viva el gonzo

God, how male this world is.

“Violence is really a luxury, you learn that after you’ve been in it for a while.”

Hunter S. Thompson, 1975

i am sitting here in what could be called ‘recovery,’ or perhaps better yet some kind of literary DT hangover. honestly i feel a bit nauseous, a slightly surprising follow-up to what was initially an impressive first impression.

perhaps that was his specialty, impressive first impressions.

he/him of course being the one and only father of mundo el gonzo, a certain kind of simultaneously self-indulgent and self-deprecating style of journalism that seems to thrive in the elements of hedonistic destruction.

there he was, using words that a doctor of philosophy needs to look up in the first few paragraphs of his article... then the clarity of those first few pages just evaporates with his own lucidity as you progress through the story.

the year is 1970, and we are at the Kentucky Derby with Hunter S. Thompson.

god bless our hearts. let’s hope we make it out alive.

in the real world, almost 50 years later, we are living in the midst of a gonzo-esque invasion that has little but not nothing to do with its namesake.

there is dancing and debauchery, i am sure, and the moderate use of alcohol and controlled substances. late nights that lead to long mornings. things that one might or might not remember, mixed for some with a kind of fluorescente escapism.

“reality gone gonzo,” so to speak…but that said, if he/him were here, i’m sure he would laugh at the naïveté of all of it. because maybe reality is gone, but isn’t really gonzo.

“Nice, crazy, like ZING, gonzo”

image credit: a very cool IG account

on the other hand, we’re just talking about a bunch of happy hippies descending upon the town for a music festival, sitting in circles with cups of semi-sacred cacao, dancing to the music of a band called Goose that as best i can glean took upon themselves the Phish/Grateful Dead mantle some years back and has been wearing it proudly and with a distinct kind of neon endurance ever since.

there is the enacting of a grand collective ceremony here, and i don’t say that in jest.

it has me reflecting on the power of the arts to pull people out of the woodwork.

all sorts of people, really. soccer moms and jock bros and sober sallies and latino musicians in sailor suits.

i don’t even need to be there to see it — just like Burning Man. tune into Instagram stories the second week of September and you get all you’ll ever need with none of the superfluous sequins.

(said with a smile and a pinch of salt and a heavy dose of compassion, right? that is the standard recipe around here.)

meanwhile i find myself thinking of a guy named Pablo, whom i never met and therefore will never know. may you met him once.

i start to wonder about his gonzo life, and his ganzo life.

it takes a certain kind of person to be a renegade with consequence.

is this celebration the essence of his legacy?

(he, of course, being either of them)

“God, how male this world is.”

it’s fitting that he landed his ass in Aspen, the home of jagged white peaks and a hard core ski patrol, a place of flannel and felt and sheep skin, a real man’s frontier.

to write this article i went down a significant rabbit hole of research, which is not always the case. i usually take these Sunday Vespers moments to reflect upon the most prevalent sentiment of the week, which is not usually a cultural invasion.

initially, i was going to joke that one can easily identify a philosophy major as the only person in the room speaking about etymology.

viva el gonzo they say, without realizing they are saying, “long live the idiot.”

if we are going to speak about Gonzo, for example, we need to talk about what it means to be an idiot in the North End of Boston, its famous Little Italy, and the original stomping grounds of the editor that dubbed Hunter S. Thompson’s style as “gonzo journalism,” that kind of last-man-standing participant observation.

it is a skill set of orientation, first of all. the ability, for example, to lose one’s self in a stupor and then crawl your way back to the mirror.

“I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to focus on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him—a model for that one special face we’d been looking for. There he was, by God- a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature. Like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother’s family photo album. It was the face we’d been looking —and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible.

Hunter S. Thompson, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” (1970)

of course, he did make it. at least to the age of 67, at which point he shot himself with a pistol while his adult son and 6 year old grandson were in the next room.

i mean really, who does that?

someone who is both decadent and depraved, and had Hemingway as an example.

“I never had any doubt that at some point he was going to commit suicide,” recalls his son, Juan. Old age is a difficult concept for a perpetual adolescent. Hemingway couldn’t handle it, and Hunter went out the same way, though more elegantly: with a pistol rather than a shotgun.

the perpetual adolescent.

celebrating the man’s man, that Southern gentleman.

i have to say that is what makes me nauseous.

it’s just too much indulgence. too much self-interest. so little respect for creation.

some say there is a Buddhist side to all of it, but maybe it is more that Tibetian diety of destruction we’ve been talking about, rather than an enlightened Buddha under a bodhi tree. a type of being that needs to exist in order to teach us all a lesson.

what that lesson is exactly…perhaps that’s the hardest thing to articulate, even for him.

screenshot: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

when we take a few steps back and i clean the lens from which i have been seeing things lately, there are a few different points that i notice.

1. happiness is happiness. which is to say, happy hippies descending upon a place is, in general, a good thing, even if they are completely unaware of the havoc they create for the local community, or the destruction that preceded or follows their presence.

2. all art is not good art. which is to say, yes, Hunter S. Thompson was an artist. he created things that changed people. was that change for the good of all beings? is that particular flavor of “forever young” juvenile laissez-faire what the world needs, now or ever? it’s arguable.

3. would i go back for more? probably not. which is to say, not all depravity is worth our attention. there is an innate sense that tends to act like anything recorded by man is worth consuming, but when one takes into account that these records were made almost entirely in inebriated states, they only tend to make sense if one is (or wants to be) perpetually inebriated.

there is a point of inquiry here, which is a quote from Joseph Campbell, who has also been making a resurgence in the vibes lately, and which apparently Dr. Thompson was quite fond of:

“In the destructive element immerse!”

apparently we are advised (in general) to embrace the chaotic, dangerous, or uncertain aspects of life rather than fighting them, which in theory allows one to survive in the "deep, deep sea" of existence.

this is another rabbit hole for investigation.

“’Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the glass case. ‘Perhaps the artist was a little mad. Eh? What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass?...’

…

"'And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble- the heart pain- the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. Ja!... And all the time you are such a fine fellow, too! Wie? Was? Gott in Himmel How can that be? Ha! ha! ha!'

…

“’Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns- nicht wahr?... No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask me- how to be?’

“His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though away there in the dusk he had been inspired by some whisper of knowledge. ‘I will tell you! For that, too, there is only one way.’

Joseph Campbell, Lord Jim

so yes, we allow. we sink and we swim.

but do we need to indulge? therein is a significant difference.

because everything has consequence, right?

God, how male this world is.

perhaps all it needs is a subtle change, an ‘a’ for an ‘o,’ and then you go from idiot to cool overnight.

Che ganzo!

just like that instead of an alcoholic coke-head owl you are a stylish artistic goose.

not bad really.

was that Pablo’s doing? is he the original silly goose?

of course, i can’t tell a story i don’t know, but we can imagine.

use that sober lucidity to invite in some enlightenment. let the good vibe club invite you to the afterparty at the Comrade Cafe, and then you go gonzo.

Ganzo before Gonzo, that’s what i’ll say.

so how bout that folks?

that’s where we’re at on this lovely Sunday.

i suppose it is a story that’s unfinished because the story’s never really finished, even if the good gonzo chapter is now over.

“Perhaps because now we only have a finite amount of words. Imagine if, in some twisted world, he’d taken his words with him…”

-Anita Thompson (Hunter’s second wife), 6 months after he shot himself.

just imagine, a world without his words.

maybe then she’d have something to say.

see you next week, dear reader.

til then, in the words of Sir Gonzo,

“Let’s get stoned and have orgasms and laugh a lot”

rsvp: vidabierta