Fools Rush In

I don’t know about you, but I’m not really interested in seeing anybody’s Spotify yearly wrap-up. In fact, I’d rather not know. At the risk of sounding pretentious, what I would like to know is the kinds of books you read this year and if you enjoyed them. I think this is because literature is so personal in the way that you, the reader, experiences it; and if in some way the text resonated or changed you then it’s like examining a flow chart of your psychological state. 

There wasn’t any fiction for me this year. My 2023 library consists of self improvement, philosophy, poetry, manifestation, memoirs…from Emily Dickinson to Pamela Anderson, Rick Rubin to Arnold Schwarzenegger, even Bukowski to Britney Spears. But the ones that captured me were the love stories…real life love stories. Twin flame, heightened drama, beautiful, enrapturing, deep, and not without heartbreak. I guess I’ll let you decide what my reading choices this year say about my mental state. 

For the past three days I’ve fallen into a black hole, obsessing and consuming, what feels like the alternate universe of Elvis Presley. While I’ve always been a sucker for mythic figures in popular culture, I never knew much about Elvis; never tapped in until my dad took me to see the Baz Luhrmann film last year. The stylized American tragedy of a wide-eyed, boy-wonder crooning songs about heartache and then is ultimate downfall are just the kind of lore that throw me. In particular, I became more curious about the woman who loved him: Priscilla. 

In all the legends of Elvis, he is portrayed to have worn many faces. Sofia Coppola shows a cocky, offbeat, and irreverent young man. In Luhrmann’s version, as told from the vantage point of his ruthless manager, he is a boy, innocent and yielding. For the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about men like him, and men in particular, as well as women and our relation to them because of Priscilla’s telling of her ex-husband in Elvis and Me. 

In her book she describes a man who is a temperamental, controlling, smoking, boozing, pill popping, fighting, gun shooting, womanizing rock star. She also describes him as generous, charming, exciting, magical, brilliant, vulnerable, and loving. The complexity of this relationship is something to be studied. If you don’t know the story, Priscilla met Elvis at the height of his fame when she was 14 and he was 24. 

I grew up in the 90’s at the pinnacle of pop stardom. The boy band craze happened for me at that sweet spot in a girls life when she is wedged between Barbies and boys. She’s no longer playing with dolls, but not mature enough to realize her sexual identity, and then, along comes this creature to awaken her on her journey. Mine, like many others, was Justin Timberlake. I had his posters all over my walls and when I saw him perform “Gone” on the Pop Odyssey tour, singing with such intensity, grinding and writhing on that stage, something changed in me. Much like, to my understanding, it did for girls when they saw Elvis shake his hips and lift his lip. I had the opportunity to meet Justin in his dressing room after a performance for the Justified album when I was 14. Not that there was ever a chance, but had Justin given me the same attention that Elvis did Pricsilla, I wouldn’t have thought twice about his intentions. At that age, you have no knowing, no comparison, only a fantasy that I believe never truly dies in any age of life. When men like that sing those songs, every girl feels like he’s singing to her. How brilliant. 

The biggest difference between Elvis and all the other stars that succeeded him is that he was the first. Though he is coined as the King of Rock n Roll, a controversial title to many,  I truly think he is more so the King of Pop Culture. The first superstar, rock star, international icon. The first to sell branded merchandise, to star in a Vegas residency, the first to use gossip and scandal as promotional tools, and henceforth, the first to make many public and private mistakes. Elvis pulled Priscilla into his orbit and molded her to be the woman of his dreams, his “little girl” as he called her, and she obliged, happily. After spending evenings with him in his over-the-top world, she found it impossible to return to the monotony of life and school. Can you blame her? She was in love. But just like any relationship, when you enter someone else’s world, there was a cost of admission; and his came at a heavy price. 

The truth of her love is so clear, because when a woman loves a man, she sees all the dimensions of him. His past and his present, his heart and his mind, and above all else, his greatness. Throughout the book it’s as if she’s describing three people: the vulnerable and homesick boy she fell in love with in Germany, the superstar with the thrilling life, and the man; lost, dark, and flawed.  All three entities vacillating between one another at every moment. 

