I just finished reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was my first time reading this particular work of Thompson's, I had previously devoured The Great Shark Hunt and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. But in this work I found something I hadn't entirely expected. Enmeshed in this story of absurdity and crazy adventures is an extremely poignant and profound observation of the rise and fall of the 60's generation.
I sometimes wish today's generation had that same power and spirit, that willingness to do whatever you could to incite change. There are still so many people out there who do, who try daily, but somehow today I am not sure it means the same. I don't think there is the same hopefulness that existed in the 60's, whether it was an illusion then or not.
"There was madness in any direction, at any hour...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing wasright, 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..."
If only we could ride that wave again.
6 comments:
OK, maybe I´m getting hopelessly idealistic in my old age (but hell a job in Spain fell from above and hit me on the head just I was wondering how to find one..)...but...what if we could ride that wave, if we just had their blind confidence - just threw it ourselves at the wave to see what happened?
(Ok, maybe the Spanish sun's getting to me or I'm goofy happy because it's Saturday and we're in fiestas here..or maybe not..)
oops, threw ourselves at the wave, obviously...
One of these I´m going to learn to type.
Well, being someone who wants to be idealistic I still am afraid that, were we to throw ourselves at that wave today, we would drown. At least as far as American politics go.
Yeh, that´s what´s everyone back home tells me. Still, got to be some way to design a super boogie board to just go OVER the wave. Singing Buffalo Springfield. (Although they've never particularly appealed to me, but if it'll make Shot happy....)
There's a terrible lack of humor these days. Both left and right will rip your eyeballs out for mocking the seriousness of their cause. Without levity all beliefs become poison, fuel for hatred. I find that most people can't laugh at themselves without some self loathing arising out of it. Remember: it's a comedy to those of us who think, the tragedy is for all those who only feel.
What I meant to say is that people seem incapable of eating LSD at any given moment, without concern for schedules, and interacting with reality running wild in the streets these days.
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