Off Main Street by Michael Perry

Author:Michael Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

2001

The Osmotic Elvis

The first thing I remember about Elvis is that he was dead. The news was postdated, and obtained in oblique fashion, but that, as it turns out, is precisely the point where Elvis and I are concerned. The Elvis I know has almost nothing to do with albums or films and almost everything to do with saturation and assimilation. I never went looking for him, never bought his music, never watched his movies. He filtered down and found me. In all his mutable states—the thin Elvis, the fat Elvis; the army Elvis, the Vegas Elvis; the hero, the has-been—to many of my generation he is simply the osmotic Elvis.

When I learned Elvis was dead, I didn’t get the news from the news. I got it from a television commercial. I was visiting a friend, and as we passed through his living room—two thirteen-year-olds headed out for another game of h-o-r-s-e—an announcer was promoting an Elvis tribute show to be held on a local radio station. An image of a man with a microphone appeared on the screen in silhouette. As the spot concluded, the image faded, and the announcer’s voice, tremulous with a touch of reverb, called the name three times: “Elvis?…Elvis?…Elvis?” I remember I thought the spot overwrought. And I remember we went about our basketball untroubled that the King was dead. But the osmosis was under way.

In 1991, profoundly recalcitrant country artist Steve Earle recorded the live album Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator. Earle was on a grungy downhill slide at the time, the heroin in his veins approaching a lazy terminal velocity. He would shortly be homeless, then incarcerated. He sang like a man forcing up crushed glass. After several encores, the audience whistled for more, but the show was over. As the audio fades, an announcer intones, “Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Earle has left the building.” At first listen, I recognized it immediately for what it was: a postmodern invocation drawn on the departed King of Rock ’n’ Roll.

Just lately, I’ve realized something else: I’ve never heard that quote in its original context. I am familiar with the lexicon, hip to the meaning, but only in a secondhand sense. But that’s the thing about the King: You didn’t have to be there to “get” Elvis. He gets you.

In June of 1988, Kalamazoo housewife Louise Welling told Pete Cooke of the Weekly World News that she saw Elvis in the Burger King. “I’m not an Elvis fan,” she said. “I don’t have any Elvis records or Elvis books. I’m not into Elvis.” But she knew Elvis when she saw him.

I know how she feels. I’m not into Elvis either. Don’t have his records, don’t have his books. But as the philosophomorical songwriter Mojo Nixon once sang, “Elvis is everywhere.” You can’t ignore Elvis. He saturates the periphery of our existence. I’ve never seen the ’68 comeback special, but I’ve seen the commercial for the video, and I’ve seen the slick magazine ad for the commemorative plate.

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