The Colossus of Woody Creek An Ode to The Doctor Departed Hunter Stockton Thompson July 18, 1937-February 20, 2005 by Rick McKinney February 23, 2005 I only hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to. - Donnie Darko In his lonesome travelogue of Greece "The Colossus of Maroussi," an ironically joy-filled epitaph for his beloved Europe as Nazi tanks crushed her bones behind him, Henry Miller wrote of his love of Greece. "Christ, I was happy. But for the first time in my life I was happy with the full consciousness of being happy. It's good to be just plain happy; it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how, in what way, because of what concatenation of events or circumstances, and still be happy.. well, that is beyond happiness, that is bliss, and if you have any sense you ought to kill yourself on the spot and be done with it." I'd like to believe Hunter was at least a little happy when he blasted a .45 caliber hole in that beautiful mind of his Sunday night. He was surrounded by family, his lovely young wife who had long been his assistant before they married, his son Juan and daughter-in-law literally in the next room. But who knows. I'd bet my old BMW that his great moment of bliss came and went decades ago. For more important to Hunter than his own happiness, was the story. I know this like I know myself, for such is my curse as well. By the way, before I go any further, let me confess that most of what I know about writing I learned from Thompson. I fear not the first person. I am not obsessed with IT or with myself, but I regard myself an intelligent enough individual to reference with frequency. Thus will this eulogy be crafted in relation to me and my relationship with the deceased. If the personal account of one for whom Thompson has been a lifelong mentor is not of interest to you, then you are excused from class. Take your snooty SPJ ass down the hall to Journalism 101, where you will be taught everything Thompson DIDN'T stand for. [SPJ: Society of Professional Journalists] Right. Back to the story of a man whose death sent me staggering into the desert Monday night wailing like a banshee. Not only did I put the fear in every Border Patrol Agent for yards around here in no-man's land half a mile from the Mexican Border, but I howled with such fury as to make the slithering, winged and four-legged citizens of Bat Country flee for their lives as well. Thompson had the heart of a warrior, his conviction and endurance carrying him far beyond the need of happiness, and, of recent, the pains of his ailing health. To my knowledge, in his Gonzo reportage he never openly admitted to sadness. Sure, maybe a little sadness at the death of a hero or friend or sadness that a certain politician was still breathing. But never personal sadness. In this sense, he remained Gonzo to the End. And now I hear tell they're going to shoot his ashes out of a cannon, just as he envisioned in a BBC interview over two decades ago. Hot damn! Here I am trying to write a eulogy, I read that and suddenly I'm jumping up and down shouting with joy. Gonzo. God, what a great man. Me? I feel like I failed Gonzo years ago. I just didn't have the mental stamina for all the downers, for the methamphetamine-jangled sunrises, for the kegs and kegs of pirate rum. So, for those of you would brand me a Gonzo copy-cat or poser, you, too, can see yourself to the door. Call me a poser now, in the mood I'm in, and I'll blast you out of a cannon. Unlike Thompson, I've been plenty sad and written of it openly. The non-existent financial trappings of my career have been a recipe for Thompson's oft-described doom & failure. I've been writing in a vacuum for years, earning next to nothing for my labors, and my readership (God bless the die-hard fuckers!) couldn't fill the 200 or so outhouses on the 2000-mile Appalachian Trail. But I never stop writing. Ever. At the expense of my happiness, my sanity, even my pride, I've kept pounding the keys and moving the pen. But I owe this diligence, this dedication to the story, to Hunter, lock, stock & barrel. When a respected friend and fellow writer asked me back in the early 90's, "When the hell are you going to stop writing about yourself and start really writing?" it was Hunter who invalidated that question. Hunter gave me permission to write however the fuck I wanted and about whatever the hell I wanted, as well. I'm not alone on this one, I know. There are no doubt thousands of young writers who are at this very moment saying the same thing. The gift of Hunter's for which I am most grateful: Gonzo Journalism, of course. The ability to write in the NOW as events unfold, to write fast and furious and damn the torpedoes of objectivity. Gonzo, the ability to write with humor and savage honesty, sometimes about not-so-humorous things. Gonzo, the proclivity for writing as though you're falling to your death and hammering out that perfect ending takes precedence over prayer. Gonzo, the