mushinnoshin

Apparently it was August 20, 1991 when I drove up to Orlando for the first lollapalooza, which I bring up to tell again about the pre-show activities, when I ate some acid with a random hardcore freak I met in line — who actually said his name was Gonzo — who gave me a copy of Fear and Loathing and told me it would change my life.

Of course that’s just one of the weird anecdotes I’ve got stored in the old files. Have I told you about the time I pedaled around through one of Ft Lauderdale’s roughest neighborhoods at some ungodly hour of the morning with a crack whore on my handlebars trying to help her find her, umm, provider? Yeah. When I later got jumped in that same neighborhood, I mostly just felt betrayed because I thought the word was out that I was cool. I guess not.

Anyway, I stuffed Gonzo’s book in my back pocket and worked my way towards the front of the crowd, to wait for the festivities to open with the blues-punk growl of Mr. Rollins and friends. And by the time I left, some god knows how many hours later, that quiet, unassuming paperback in my back pocket had turned into a brick of dried sweat and garden hose relief. So, Dr. Gonzo, I’m sorry to say I didn’t get to read that book.

But I most certainly read another copy some time later. By which time I suppose it was too late to say that it might change my life, as I wast most assuredly already living the life less normal. I did enjoy it of course, but it probably wasn’t until I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and The Great Shark Hunt that Hunter Thompson would really worm his way into my soul.

Well really all this is just to say that the Belcourt’s currently running a biopic called Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Hunter S. Thompson, which I saw last night. Eh, I’m not going to tell you it’s some amazing movie, I mean, fuck, it’s a documentary about Hunter Thompson. If you like Hunter, and you like documentaries, or can find some reasonable median between the two, you’re going to love it. Otherwise, maybe not. All our lives will go on.

Well, except Hunter’s of course. He had the sense to get out while the getting was good. It’s sad though. I wonder what the man who may have had more to do with both the nomination of McGovern and the election of Carter than history will ever credit might think of Obama? I really don’t know, that’s why I ask. Would the mantra of hope we hear today rekindle the glimmer of optimism that kept Thompson going all those years? Or would the good doctor be the first in line calling shenanigans when the Senator strays? Or, as with myself and so many others — both? We’ll never know.

A great Thompson line, used well in the movie —

“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”

Yeah, I remember the days when I pushed my luck and peered into the precipice. I swore I’d be dead by thirty and just figured that’s how it was, that’s the way it was meant to be. But I slowed down, and I pulled back, and I survived — but at what cost, for what point? To live the ordinary life that Thoreau says masses lead in quiet desperation? Well actually I’d be ok with that, if it were still possible. But it’s too late for that, for me. So I just live here, barely on the wrong side of the tracks, too close to the edge for convention, but too safe and far away to find greatness.

I guess I’m just sad. Sometimes we meet people with the capacity to see what we see, and in our loneliness we convince ourselves that they see it.

But maybe they just haven’t eaten enough acid.

Or maybe I’ve eaten too much.

Either way, it’s all the same.