“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years
later? Six? 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. Whatever 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.
My central memory of that time seems to
hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left
the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning
across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and
a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel
at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which
turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate,
too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being
absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place
where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. .
. .
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, Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas
In many ways the failure (and success) of
the 1960s has defined my life in many ways. Thompson understood. It’s a short step from
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to Charles "Thulsa Doom" Manson. Or
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Role playing games were born because Excalibur had gone back to the Lady of the Lake but we still needed to dream again.
I wish everyone a 2016 in which dreams come true, our monsters are slain and treasure found.
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