utilitarian delusion that what you're writing is important, vitally important, even when you have no access to major media and know thus that you may never be heard. There's one I bet Hunter never even thought of. But that's what he gave me, by his example, a sort of costume arrogance at times when Freud would have been hard-pressed to locate an iota of ego in me, that and a genuine stubbornness to tell the story, no matter if it killed me. Denial played an important role in all this, no doubt. But as a shrink once told me, "Act as if." When the going got weird, I acted as if I was a pro. And I was definitely weird enough to pull it off. Gonzo is an event. It is much more than writing. It is living a life worth writing about. Who could deny that Hunter lived just such a life? Thanks to Hunter, I'm not doing too bad myself, though it hasn't always been this good. In Colossus, Miller goes on to say that he possessed neither the power nor the courage to kill himself, despite what still sounds to me like a great idea. I haven't exactly nailed down when that moment of bliss came for me, but I know this much: I didn't have the courage either, or more likely I was so giddy with life that the thought of suicide just never occurred to me. I did have the courage when life inside my head got unbearably ugly though, enough courage to land me a stint in a psychiatric hospital. In another instance, with a Thompson-inspired 9mm to my head (what true student of Gonzo doesn't own a gun?), I had the power and the courage. And dumb luck. I pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. I lived to outlive my mentor. And last year I outlived a dear friend. Luciano and I shared a love of Bukowski, and I know he'd read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I mention Luciano because he, too, had the fortitude to stick a gun to his head and pull the trigger. Thompson was no stranger to guns. In the end, the gun probably felt like a peacock feather in his hand. Maybe to him it felt as intimate as holding Anita's palm to his cheek. Thompson and guns were that close. Thompson was 67. Not so Luciano. The night he put a friend's 12-gauge in his mouth and said "Vaya con Dios, Silly World" might have been the first time he'd ever hefted a gun, for all anyone knows. Luciano was 27, a fantastic songwriter and guitarist lost to us all. When he died, his mother bade me write a eulogy for her platinum album-artist son. I couldn't do it. My heart felt like a brown paper lunch bag popped in your ear by a bully then crumpled and tossed. I could hardly breathe let alone write. His death was the unthinkable. At his wake, a theater busting at the seams with stunning girls and dozens of black-clad L.A. celebrity musician-types, I read this Bukowski quote, adding only that I was glad my friend had not died so destitute and unloved, unknown. I repeat it here for Hunter, for whom it is equally appropriate, ammo gauge size and longevity of their respective lives aside: "This thing upon me like a flower and a feast, this thing upon crawling like a snake. It's not death, but dying will solve its power. And as my hands drops a last desperate pen in some cheap room they will find me there, and never know my name, my meaning, nor the treasure of my escape." Perhaps Dr. Gonzo wouldn't mind sharing a little of this, his eulogy, with Luciano, who never got one. Not from me anyway. No, my eulogy to Luciano took the form of a very long walk. Still bereft and bereaved three months after his death, I climbed out of Luciano's BMW that I'd inherited, packed my toothbrush, a North Face down jacket, 400 Snickers bars, a Palm Pilot and a collapsible keyboard and proceeded to walk over 2000 miles through 14 states and over 150 mountains to purge my grief on the Appalachian Trail. Run, Forrest, run. And something else. To write. Sure, many books had been written about the AT, but had a die-hard Hunter S. Thompson acolyte ever tackled it in language befitting the Doctor? I doubt it. In fact, hell no! I'm sure not. And so it was that while HST was getting a hip replacement and breaking his leg and feeling what Bukowski termed "the forlorn rags of growing old," I was putting the best of Hunter's gifts to the test (as well as taxing my feet, knees and lungs to their max!). I was riding the crest of a huge and beautiful wave I'll call "The Unshowered Gonzo," and I think it would have made him proud. Remember the scene in "Where the Buffalo Roam" where attorney Peter Boyle pontificates and Bill Murray's Thompson types away on a bulky, now-ancient typewriter while weaving a treacherous path down steep San Francisco streets? Well, Hunter would be proud of the extent to which I've made the Palm Pilot the ultimate Gonzo writing tool. On the trail, already a touch-typist, I taught myself how to type lying down in my sleeping bag at night with no aid of flashlight or candle. And I wrote a bundle: over 175,000 words in total. And while I hiked, my "attorney" Justin