Fear and Loathing … Texas 2002

Strange
memories on this nervous night in South Austin. Five years later? Six?
It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era- the kind of peak that
never comes again. Austin in the middle nineties 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 explains, 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 Casino's half-crazy and , instead
of going home, aimed the big Ford pick-up across the 360 Bridge at a hundred
miles an hour wearing 517 “western-cut” jeans and a $100 motorcycle jacket…booming
though the night at the lights of Cedar Park and Waco and Dallas not quite
sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other side … 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 prairie then over the Hills or down 35 to San Marcos
or San Antonio …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 Mt.Bonnell and look East 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.