monday do drugs tuesday do drugs wednesday do drugs thursday do drugs friday do drugs saturday do drugs sunday rest and do drugs
this is not another piece on drugs
on drugs
it’s about stories
it’s about legends
it’s about the legendary
honorary hells angel
distinguished drug-user
number one gonzo journalist
hunter s(tockton) thompson
a man with faultless taste in guns, sunglasses and hats
a late, great, literary celebrity around whom improbable, implausible stories seemed to cluster like sheep, like flocks of candyfloss cumulus clouds, condensing on the metallic surfaces of typewriter keys and shotgun barrels as cold hard myths
here’s his daily routine
3:00 p.m. rise
4:16 orange juice, Dunhill
8:20 sleep
of course, it’s a fairy story.
it’s fiction. it’s a fabrication. it’s fake news.
it’s a lie.
well, it’s a story.
it’s actually a pretty great story. it’s from e. jean carroll’s 1993 pseudo-biography, hunter: the strange and savage life of hunter s. thompson, which alternates between fictional and factual chapters. there’s an interesting article about it [here].
at first i was disappointed. just a story. but it’s not just that. or it is, but just that isn’t just that.
because we are all just stories. memory is a misspoken mantra, a mistake on repeat. hunter s thompson, the man, died, and was cremated, and his granulated remains were fired out of a cannon from a forty-seven-metre-tall tower in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button, to the tune of norman greenbaum’s spirit in the sky. really. unless that’s also a fantasy. hunter s thompson, the legend, lives forever.
I haven’t found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a desk writing, trying to imagine a story no matter how bizarre it is.
Hunter S Thompson