posted to the Web, and the whole Gonzo tale made its way to the readers of Jigglebox.com almost as fast as I could write it. Again, it was Gonzo on many levels, the utilitarian delusion of importance and timeliness not the least of it. Indulge me, kind Reader, this tiny regret: Oh how I wish Hunter had been reading Jigglebox this summer. In the late 80's, I'd sought out and earned my bachelor's in journalism because of Hunter and been severely flogged for my Gonzo creativity right up to graduation. In contrast, writing my way to the top of Maine's tallest peak this past October felt like the righteous graduation I never got. And if Hunter had been there, I would have handed him my diploma and together we would have rolled a big Bob Marley joint with it and smoked it and raised a fifth of bourbon in toast to Thoreau and all who'd gone before us. Instead now, I am left to raise the glass alone. "To Hunter, my teacher-in-absentia, the mentor who never knew me, who never knew how hard I studied at the ethereal College of Gonzo and how very, very much I loved him." And if you don't think I'm crying as I write this, YOU'RE A HEARTLESS SWINE! So sayeth the Doctor. Whether or not Hunter ever read any Hermann Hesse, he certainly did say yes to himself, to what made him different, to his feelings, his destiny. Hesse said: "There is no other way. Where it leads I don't know, only that it leads to life, to reality, to burning necessity. You may find this unbearable and take your life; that course is open to all, the thought of it often makes one feel better as it does me. But to elude this path by decision, by betrayal of your own destiny and nature, by assimilation to the normal - of that you are incapable. You would not succeed for long, and your despair would be greater than it is now." Obviously, Hunter S. didn't take his life for any such reason, and he certainly never assimilated to the normal. He just got old, and like an elderly Eskimo who doesn't want to burden the tribe, he wandered off into the freezing snow to roam again with the buffalo. Just days before Thompson's death, my cousin Justin, the "Samoan attorney" to my "Raoul Duke" in everything we do, tacked this Thompson quote to the signature area of his emails. Was it a recent quote? I don't know. But if so, it certainly rings of the kind of well-thought-out suicide Hunter's friends now believe it was. "Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of "the rat race" is not yet final." What an eloquent way of lending a dim glimmer of hope to Thoreau's "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Oh, and by the way Hunter, thanks for flipping GW & Co. and half the voting public the royal bird by clocking out on the eve of Presidents Day. I don't care who says there's no connection. Even if the timing of the holiday was just conveniently coincident with your plans, the irony is crystal. Just listen to the author writing two years ago in "Kingdom of Fear." "Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis." Of the hundred-some articles I read in the 24 hours following what I'll term The Shot Heard Round The Gonzo World, I think Salon.com writer Cintra Wilson nailed it best, saying: "I think it is improper and disrespectful to whine about this suicide. Thompson was in the game for a very, very long time, and I think it is a safe bet that he was never comfortable. This was a profoundly tortured guy, the smoke from whose ears always made a whole lot of exciting colors that we all enjoyed. It was a great brain to watch but you wouldn't want to live in it, I'd aver. He was a butch motherfucker and I'd bet cash he stuck it out significantly longer than he really wanted to. Let's face it, HST was not one for the nursing home -- he'd have just stolen everyone else's barbiturates and hurt people trying to arm-wrestle." I wish I had said that. But I'm not that quick on the draw when the death of a beloved is concerned. So it was a day or so before I could write anything. Touched by Bay Area workers who were posting to Craigslist.org both their grief and their dismay at how little empathy they were getting around the office, I posted this to Craigs on Tuesday: Friends in Gonzo.. I am in the southern Arizona desert, twelve miles from the nearest neighbor, and if it makes you feel any better, last night, I screamed at the top of my lungs for hours "My hero is dead!" whilst stomping the terra and flooding the desert with my tears. I have crafted a life around this great mentor, from my education, to years as a freelancer, to building a gigantic art car dedicated to the spirit of Gonzo, to writing and writing and writing til my fingers bleed with the intensity of a man in whose style I found similarities long, long ago. Without attempting to copy him, I have carried the torch now for many years. When your initial grieving lessens with a half dozen heinous hangovers (as I have today), perhaps you would find a kindred voice in my Gonzo-inspired