Remembering Raoul Duke

I'm just watching the most excellent and infinitely entertaining Breakfast with Hunter for the first time in several years.

You know there's a moment when you realize you're not a kid anymore, when you suddenly hear of the death of someone special and suddenly you're faced with the certainty that the world as you know it has been irreversibly changed, invariably for the worse, that no matter what happens, it used to be a better planet than it is now and will ever be, because this one dude is Gone.
Forever.
I think the first time I ever had this feeling was when Miles died in 1991, shortly before I left Canada. I remember hearing the news, and I just got up and went out and walked around the streets for a couple hours, and I swear colours were less bright.
I definitely recall having this feeling when FZ passed a couple of years later. It was like having a stroke or something where one chunk of your brain dies. I just felt like from that moment on, the human experience had lost one entire form of expression, and that one aspect of existence had been suddenly and tragically rendered mute forever.

But all that was baby aspirin compared to my reaction to the news of February 21, 2005.

At first, like a lot of people, I figured it was BS.

Especially since there had been kind of a resurgence in his public activity just prior to that, with all the anniversaries of the 2 Fear & Loathings, the excellent and (finally!) worthy Gilliam production of F&LILV, and what seemed like a whole new generation of commentators and analysts who appreciated and loved his work, thanks in no small part to a level of maturation of Internet information presentation.
But, as the days went by, it seemed to be legit, the Good Doctor had really kicked off.
Whether or not it was actual suicide, which is still a matter for debate, the fact remained. And, in some kind of weird Moebus irony, it made perfect sense.
Because the kind of a shithole of a world where such a colossal mind and talent would end up blowing his brains out was exactly the kind of savage, rank, predatory Puppet Show of the Deranged that he'd seen coming for decades, and had warned us all about, over and over again.



Who, one had to ask (and still does, really), is going to speak for us now? Who's left that has even a sniff of HST's uncanny ability to express the depths of mendacity plumbed on a daily basis by the Powers That Be (and Wannabe, for that matter)?




No one, that's who.

The 5+ years since he left us have not only failed to ease the pain of losing him, the events occurring therein have proven him to be even more accurate and perceptive than ever.


They're still at it, rube, like rats across the tundra spurred on by the stench of imminent decay.

So long, Doc.


ETA I got a smoke for you if you can ID the other two guys in the second picture.