I believe that we all have our light and our darkness and that true love is to accept another’s darkness. It’s easy to love the fun parts, but intimacy pulls us closer to the edge of someone and often times, it’s not a place we’d like to be. Elvis would threaten Priscilla, disregard her feelings, or become violent when faced with challenges or emotions. He would say “this is how a man is suppose to behave,” practically talking in third person as if disassociated from himself. While he was called a King, in this way Elvis was no different than your average man walking around believing himself to be of higher regard than he actually is. 

To be clear, I don’t think that Elvis was a bad person. I don’t think that the masculine shield he wielded or his monstrous behavior was in line with his true core frequency. Though many of his actions inexcusable, it can be argued that it was a survival mechanism coupled with an idea about masculinity that is thrust upon men over and over and over again. It is the crux of patriarchy and under this rule, no one truly wins. 

I’ve heard that women process thoughts and emotions in the right and left hemispheres of our brains which is the same utility that allows us to multitask and move through our feelings. Comparatively, men process the same things in localized parts of their brains which is what drives them to the nearest and easiest good feeling when a negative emotion arises. Combine this science with a socially devised aspiration to act like a man-take it like a man-quit cryin’ like a little girl-and you get, dare I use the term, toxic masculinity?

Throughout their relationship he continued to be unfaithful, abuse drugs, and search for meaning in religious pursuits or spending sprees. He continued to look outside of himself to find wholeness, when in truth, she was standing in front of him all along. In America, we don’t have royalty by way of divine right, but the Presleys having been at the helm of rock n’ roll, an American institution, serve as our royal family. He was the King, but he didn’t know how to treat her like a Queen, and eventually she grew up and left the kingdom to find herself and her redemption story. As he dissociated more and more through drugs and fame, he became unreachable, and though she never stopped loving him, she had to decide to love herself more. 

Their story is a fable of modern proportions. A man who by defying the woman he loved ultimately defied himself. A woman who had to compete with a mans’ many distractions and a darkness from which she chose to forfeit. These parables are something we experience in love time and again: the man with double lives and double wives, the dad that goes out for a pack of cigarettes and never returns, the boy who pursues a girl as a conquest only to discard her when he develops feelings. Men living in their shadows, never to face themselves because that’s not what a “man” does. The irony is that there is no escaping the truth, no outrunning, no amount of money, drugs, sex, or success that will be the antidote for the emptiness within. Unfortunately, I think most men understand this concept, and yet, they persist. I can’t help but continue to think about the personas that we all find ourselves in when we fall in love. The darkness we contend with, the light we turn away from, and the way in which love colors our lives. 

The duality of masculinity and femininity threads the story of Elvis and Priscilla, and though beautiful, it never found its harmony. She acknowledges the many sides of the man she loved, but like most women, she breaks it down simply in the end when she tenderly says “He was a man. A very special man.” 

The day she walked out on him, he implied that maybe in another time they will find their way back to each other, a sentiment that I think many of us ponder when a relationship dies. That somewhere, maybe in an alternate universe, in the quantum field, the two people that fell in love are still together as they imagined, and they are perfect.

Priscilla carried on with her life, though she never married again. She still regards Elvis as the love of her life and felt that marrying anyone else would disrespect him and dishonor the bond they share, even in death. I believe her because I believe that women are portals to the beyond which is how we are in tune with the highs and lows of the men we love. This ability that we hold is often to our detriment when we love men who are out of alignment with themselves or their divine masculinity aka their inner King.

There is a famous letter handwritten by Elvis from Graceland where he said “When you’re not in love, you’re not alive. God is love.” And I think this is the ultimate quest that each and every one of us is on. Seekers of truth yet so often looking in the wrong places. 

I wonder if Elvis ever found God. Or if he’s still out there. Just cruising. Waiting for Priscilla.