site, Jigglebox.com. Stomping with you and for you in Arizona, Rick McKinney I didn't write this eulogy to recap Thompson's career for you. Why bother? This week one need only plug his name into Google to read a thousand hours of reportage on a final act of freedom that took all of one second. BANG! No. Stealing the final lines from one of my still-favorite movies The Matrix, "I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came to tell you how it's going to begin." First, they're going to shoot Our Hero's ashes out of a cannon over Owl Farm. Then, a shitload of pigs who don't give a rat's ass about the man or his work are going to make a bundle selling his every pen-stroke on eBay (a sacrilege that began seemingly just moments after his death). Then I'm going to do what many may consider a sacrilege: I'm going to carry the torch. I'm going to continue doing what I've been doing for well over a decade: write like a Gonzo Motherfucker. No way would I ever go on record as claiming to be "the next Hunter Thompson." I'm fully in accord with those who say he will NEVER BE REPLACED. Years ago I started construction on an Art Car dedicated to Thompson and the spirit of Gonzo. About twelve years later, the 12-foot tall road beast on a Ford Granada chassis is more or less finished. Between that, the Gonzo dagger tattoo on my right arm from the mid-80s, and the dagger now lodged in my moose-sized heart, I guess you could say I was somewhat enamored of the man and his work. As a result, I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, "Have you met him?" quickly followed by "Don't you want to meet to him?" sometimes even chased with "Let's drive up to Woody Creek right now!" And it boggled the hell out of Thompson fans when I'd say no, no, no. Until a brief moment of doubt on Monday when it was too late, I had always been sure that no, I didn't care to meet the man. "But why not?" came the baffled replies. Answer: I love the man for his writing, that's all. I didn't want some awkward or ugly meeting with the man to shatter the myth, the legend. And most of all, I didn't want to be "just a fan." Hunter forever made it clear to the world that he didn't want to be bothered at his home. I sent him postcards of the car I'd made in his honor, a car aptly named "The Duke" that had gone on to gain a good measure of fame for itself over the years. He never responded. That was enough for me. Do I regret not meeting him now? No. Okay, we probably would hit if off great, and the Art Car would have opened the gate. But who was to know? I'm not a gambler, and I like him best where he will live now forever: in my heart and in my mind. Oddly, if I have any regret, it's that I didn't drive "The Duke" up to Woody Creek this past year and chain it to his gate with the note: "Happy Birthday," then just leave. I wanted nothing more from Hunter than what I got. I would only have been happy to have given him something, even if he did just turn around and shoot my masterpiece full of bullet holes. Finally, this from a Thompson piece titled, "German Decade: The Rise of the Fourth Reich" from Songs of the Doomed wherein Hunter's friend Cromwell goes mad with fear of "seeing his son a slave to Germany." "Oh God! It's too horrible! He'll be better off if I put a bullet through his brain right now!" He jerked a stainless-steel .45 automatic out of a kidney holster on his belt and cranked a slug into the chamber, then aimed the gun at his huge blond son, sleeping peacefully in front of the fire. I seized him by the neck and clamped my thumb on the hammer of the .45. "Be calm," I hissed. "George Bush is in charge now. Your son is safe. We are still Number One." He went limp and meekly surrendered the weapon. I was lying, but it seemed necessary. I didn't need a murder in my house. I handed the .45 to his son. "Here, hold this," I said. "It's loaded." "Good," said the son, then pointed the weapon at Cromwell and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. It misfired. Old .45 ammo is like that. Do I wish Sunday's .45 round had jammed? Only for those he left behind. "Funerals," I once wrote while working at a mortuary, "are for the living." Hunter is doing just fine now, lounging on the patio section at the Beverly Hills Hotel or wherever occurred for him that moment of perfect bliss we spoke of earlier. For that bliss, (I believe) is our Heaven. Goodnight Rogue Prince. May flights of bats wing thee to thy rest. With love, Rick McKinney [Postscript: In the midst of this writing, my best friend Harrod's mother Gail also passed from this world. An exquisite ceramicist & painter, Gail's years of battling cancer are finally over. She is survived by her son's Harrod and Beau, her 2nd husband Bert and Harrod's father, noted documentary filmmaker Les Blank. Note to Hunter: find Gail up there and take her for a fast, fun ride in the Great Red Shark. As a personal favor to me, capishe?] HOME   Write Me!   Copyright 2004 Richard McKinney All Rights Reserved