One big reason I started this blog is Hunter Thompson, and let me say right off the bat that if you detect any similarity in my writing style with his, it is for good reason. I am a chameleon. I have no clearly defined style of my own. When I was younger I read the writings of John Lennon, and that became my style. Later it was Kurt Vonnegut. In college writing classes I had to try hard not to write short, blunt sentences full of humorous musings. Around that time I became aware of Hunter Thompson through my room mate, Barton Highfield III, who told me about this great book I'd like called "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas". I never read it until much later, but I did really like a quote from the book that he told me, and it stayed with me all those years--"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Well, I was weird, in my own estimation, and the going WAS getting weird. I had grown up in East Pediddleville, a small town on the banks of Salmon River. Now I was living and going to school in New Haven, Connecticut, which was far weirder than Pediddleville. There were parties, music clubs, bars with beers of the world, girls, people who participated in Peace rallies, artists, minorities, all coming at me like a whirlwind. I wonder now how being initiated into Gonzo Journalism would have framed this new life I was living. It is important to note that this was the Reagan-Bush years, a truly harrowing time for a kid from East Pediddleville who was only just beginning to become a citizen of this land, and realizing that madmen were at the wheel. At the time my main artistic focus was writing, and my thoughts throughout the day usually took the form of a narrative. It was something that I was very conscious of, though after school ended and I stayed in New Haven to live, the Narrative started to fade. I was, after all, living in a house with a bunch of friends, cheap rent, playing bass in a band and playing gigs at famous clubs, meeting semi-famous touring musicians, recording scads of music on my 4-track, and only having to work part-time to get by. The Narrative faded and the Music moved right in.
Time kept on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future... eventually I realized that I had lived roughly the first half my life in East Pediddileville and the second half in New Haven. I continued playing music and doing music-related things, but did very little writing. At the tail end of the optimistic trade surplus Clinton years I got married, and bought a house in Pediddleville right near the idyllic Salmon River that I remembered fondly from the first half of my life. I worked for a big local company that was eventually swallowed up by a giant global company. I was now in the Belly of the Beast as they say. Another Bush slithered into the White House, and then 9-11 happened.
Several years later the hostile atmosphere of my workplace and the discernible decline of the American experience had me pretty well freaked. It was as if the rottenest dystopian paranoia was actually coming to pass. The bucolic Pediddeville was no refuge from" The Fear"--something I would have defined for me soon enough. I was frustrated about music. I had little free time, and what time I had I often just pissed away procrastinating. You see, I have the Creatism disease. It's an imaginary psychosomatic ailment that is a combination of Creativity and Autism. I must be doing something creative at all times or it is very bad for me. Yet, I am a champion procrastinator. And of course the state of things in the World was sketchy, very sketchy. We were in a war that was a preemptive strike against something that didn't exist. Fox News, since 9-11 had somehow mesmerized half the country into thinking it was patriotic to be Republican, that you were not a true American if you were not Republican. Crazy shit, like people boycotting mustard and ketchup. I was getting disturbing premonitions about the future. Somewhere in there I started reading quasi-political books that I'd get from the library. I read Michael Moore, Greg Palast, Al Franken, also "House of Bush House of Saud" by Craig Unger, which really floored me. I was beginning to perceive the full scope of just how fucked we are. It was a realization that something horribly wrong was driving everything, and that there was no way to stop it. At this time I still had not read any Hunter Thompson. My friend Deadbob was a fan of his, I knew, but I wasn't compelled to check him out. Even when I heard he had offed himself I didn't read anything by him.
One day I was in the library looking for something to read. I saw a book called "Liberty And Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" by Mark Levin. I had no idea who he was, but leafing through it, it seemed to be a pretty reasonable book, not bat-shit crazy like Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck. I thought maybe I'd read it, you know, for balance,... what-the-fuckever. Something about it bothered me though. It was the smug look on the guy's face on the book jacket. He had the kind of expression on his face that made me feel like I was being talked down to. It said "I am right. I am superior to all Liberals. They are stupid anti-American fools. You should think the way I do." Hmmm. I just could not get over that expression on his face. I wanted to deface it somehow, like black out the eyes with a black Sharpie. Then a book with a bright orange spine caught my eye. It was "Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews With Hunter S. Thompson" Instantly I knew--I looked at Mark Levin--"Fuck this asshole, I'm going Gonzo!"
It was a good introduction to the Gonzo worldview. In one interview he talked about how he believed that 9-11 caused " a national nervous breakdown". I got it. A nervous breakdown. It really did seem like that's what it is. In the years since then, the nervous break down has gone untreated. Things like the Tea Party, the gridlocked congress at a 10% approval rating, the Birther Movement, Occupy Wall Street, all symptoms of the breakdown. 9-11 caused a rift at an organization I belong to that has festered and widened to this day. I see it as a microcosmic representation. A fractal. Just like the course of many people's lives has gone downward since then. The damage has been done and the thing will just keep careening down the road until that part that lost a few bolts starts vibrating, and then it will work itself looser and looser until it shakes violently, causing gyrations that don't belong in other parts of the machine, causing it to swerve out of control and hit the side rails, maybe spin out, then who knows? At what point does the driver decide it's time to pull over? Who IS the driver?
Anyway, I was talking about Gonzo Journalism...
I read everything I could get my hands on by Hunter Thompson. The Fear. I understood those things. His main thing was The Death of the American Dream. He was "a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger". All of his writing was rife with examples of perfect explanations for why I feel the way I do. Here was a person who I had very little in common with, when you come right down to it--
I don't smoke. I don't have any interest in sports. I very rarely drink hard liquor. I don't like cocaine. I don't own guns or explosives. I don't gamble. My life had been pretty tame in comparison--and yet he seemed to think the same way I do. In addition to the factual journalistic starkness, told in a wicked, at times hilarious style, there are cautiously veiled allusions in his writing to his knowledge of extreme situations most of us can only shudder to think of. It's all the confirmation I need to be able to form an understanding of how things work--at a primal level. It had such an effect on me for a while, that I unconsciously affected quirky physical mannerisms reminiscent of Raoul Duke. The people of Pediddleville were alien to me also. I had been from East Pediddleville, so I didn't know many people anyway, but they seemed like Yuppies to me. These were people who I would feel uncomfortable explaining why I would do a radio show for no money, or why I would play gigs in clubs on weeknights for no money, or why I would go snorkeling in Salmon River. They name their kids trendy names like Madison, or Taylor, or Hunter... I fantasize about going up to one of them and saying "Hey cool, your son's named after Hunter Thompson?" to see their reaction. Probably they wouldn't know who I'm talking about. Once in the Pediddleville Public Library I asked the Librarian if they had any Hunter Thompson and she looked at me like I was on fire. Seven years away from having lived a third of my life in East Pediddleville, a third in New Haven, and the last third in Pediddelville, I began to really miss New Haven, and with everything going on in the world, the workplace almost a parody of "Catch 22", and reading Hunter Thompson, I achieved a certain Gonzo affinity. Somewhere in there, the Narrative came back...
The current Presidential campaign freakshow just screams for Gonzo coverage. Sure, there's a lot more cutting edge political journalism now because of the internet, and also the extreme bullshit stream of Fox News, so some might say that somebody like Dr. Duke isn't necessary, but they would be wrong. We are poorer for not being able to read about the 2012 race in real time, in real Gonzo. The world always needs somebody like him keeping things weird so that they can be seen clearly by the rest of us.
I want to thank Anita Thompson for putting out that book after his death. It called out to me and it changed my life.
How Long, O Lord? How Long?
The fat is in the fire.
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Mahalo.
