That Place Where the Wave Finally Broke and Rolled Back
I've been re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas recently and was reminded of one of my favorite HST passages, and it still gave me chills. So, here:
"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. What ever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
. . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
- Hunter S. Thompson
"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. What ever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
. . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Labels: 1960s, Fear and Loathing, Hunter S. Thompson, stopping the world, youth culture
posted by petebfd at 10:53 AM
2 Comments:
That's a great passage--there's another good one from one of his earlier books, might be this one or even Hell's Angels--he talks about how the American Dream and Manifest Destiny brought all the fortune seekers and gold diggers and Okies as far as the west coast and they got there and realized they couldn't go further and still had nothing to show, so it all just sat there and festered. Of course he said it more eloquently.
Where is this place in our generation? Where we can feel like we are winning? Where madness is happening and it feels perfect and timely? I'll move there tomorrow...
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