Fuel and Spirit
Wherever you are, Hunter, there is music! We still hear it in every page…
Here’s a piece from “Kingdom of Fear.”
Music has always been a matter of energy for me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel.
I have always needed fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. A new high-end Cadillac will go ten or fifteen miles faster if you give it a full dose of “Carmelita.”
…It happens over and over, and sooner or later you get hooked on it, you get addicted. Every time I hear “White Rabbit” I am back on the greasy midnight streets of San Francisco, looking for music, riding a fast red motorcycle downhill into The Presidio, leaning desperately into the curves through the eucalyptus trees, trying to get to the Matrix in time to hear Grace Slick play the flute.
There was no piped-in music on those nights, no headphones or Walkmans or even a plastic windscreen to keep off the rain. But I could hear the music anyway, even when it was five miles away. Once you heard the music done right, you could pack it into yr. brain & take it anywhere, forever.
_– Hunter S. Thompson –
Yessir, That is my wisdom and that is my song. It is Sunday and I am making new rules for myself. I will open my heart to spirits and pay more attention to animals. I will take some harp music and drive down to the Texaco station, where I can get a pork taco and read a New York Times. After that, I will walk across the street to the Post Office and slip my letter into her mailbox.