Panegyric for Hunter- Ed Keller

8/4/2019 Panegyric for Hunter- Ed Keller

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GONZO A Panegyric for Hunter S. Thompson

by Ed Keller _________________________________________

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

ESTABLISHING SHOT:Late at night in the deep woods with summer insects clamoring outside, and Bill Laswell /Bootsy Collins dub funk psychedelicmetal from Zillatron is fueling this writingsession- also Mon Paez i Blanch growling afurious Catalonian lyric over Casuals late 90sgloom metal on their disc Figura 11- allchanneling the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson.

Demon wine mixes with the fatigue of a

bout with lyme disease, abated by powerfulantibiotics. Nothing like the strange brew that Hunter S.consumed but weird enough to propel meforward.

Writing to invoke his particular spirit- hoping atleast a bit of him will rise from the vasty deepas I call him up-in a kind of belated homage andthanks, and also as his particular psychoticbreed of energy is something we need thesedays. Who has this kind of energy?

CHARACTER ENTRANCES:I snatch at topical arguments, catchphrases anddocuments. To wit, pop culture geopolitics thatthe most successful survivors of 1968 play withlate capitalism. A glass bead game with brittleplastic marbles. No question the game has highstakes and is being played for keeps- walkingthe walk, with tens of thousands of pages,redrawn national borders, and billion dollar commissions- but those beads are cast onto aplaying eld where temporary leverage to gain astep forward cant always be distinguished fromcomplicity with massive ows of capital and newprotocols for regulating biopower. Adbustersbecomes an autophagus legitimization for satires of irony. Advertising revenues ow.Transvaluation? Im not being bitter here. Buttheres something maddening - and historyrepeats itself, this has happened countlesstimes before- when a group of brilliant rebelsgets swallowed by the blind spots of mechanismitself.

I remember a brief conversation in passing withAndrew Benjamin. I had something to say aboutvalue systems, and good and evil. I implied thatthere might even yet be such things. Andrewsreply, phrased perfectly as a good humoredrebuttal to my somewhat rabid articulation thatvalues still existed: But now were beyond goodand evil.....

Yes, we are. Friedrich took us past that, andplenty of others. But where does that leave us?The distinction between the negationist and thenihilist is instructive [cf Greil Marcus ne book _Lipstick Traces_]. He argues that they bothuse the same techniques, ranging from surfaceideology to the casting of explosives... thusmaking it possible for the negationist to bemistaken for a nihilist, at least by outside forces

and powers.

Could brilliant comedy rescue us from thisdilemma?

DUDE: Theyre nihilists.WALTER: Huh?DUDE: They kept saying they believe in nothing.WALTER: Nihilists! Jesus.[Walter looks haunted.]Say what you like about the tenets of NationalSocialism, Dude, at least its an ethos. from THE BIG LEBOWSKI, Coen brothers

So where do we locate the new epistemelogicalhorizons? Where can autonomy be found,real autonomy? Real freedom, and not justthe agency of choice, pre-limited by horizonsdened for us by non human ows of energy,capital, and cycles of time?

Is this the nineteen sixties or is my mindplaying tricks?Where do Bill Laswell & Co. take us with their North African inected trance funk? Remix,sampling, and conspiracy theory meets radicalpolitics and a kind of pan global criticalregionalism.

P-Funks legacy as a subaltern cadre of magi.Laswell, Bootsy Collins and Buckethead gazingthirty years into the past, and rifng in their own blend of Gonzo: if you see a geopoliticalsystem and its limit, and you want to show thatepistemological horizon to others [and here Ithink of Jameson- the intellectual equivalent, par excellance, of a Gonzo reporter, surng on theontological edge, probing the soft underbellyof capital, of power in its most extreme andstratied] then you throw the glove that Hunter S. also threw down: this is not played as aneutral postmodern shell game. This is balls tothe wall, full bore madness and invention.This is Rabeleis, lived out as what Reality TVshould be.

If you are going to show the limits of thesystem, then an encounter with surrealistassociation and systemic disruption is inorder, a demonstration of all systems ability totransgress their own boundaries. In other words,a belief that formal systems always include their own overcoming, or at least their own wrackand ruin. Guy Debord may have tried to kill the

weaker strains of surrealism with justication-but there are stronger, deeper componentsto it. Abstract principles of invention andthe unknown that have nothing to do withinterpretive strategies and cults of personality.

