I woke up the other morning on a strange couch. There was a bright winter grey light coming in through
the blinds. Actually, there were no blinds. Some fool had pulled them down in the night. Some fool had
taken all my clothes off as well. stripped me right bare, no dignity whatsoever - somehow my jockey shorts
were around my neck. I'm thinking, "Oh God no! Not that routine again! And who was my audience?"
I picked up a fuzzy pink blanket and wrapped it around me. Now at least I wouldn't get arrested if I
stepped outside for a newspaper, anything to get me oriented. I needed the date, a sniff at the equinox, a
sense of what the sun was doing... the percentage of oxygen in the upper atmosphere. Hell, I needed some
air! Clear my mind, find my clothes. See if some malevolent force was doing this to me, or was it just my own
stupidity...
I needed some food! Maybe peer over the fence, chase something down... breathe, baby,
breathe! I needed to be less irritating. Hung over like heavy bombers cruising under an overcast sky.
Stop the madness!
Quit this gibberish!
Silence please! Clear the horizon of your own head... Sleep.
There are some things none of us should drink.
I have an unfortunate tendency to start climbing. I mean, some atavistic urge overtakes me and I climb
lamp posts,red pine trees and bell towers. Unfortunate legal circumstances sometimes follow..
I didn't know where I was. I didn't recognize the people in the hall who were waving at me and
bringing the coffee. I looked in a hand mirror without recognition. The name written across the glass
was, "Johnny Rock It!"
Now this did bring a shock and some horrors. I used to play music under a similar
but different name.
"What day is this?" I asked the woman who straightened the back of the room.
I looked out the big window over the street.
"Day?" .she answered..
Hungover, but very relaxed, with just the odd shudder and shake. My limbs were very
loose... as if I had been dancing for days. And not to some nasty club-footed heavy four-four Moloch music
either. I could feel Caribbean rhythms had passed through me...Maybe some early calypso:
"I wonder why nobody don't like me
Or is it the fact that I'm ugly?
I wonder why nobody don't like me
Or is it the fact that I'm ugly.?."
What was the name of this song? It was circling round my head. Constantly.
Aha! I had it! It was Lord Melody from Trinidad! What a song! The original
highly sexy "zoom! zoom! zoom!" version. That was great growing up there! On the north
coast of Jamaica from the age of six to fourteen, on and off.
I'd been thinking I was sick. I felt such heaviness all around me, a feeling of doom. But this morning
waking up I realize: "This whole country is depressed all around me! Everybody feels that there's no
hope, that the future holds nothing. That all there's going to be is more aggression and violence and
mind-numbing death until we kill ourselves!"
Once I realized that, I just wanted to go back to dancing.
"Hell!" my father once shouted over at me, "That's why they call it a DEPRESSION!
Get it right, boy!"
Well, Wild Bob's got it right this time. I'm going back to that funny, story-telling music of my early days.
Now, once again... what was that song? When was the last time we laughed?
* * *
THE HOWLING HIGHWAY H0NOURS HUNTER S. THOMPSON!
I don't care what the fuckheads and fruit-bats say about his "demeaning focus on drugs." Fuck them! He's a great humorist and an intense defender of the Constitution and human rights, when he was forced to train his finely-honed mind on such legal matters, he rose to the occasion....
A general feeling of doom. A sickness and horror at all the violence. A nausea....
unsavory taste in the pit of the stomach.
A feeling that the future will certainly be worse ---- more concentration camps. More horror.
More death. More guilt, more shame...
I miss Hunter S. He was the master of the quick shift... writing from
horror to humour and back again. My God! I miss that omnivorous prick already.
I miss the explosions. I miss the intricacy of his insults.
We almost came to blows over my use of the "..." system. He called it lazy and offensive. I called
him a pig-fucker, can't exactly remember what kind.. I loved the homicidal look in his eye. It was
so completely genuine. One freezing ice-lashing. toe-snipping night in Toronto... In the back of an empty
theater, we nearly came to terminal blows. Canadian rye will do that to you pretty quickly.
It was a moment of pristine clarity and silence. I'm certain he enjoyed
the moment. I know I did. It was the still place they always talk about,
in the midst of the turning world.
You can't really kill a man like Hunter. You certainly can't kill his Spirit, which has grown by several
megatons since his death. I can feel it rattling, gearing up, blasting up and down the highways of both our
coasts, east and west... from sea to shining sea.
I can still feel him looking over my shoulder as I'm writing this. And I'm
being careful because the masterful teacher of vicious insight seems to be watching as I write this.
. I hate being careful when I write. (That's for editing one week later) .My eyes are as sharp as
Hunter's. I'm a better shot than Hunter, though there's no way he'd agree But I don't have his fine gift for
vitriol.
I keep losing my sense of humor, something he rarely did in print.
He's welcome at my table any time. And I'm honored if her wants to look over my shoulder
There will always be a strong cold drink, waiting for him here.
Let's be honest. He's an American hero. He was not afraid to speak up in these decades of Fear
and cowardly, willful blindness.
This pervasive feeling of fear...
"There's nothing to fear but fear itself." Roosevelt said this. He helped people out of the last depression.
I wonder who will help us out of this one.
"The definition of madness is loss of a sense of humor." Hunter S. Thompson.
Carpe Diem
_____ ____
Discard nothing. Everything may serve.
What was the name of that old calypso tune?
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