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The Chris Chandler Show

  • Last Thoughts on Elvis Presley

    Last Thoughts on Elvis Presley

    chandler/rockstroh







    Ascending Skywards, in a glass elevator, whose path through the clouds runs along the outside of a cathedral of corporate capitalism hymns of devotional muzak fill the vessel Simon and Garfunkle, Huey Lewis, Elvis Presley.



    Elvis



    From that vantage point, the city was luminous beneath me.

    All those lights, electric lights, neon lights, fluorescent lights that beaded to a mosaic of votive candles



    It was glorious



    It was the glorious, glinting of the jewel studded celestial jumpsuits of ten thousand Elvis imitator angels doing a command performance for God.



    As I reached the 70th or 75th floor my ears began to pop for I was so close to God that I could actually hear him count his money, while the high priests of commodity genuflect awaiting the cash or credit communion wafer from the cosmic CEO.



    And I wondered how this glass elevator could ever be a chariot coming forth to carry me home when the only home I've known is the home shopping network.



    Perhaps that's why the epiphany arrived with the crystalline clarity of a world of zirconium diamonds resplendidly reflecting a thousand fluorescent suns.  



    You see, we are like Elvis.  In the seventies.  Puffy and bloated, wheezing our way through our set, heaving our way across the world stage, the fans still scream for more, failing to notice any decline.  The world wants what we have but America has left the building.  America died like Elvis, retching pharmasudical cocktails into the toilet.  



    Our culture died but its imitator is sporadically spotted at Burger Kings and Wall Marts.  First it was in Gallup New Mexico, but then in the Kentucky Fried Chicken adjacent to the Eiffel Tower, and in the 7-11 reflected in the pools outside the Taj Mahal.  



    Our Culture is sequined across the global landscape.  All those lights.  Electric lights, neon lights, fluorescent lights visible even from space.  Our globe shines like one of Elvis' Las Vegas costumes, but no one sees the dying man beneath the jeweled jump suit.







    The gods that once dwelled in nature now dwell in culture and even our culture of excess must have a god.



    So I guess glittering Elvis is the god of it all.  He rises from the ashes everywhere in every flashing or blinking running light, every strobing fluorescent tube light, glimpsed in every glowing sign atop every home delivery pizza truck on earth we await the Elvis Pentecost when it will rain triple cheese burgers, fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and Percadans from heaven.



    Our guarded gate communities are our own personal Graceland behind its walls we die of isolation and excess.  The land and the king are one.  He is the gleaming god of the millennium's end.



    Did we dream Elvis or did Elvis dream us dreaming?