The art you make may save your soul...
I broke from convention so long ago that “society” has crept up with drawn blade more than once, and I can’t help but ask if I’ve failed the universe by not keeping current, perhaps building on the work of giants so as to better inhale the silver iodide that gives plants what they need.
Now that I’ve blended myself a metaphor few can appreciate, complete with graphic, I can explain how I’ve failed humanity.
I saw Fear&LothingInLasVegas when it was released, and because I was reading TheProudHighway, I twaddled my skippy ass to the other side of the mall and bought the first HST Fear&Loathing that I could find. In fact, I still have it twenty-five years later, a relic from a life with no Plan B, knowing with a bone-deep certainty the eventuality of this experience. If I had batteries for the digital camera, I would prove it, as I don’t use the Pokemon-Finders preferred by the NSA, et alia.
You’ll have to trust that the book is sitting next to my left arm as I type, but only because I was going to take a picture. Yesterday, I even shared the story about Ibogaine, having detailed how it affected the 1972 Democratic Primary. Truly, a thing of beauty. I know I watched Thompson’s appearance on Carson detailing his coverage of Muskie & Ibogaine, but after a few minutes searching YouTube, I skipped the other possibilities and again agreed this is for me, not you-do your own research after you finish jumping from one bandwagon to the next.
I read this book every other year for two decades, a form of sanity maintenance too juicy to put down and too honest to believe. Like any person who is true to himself, everything becomes a work of art, F&L:OTCT72 no exception. Perhaps that’s why culture now looks like a paint-by-numbers version of DogsPlayingPoker, we’ve surrendered to pretense, and pretentiousness always needs a plug, a pump or a push from the baseless to see success. Organic and false do not intersect, even if this is the EndTimes foretold by some of the Christians.
Nonetheless, every other year on the Sunday before a national election, it was HST & me.
At least until 2008, when I modified my little tradition to include InTheLoop on the Saturday night before those increasing useless and probably counter-productive elections.
I failed in 2020, and since COVID is the scapegoat of the masses, I’ll leave them to it, stating I’d grown bored with the past and fiction. Much as a game of chess is not the end goal, but an illustration of strategy, Iannucci & Thompson were the reminder that voting is sillier when more people do it, and I no longer had the heart to admit it.
I failed to fulfill the tradition again in 2022, preferring to watch the BigTop welcome a new slate of tired animals too haggard to avoid falling off a pedestal, too mindless to shut the fuck up, and too committed to do anything except fail.
There’s still time this cycle, perhaps leading to the retirement of a now forty-year old paperback, the words woven into my heart like naughty cheerleaders trying to break free of the DixieMafia, the weirdness now required to maintain perspective in an AI world disconnected from life itself. Perhaps once more around the park before the BigParade begins.
InTheLoop might not wait until Saturday before the election, I might be watching that tonight, substituting Iraq for Ukraine or Gaza, both of which are the sort of ongoing failure that weapons manufacturers demand of Congress, something the overwhelming majority are happy to deliver. Decades of war defining a nation…what could go right?
I might be a little hasty on the book too, trying to get ahead of the bleeding shit-show more apropos of an audience-encouraged Tijuana barnyard than a collective of people claiming to have a national identity that few people even try to define personally.
What is America?
What is a conservative?
What does liberalism mean?
I’m sure there will be a required update when time demands; in the interest of homogeneity, togetherness and WallStreet, let’s all hurry up and get on the last page.
BillRice’s latest column drew my interest, as he asked which DC daycare has a work-study program with CasaBlanca, be it Communications, Policy or Bullshit, the crew in KJP’s office looking as though LimboJoe isn’t the only one who could use a diaper change.
Hence, InTheLoop.
No offense, son, but you look like you should be at a prep school with your head in the toilet, not giving a policy brief.
Ah yes, I’ve met one of your highly-gifted toddlers working on policy.
You sound like a Nazi JulieAndrews.
The sort of dialogue that evades the fearful and submissive, the last of the American rabble still capable or forming a sentence that omits a trendy phrase, a person who’s read something for pleasure, developed an interest without bragging, accomplished something that wasn’t up for group debate, the “rugged individualists” who might invoke if not internalize the idea offered by PatrickHenry [probably].
Until then, I’m going to enjoy the show, happy in the knowledge that life is fleeting but government is forever…unless it fails the majority, which can’t happen soon enough when life and art have become indistinguishable.