Sunday, August 21, 2005

Blowed Up Real Good

AshesToAshes
NoRustInHisDustVille



You wanna hear about my best Thompson experience?

Reading him I mean.

Spring 1982, or maybe 1983; little red log cabin in the Sooke Hills with a wood stove.

Woke up in the middle of the night, picked up the Vegas book, started reading it for maybe the 15th time, only this time did it right through, which was easy to do because that's how he wrote it, or so he said, in between bouts of heavy work on the Salazar piece which is why he was really hanging around with Acosta at the time.

Anyway it wasn't the weirdness I wanted in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods.

It was the cadence, with the rush and the whoosh bookending all the stops, stutters and tangents.

Melodic and percussive at the same time, not so much like Mr. Zimmerman as, well, dare I say it - jazz.

Was light when I was done; knowing how much Thompson liked to swim, jumped out of the sleeping bag, ran down the path and jumped into the freezing cold lake to clear out the jets....

As it were.

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