Jeremy Hogan Remembers

Our Shaman Has Gone Away – Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

Somewhere between the Barstow and hell, three universes past the back of my darkest recess of my imagination, I turned on the computer and read today that the doctor is dead. The shock began to take its effect…and I turned on the TV as some Jesus freak hell bent on bombing people into freedom declared and declared on CNN. And I thought of Hunter as I looked at the wire-story in disbelief.

I can imagine him walking on his property somewhere in Colorado with that gun in his hand thinking what will happen if I pull the trigger…what a trip that will be and then he did it. And then in a parallel universe of my thoughts I had to wonder if one of his enemies finally caught up with him…I’m sure he had a lot of enemies…and one can only speculate at this moment about what really happened to Hunter.

I don’t agree with suicide but I understand what might have led him to take his final trip.

It doesn’t take much to figure out that on the other side of his brilliant to the point political and sociological analysis and off the wall funny writing was a deeply self-destructive subconscious. But, any human with the insight of Hunter is going to feel the pain of half the world living on 2 dollars per day, slave child labor often making our products, 30,000 children under the age of 5 die each day from conditions that could be avoided with just a fraction of the money being spent bombing Iraq – anyone who would think this is OK would be a smug bastard indeed and smug bastards are who Hunter clearly disliked – just read his writing.

Meanwhile, the present goes on melting into the future like some bad acid trip. Except there is no coming down from this fistful of brown acid and I can imagine this is how Hunter must have felt back when he wrote, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” and what has really changed.

So, who knows what was really going through his head. Our constitution is under attack, our civil liberties are being taken away, according to the government and the media - half the world hates America, there isn’t a day that goes by when we aren’t warned we’ll soon be attacked again by these invisible terrorists. Everyone is running around all paranoid like a meth-tweaker on a 48 hour binge constantly looking out the window every five seconds for the police or who ever they’ve imagined is after them. This paranoia cannot stand – it is killing our souls and our dreams.

And Sadly, anyone who wants to analyze the situation as a free thinker might find themselves under attack for being unpatriotic. Hunter S. Thompson was such free thinker and he didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought about his analysis of this absurd human situation we’re all dealing with no matter what political spectrum we come from, whether or not we are religious or a nihilist or whatever signs and signifiers one might place on this unknown journey we all share as human beings.

What is evident, however, is truth and freedom and dissent are what our country was founded on and what has made the great aspects of it truly great. And there seems to be precious few contemporary voices outspoken to tell the truth as they see it no matter who is pisses off. Hunter used the beauty of the poetic form of literature with the techniques of a journalist to tell his version of the truth as he saw it and we are all the better for it.

In many cultures Shamans are deeply respected. The Tibetans have fortune tellers who go into a trance, many other Native peoples use psychedelics to communicate with the spiritual world. In our western materialism the spiritual is often overlooked. Hunter was a shaman who wrote the truth.

It’s a sad day for America and for humanity – our shaman has left this crazy village for good.

Hunter will be missed.

Jeremy Hogan – February 21, 2005

 

New and Of Note It has been a year since Hunter's death and who would guess that a fateful trip to the grocery store would be the catalyst for a sobering perspective of the shamelessness of Free Market Folly and the elitist agenda driven mass media doping of America. Click Here to read Jeremy Hogan's rantflect "Musings on the One Year Anniversary of our Shaman's Passing."

 

Learn More about Jeremy Hogan at his newly re-vamped website, www.jeremyhogan.com .