Hunter S. Thompson...One Year Later

"Politics is the art of controlling your environment"- Hunter S. Thompson. On the eve of the anniversary of his death, I feel a need to write briefly about the writer who has had a tremendous influence on my writing. Several years ago, when I was working on a novel, aren't we all, I came across a book titled "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". I enjoyed it for two reasons. One, it is extremely funny. Two, it was a big morale booster to know that a writer can write the way he did and still get away with it. There's a certain magic to the words writers put on a page, and it doesn't matter who among us we're talking about. If you write for a living, or write a blog on your free time, there is purpose and art in the way words flow out of your spirit regardless of what you are writing about. Some of those, like Thompson, just seemed to have a little more magic than the rest of us. When he decided, for his own reasons, to leave this existence he took with him whatever magic he had left to disperse among those that found him at once interesting and captivating. It is the wish of every writer to meet his or her heroes, even at the very least for a moment to shake his hand at a book signing to say, "Thank you, for making me believe in my own writing". Sadly, I will never have that chance, but I continue to read Thompson's books, and to this day I never get tired of reading those famous words he was quoted as saying, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".