A Letter to Fellow Insomniacs from Music City

Ladies & Gentlemen:
This 1:00 a.m. (CST) communique was inspired by a pair of demented media sources: (1) Hunter S. Thompson's letter to a friend, dated October 19, 1960 (exactly 2 weeks after my birth), postmarked San Francisco; & (2) a WRVU-FM radio program of weird, hilarious & corny 78-rpm novelty & show tunes called "Old Timey Funky Fresh Jams" hosted by a guy & a gal playing what they describe as "frickin' awesome artists taking dirt naps."

In his letter, 23-year-old HST complains that "If I don't get a job almost immediately I'll either starve to death or be desperate enough to attempt the long trek back to New York . . . To cross the continent by thumb in the dead of winter is something I dread more than anything I can think of. But if the only alternative is a half-gainer off the Golden Gate bridge, I will probably prefer the thumb and the cold and the hunger and all the rest of the shit a man has to eat and wallow in if he wants to stay alive."

That passage captures a mood of bittersweet despair that I am all too familiar with. Nevertheless, it's written with such humorous determination that I can't help but smile at the struggling young Hunter, who composed it in an empty borrowed apartment on the West Coast. Then, of course, he avoided a dirt nap (i.e. traditional burial) upon his suicide some 45 years later by arranging to have his mortal remains cremated & stuffed into a custom-made cylinder of fireworks. Ever dramatic, Thompson stipulated that this semi-human rocket should be launched at his Owl Farm compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. His widow - aided financially by HST's good buddy & fellow Kentuckian, "Colonel" Johnny Depp - actually granted this appropriately strange incendiary request.

Imagine the spectacle, as witnessed by Madison lawyer Bill Dixon (another pal of the legendary journalist/fabulist) in August 2005: the HST-rocket is fired from atop a gigantic raised fist clutching a stylized peyote button, Thompson's Gonzo logo, as Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" serenades at ear-blistering decibels the crowd of friends & family. The rocket rises toward heaven, but stops short of God's grasp, exploding in a fiery blaze of sound & light, eventually drifting back down to Earth.

Can't think of a better way to scatter one's ashes across the surface of this odd planetary way station from womb to tomb myself.