CENTRAL CONFLICT vs. NON CONFLICTTHEORIES: [the machine views its own blindspot]: And of what worth is GONZO, in anycase?As a blending of documentary and ction. Anerasure of journalistic objectivity.As a play with exactly those characteristicsof destablization and overlap- of subjects,

categories, boundaries of power- that thepostmodern loves so much- but with an edgeadded. Is the edge rage? Righteousness?Perhaps a bit, but overall probably somethingmuch simpler: the realization that thereare some basic truths we recognize that have todo with human dignity, preservation of life, andhow we can react as Intelligent beings to theinfringements upon those basic rights.

Central conict theory- in cinema- depends ona simplistic diegetic structure that producesa blinding narrative of RIGHT and WRONG, of subject/agent in a struggle against that

which should [supposedly] always be struggledagainst. But another more complicated formof diegetics produces values contextualizedagainst an act of invention, and against thebasic fragility of human life and intelligenceitself. Precisely this logic informs the descent/ascent into GONZO.

Anything but apathetic, Hunter S. was a fearless,irreverent rat bastard genius who had nocompunctions when it came to pushing the

envelope, laying it all on the line in search of some kind of journalistic truth which could beattained only through provocation.

GONZO AND ARCHITECTURE:Pernicious speculations and belief systemsout of control permeate the disciplines:symptomatic of a larger cultural indecision[rot?] that architecture merely amplies andreects.

Post theory, post critical? What is the sense of such a range of -isms when hermetic systemsof thought suppose their world models to haveuniversal applicability, yet suddenly discover they have no traction whatsoever? I dont wantto sound like Sokal and Bricmont here, not inthe least: but lets make it clear what is at stake.

Gonzo is fueled by a desperate urgency andpessimistic activism. As a good friend of minesays, regardless of what kind of scenarios wecan weave in speculation of our futures, peoplewill still like to fuck. Some might take thisstatement as nihilistic, which would be idiotic.I take it as negationist at worst- maintainingall the feral usefullness of critical thinking-and downright good advice at best. Notonly because indeed we still do like to dothat- fuck- but because we can see futuresopening to us and our kine, and those futuressuggest that systems can always escapereal or imagined limits. It doesnt only implypleasure and reproduction, it implies survival.And more important, it is an engagement withthe unknown- an abstract encounter with theunknown and largely inexplicable.

Humans are open systems. Open systems areconstantly exploring possible futures, andpleasure is a kind of engine for invention that

drives that exploration.But not just raw expression, not just selshpleasure. Its a question of agency. For example, Hunter S.was afraid to be so incapacitated that he wouldbe unable to commit suicide. He was terried of a loss of control. Psychoanalyze him as you will-the issue of agency is at stake.

At the end of a life, control and agency rulefor all of us on an almost pathetic level, but inGonzo, they become absolute imperatives for aconstant and far from equilibrium drive towards

the bounds of mediated space, of propaganda,and of the systems of the world: Gonzo providesaccess to a kind of agency that is unpredictable.

When de Certeau and Negri suggest that thetemporal zone of Kairos might have somethingto teach us about a new politics- a crucialform of invention, or a new capacity of themultitude- they are pointing out the exact placesin a system where tension exists between asingle future/destiny and the range of wide openfutures that are born when we move towards far from equilibrium.


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Not completely random; but not completelygiven. The right moment in time. The cubiccentimeter of chance.

Gonzo wasnt intended to be a personal,subjective, indulgent experience, although byits nature it would be conducted as such untilthe mid 90s, when the internet and two waycommunicative systems would take it beyondthe personal. TXTing revolutions are a kind of Gonzo. The revolution wont be televised as

they say, it will be TXTed, blogged, vogged, vodand podcast.

Gonzo is the process by which any and all canescape the limits of the world drawn for them bycontrol systems.

A CAUTIONARY TALE:Max Renn [James Woods], in Cronenbergslm Videodrome, is Gonzo gone bad. In pointof fact, Max was never really Gonzo- his goalnot the sensing of hidden boundaries in thequest for a new form of journalistic method, but

just a search for transgressive and seductivecontent for his TV network - nonetheless hessymptomatic of one of the hallmarks of Gonzo:embedding oneself in the system and therepresentation of the system so deeply that theboundaries evaporate. Of course, the danger of this method is that one loses all sense of boundary, which is exactly what happens toMax.Unfortunately for Max, hes being gamed byseveral competing networks of power, which alluse him as a tool. The risk in Gonzo would bethat this same shell game of hidden agendasoverwhelms the agent.

