wilson does a totally gorgeous version of it. Anyway, there's Emily again!!! Here she is "young Emily." Emily certainly was getting around the West Coast scene, and I imagine that she may have been sweet and young but by the time Jim Morrison got done with her apparently she was dead.

So who is Emily? I think she is some sort of Beth in Little Women type figure, a sweet young thing you have to kill off to provoke an excess of emotion in your audience. It's one thing to kill off the old codger living in the shed up the lonely rural road and another to kill off some sweet young blonde thing. As Oscar Wilde said, you have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Dorrit. I will ask my friend who is a Bob Dylan expert if Emily ever got to the East coast on her mission to be a tragic figure and report back.

And another thing I wonder, here in Sacto, all the homeless people have bicycles. Which is great for them, but they also have the child towing devices attached to the back of the bicycles. With no children in them. So where are the children? If you are riding your bike towing your tot and you pop off for a pee, when you come back is your bike there and your kid on the ground behind it?