I guess we always knew it would turn out this way.
From: ish
To:HST
Going gonzo is a lifestyle that doesn't allow for growing old gracefully, and you never really could relax the full-throttle pace. And you probably always knew it would turn out this way, too, right from the first step, but you didn't hesitate or tiptoe but leapt, running full tilt onto the road which on some February day would hold your doom.
Ever the gambling man, you told Pascal to shove his wager right into his own nonplussed nether cavity and put it all onto the Hard Eight. "Let Him come and get me," you said, "in the meantime I'll be in the bar."
Somehow along the way the Bad Craziness was just too much, as surely it had to be someday. But how can I judge, Ho Ho, say I, there are worlds along the way and dusty roads full of fear and loathing that might give any man a taste for cold steel or splatter his mind upon the coffee table. You've climbed fences into the devil's asshole and camped out like you owned the joint, so walk a mile in those sandals, rube.
What will history remember, I wonder now that the frenetic wild genius of your mind has finally rested upon your own coffee table of eternity, what the hell will any of it *mean*? And wondering, I doubt it can really be understood, you were always a part of the times, always live, always a journalist more than an artist, reporting to us from the abyss from the places we were terrified to go. Without you, what can it mean, what could someone draw from it 6 or 60 or 600 years past? I'm afraid all they could draw is the story of a life, lived intensely, burning brightly into the forests of the night.
Uh-huh. But cut the shit, shall we, Doc? I'd like to feel sorry about that, but fatalistic or not, it's hard to see how it could have happened any other way. You'd proven yourself invincible to carwrecks and heroin and firearms and all the bad craziness life delivers. You'd met everyone worth meeting and if you hadn't you'd made up a story infinitely better than the real thing. Nights in dens of debauchery from across the world and in the back alleys of anytown USA we like to think don't exist. But who knows, maybe you were facing the one danger you couldn't escape, Yee-haw partner, maybe you were facing boredom.
Truly the only thing more terrifying than being bored is being *boring*. That's a mindfuck, and Amen! Enough. You'll be missed, but there's a price for traveling into the darkest places, paid in blood. Good travels, Doc, whether you've moved into the haze or out.
From: HST
To: ish
Blow it out your ass. You attempt to psychoanalyze me is laughable. I cannot be understood. I am eternal. Or I suppose I shall find out. Ho Ho. In any case, I can't see my feet and I'm done.
Notes:
Fear and Loathing in Elko
Shotgun Golf from the Page 2 Column
It's hard to say anything else. You'll just have to read for yourself. Start Here
While I know it's not really true, when I heard about it, and the initial sarcastic "There's a big suprise" comment was done going through my head, I had this image of him home alone, drunk as hell, thinking, "There's one thing I haven't tried yet."
I like that. Somehow it feels right, like Oscar Wilde's fallacious last words, "Look at those drapes. One of us has got to go."
Fixed your mispost by the way in case you're wondering why it all got rearranged.
Thanks. I thought you might.
Who the hell sent this site to my parent's address in Sterile Whites for my eyes only?
6. I heard about Thompson at work as the news broke. A friend with a radio.
I just wish he had done it with some cajones, like driving a car bomb into
the Republican National Convention last year or some shit. It just seems
like an anti climax after a life time of fire and explosions. Still, I
suppose death is ultimately yer own fucking business, and he did it his way
like all other things.
This is extracted from an email to my friend Matt, the guy who first turned me on to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was 15. I'd like to add that I never would have spent ten years as a drug eating artist and musician who then cleaned up and started doing something with the knowledge gained from those experiences if not for Hunter. Thanks Doc, you were an inspiration!