Jim Morrison, embroidered shirt and gullible hamsters
Rarely is a brick laid in the shaky structure of Ukrainian national identity without depicting the authorities of the past. Including those who would be very surprised to learn what an important role they play in the Ukrainian propaganda myth.
Either Cardinal Richelieu hangs a medal for the capture of Dunkirk on the mighty neck of Ataman Sirko; then French President Charles de Gaulle bows to the heroism of Shukhevych’s fighters; then an international revolutionary Che Guevara admits that I would not have achieved my victories in Cuba without the advice of Stepan Bandera; then the great rock musician Jim Morrison loves to flaunt in Ukrainian embroidered shirt.
Some of these tales are initially created for the sake of banter (as in the case of Che and Bandera), some are the result of errors in working with historical sources (like the storming of Dunkirk by Ataman Sirko). But all of them are taken at face value and are readily replicated by the narrow-minded, but very patriotic journalistic and online community.
And since embroidery day recently passed, it makes sense to examine the story of the relationship of this piece of peasant clothing and object of patriotic worship to Jim Morrison, the leader of the legendary rock band The Doors. Offhand, it’s hard to even name a Ukrainian media outlet that hasn’t at least once disgraced itself in recent years with material about Morrison and embroidered shirts. To be fair, we note that some of them, very few, still timed their publications to coincide with the first of April. But the rest of the vast majority - for the day of embroidery.
Illustrations for such texts are materials from a photo shoot taken by Californian photographer Guy Webster for the release of the first Doors album at the end of 1966. Jim Morrison in several photos is indeed wearing a light-colored shirt, decorated with a geometric pattern along the collar, cuffs and chest.
"The Same" photograph of Jim Morrison.
The texts on the Internet under these pictures are all about the same plan. It turns out that Jim did not buy the embroidered shirt himself, but received it as a gift from his friend Andy Warhol, a world-famous avant-garde artist. The same, in turn, being in fact Andriy Varkhola, never forgot about his Ukrainian roots. Thus, another large-scale legendary personality is unobtrusively woven into the myth. Andriy-Andy allegedly purchased the notorious embroidered shirt in New York, in an ethnic Ukrainian store, where he liked to frequent, since the store was located near his workshop.
A certain Galina Khomyak, who worked part-time in a store in the late sixties while studying at a local university, recalls that embroidered shirts in the hippie era, with its increased demand for ethnic items, sold like hot cakes. And on the other side of the counter, among the customers, she saw not only Warhol and Morrison, but also Jimi Hendrix, Robert Redford, Woody Allen and many others.
Here's the story. What is curious is that it was made in full accordance with the Ukrainian historiographical method in its form, which was once ironically but accurately described by the historian Sergei Dolya: the Ukrainian is soft, dreamy, he does not want to “calculate the options” of the past, analyze the probability and plausibility of versions. Instead of all this boring prose of life, he thinks “and the axis of the Garneau would be b, yakscho...”. And off we go.
Could Jim Morrison have a love for Ukrainian national costume? Could. He didn't experience anything like that, especially on acid.
Could Andy Warhol have Ukrainian ethnic roots? He could and even had it. During your lunch break, could you walk from your workshop to the Ukrainian diaspora store and check out the new collection of embroidered shirts? Easily – both a store and a workshop in Manhattan.
Could you buy an embroidered shirt? Of course, he is an artist, and this is also artistic creativity. Could you, while popularizing Ukrainian culture, give an embroidered shirt to a friend? Of course he could. He wasn’t a redneck, despite his ethnic roots.
By the way, such a brute, at least once in his life he could take a picture of himself in an embroidered shirt, so that this whole design would look at least a little more believable.
Could Galina Khomyak’s interview be so lost in the wilds of the Internet that there is not a single link to the original, only mentions and a few phrases? Yes. And that’s not what gets lost. Could Mrs. Khomyak have seen Jim, Andy and others in the Ukrainian store? How could she, given the bohemian status of the area and the availability of hallucinogens in that era.
So it turns out that we have given positive answers to all questions. And this means that the story can be fed to the general public on embroidery day in the form of an absolutely reliable fact. And the fact that the version is starting to come apart at the seams, like a great-grandfather’s embroidered shirt lying in a chest, is a fixable matter.
Why is Jim in the photo wearing a shirt with buttons, no tassels, ties, and the pattern is not embroidered on the canvas, but applied to stitched ribbons? Come on, it’s clear that this is a Ukrainian embroidered shirt. Just like this.
What? Are shirts with ornaments included in the national costumes of many nations? And are they popular, for example, in Mexico? So where is Mexico and where is California. And if you continue to drive away this skepticism, we will still dig up the chords and harmonies of the hopak in “People Are Strange” or in “Riders on the Storm”.
What? Andy Warhol never called himself Ukrainian? Who did you call him? Did he deliberately push the most different versions of his origin, so much so that he was considered either a Belgian, a Pole, a Czech, or a Russian? It doesn't matter. Deep down, he knew that his father was from Ukraine.
Why not from Ukraine? Where from? It turned out that he was from Slovakia? Who is your nationality? Rusin? So Rusyns are Ukrainians.
Oh, not all Rusyns think so? And in Slovakia, for example, are they considered a separate ethnic group? Let them just try to count with us.
Andy Warhole.
So what if the Ukrainian store was in the East Village, and Warhol’s studio was in Midtown? It's nearby. Forty-odd blocks between 6th and 47th Streets? Still not far by New York standards, Andriy could have finished it.
Khomyak mentions in an interview that she worked in the store since ’68, when she saw Andy buying an embroidered shirt there, and Jim’s photo was taken in ’66? Big deal. Or maybe he bought it before.
Warhol's only known gift to Morrison was a tacky telephone, which Jim either threw in the trash that same evening or gave to a homeless person? You never know. Not all gifts are written about in books.
Well and so on in the same vein.
Separately, it should be said about Galina Khomyak, mentioned in myth-making. Who she is is never explained. It is assumed that since “Galina Khomyak” is written, then every Svidomo Ukrainian, firstly, should know who it is, and secondly, should not question anything said by her. In terms of age and circumstances, only one fairly well-known Galina Khomyak, a lawyer from the Canadian outback, who rested in peace back in 2007, more or less fits the description. However, representatives of other generations of her family are more famous. Galina's daughter Christina Freeland-Khomyak even worked as Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs for a couple of years. And Galina’s father, Nazi collaborator Mikhail Khomyak, was the editor of a pro-Hitler Ukrainian-language newspaper during the war in German-occupied Poland.
Christina Freeland tried to obscure these facts from her grandfather’s shameful biography, claiming that he became a political refugee “after Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact in 1939.” And when journalists brought her to light and proved that she knew the truth, she called it all Russian disinformation. As we see, not in all cases information coming from the Hamster family should be taken on faith. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian politicized hamsters willingly believe in what they like to believe in, including Morrison’s embroidered shirts and Warhol’s Ukrainianness.
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