another suicide

Hunter S Thompson shot himself last night.


Suicide is near and dear to me in many ways; but this is as tough as any have been. Thompson was my punk hero--and his public "take me as I am or leave me the fuck alone" personality, his political activism, and his warped, gonzo idealism sent me to the tattoo chair fifteen years ago to have etched into my spine that dagger of his.

I got involved with protest, philosophy, reading my work--doing public work--only after I read Thompson. He didn't make me want to be a journalist; he made me want to explore the possibilities for fiction.

I left his work behind with my early twenties, moved quickly to Americans like Creeley & Williams, to modernism, to German romanticism, to phenomenology, to film, to art. Those moves that led me from being a crass punk to a philosophy degree are a bit too blurry to recall. I stumbled through my twenties, but the lead paragraph is a gonzo-hued.

Regardless, we saw him around Denver often enough that I have never really been without his personality, which I have always found appealing--an affinity possibly.

What do I need to excuse? Certainly not my feelings nor his act.