In contrast I offer a successful, if somewhatnostalgic agent example from cinematic reality:Lemmy Caution, Eddie Constantines character in the lm Alphaville, by Godard.

LEAD MONOLOGUE:One of the strengths of Gonzo would be itsability to produce scale shifts from the personalto the political, while erasing those abovementioned boundaries, and maintaining a littlebit of territory that one can return to, a kind of grounding reality. Shifting zones of stability,hidden sandbars:

Strange memories on this nervous night inLas Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems likea lifetime, or at least a Main Era- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco inthe middle sixties was a very special time andplace 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 cantouch that sense of knowing that you were thereand alive in that corner of time and the world.Whatever it meant...History is hard to know, because of all thehired bullshit, but even without being sure of

history it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a wholegeneration comes to a head in a long ne ash,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 ve or maybeforty nights- or very early mornings- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of goinghome, aimed the big 650 Lightning across theBay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearingLL Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherders

jacket...booming though the Treasure Islandtunnel at the lights of Oakland and

Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure whichturn-off to take when I got to the other end(always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted tond neutral while i fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter whichway I went I would come to a place where peoplewere 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 LosAltos or LaHonda...You could strike sparks

anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sensethat whatever we were doing was right, that wewere winning... And that, I think, was the handle- that sense of inevitable victory over the forcesof Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didnt need that. Our energy wouldsimply prevail. There was no point in ghting- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;we were riding the crest of a high and beautifulwave.... So now, less than ve years later, youcan go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you canalmost see the high-water mark- that placewhere the wave nally broke and rolled back. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S.Thompson

FLASHBACK/FORWARD- parallel universeencounters [Voiceover]Exterminate all rational thought, that is theconclusion I have come to. Naked Lunch,William Burroughs

I see Guy Debord, Hunter S., and RichardNixon. I see them meeting in a bar in LouisvilleKentucky, during the Derby, and at each othersthroats like rabid dogs. Nixon was a key gurefor Hunter: reviled yet perversely respected.Who knows if Hunter knew who Guy Debordwas. But they could at the least have hoisteda pint or two. What would Debord have to sayto Nixon? What provocations would HST havemade?

Nixons [apocryphal?] comment: I long agolearned to do one thing and think another...comes up hard against Debords self-pennedPanegyric:

All my life I have seen only troubled times,extreme divisions in society, and immense

destruction; I have joined in these troubles.Such circumstances would no doubt sufce toprevent the most transparent of my acts or thoughts from ever being universally approved.But, I do believe, several of them could havebeen misunderstood....My method will be very simple. I will tell of what I have loved; and, inthis light, everything else will become evident and make itself well enough understood.

EPILOGUE: RIDING INTO THE SUNSET:So, intrepid reader: your writer nds himself once again contemplating a sojourn in thedesert, as hes done several times before,

somewhere between LA and the Salton Seaor Barstow, where [like a B sci lm- say, The13th Floor] the limits of civilization becomeshimmering and transparent as we move farther from the center, which long ago ceased tohold.

Hunter S. ran for sheriff in 1970 on the FreakPower ticket. All I can think in response is that...the meek shall inherit the earth...

The meek being, of course, any of the manystrains of subalterity that today can bandtogether in ways never before possible.

Were using maps of the C20 landscape tonavigate the desert itself, or nding the desertin the very center, and the monuments we studyarent tricking us into forgetting the future:were crafting another set of monuments thatgive us eidetic recall of both the future andthe past, while we paradoxically choose at willwhich kinds of amnesias to slide into, whichreductions of destiny to taste like wine.And a host of kindred spirits rides with us, bothliving and dead.

OMNIA MUTANTUR, NIHIL INTERIT ---------------------------------------------------------------------ROLL CREDITS:[shot like Fellinis nal scene in 8 1/2: thecurtains part, and all the participants- near and distant- descend into the circus ring, theharlequin dance, as the lights fade]

[Voiceover] Credit is due to the followingcharacters, who sang in the head of the author like vodou loa: Juan AzulayWilliam S. BurroughsBernard TschumiJean Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Chris Marker Philip K. DickRem Koolhaasthe S.I.Locke/Robertson [The Passenger, Antonioni]Zarathustra / NietzscheGrant MorrisonThomas PynchonRobert SmithsonPier Paolo Pasolini and Mama Roma


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Panegyric for Hunter- Ed Keller

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