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Posted on 15 August 2007
Wise Blogger Phil Andrews said:

Always on my mind

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Been reading about the commemorations taking place at Graceland to mark 30 years since Elvis shuffled off his white jumpsuit and went to meet his maker. What is it about certain people and events that the remembrance of them generates responses that border on the fanatical? I can see the necessity of keeping alive the memory of the ordinary people who gave their lives during two world wars, even of families and friends who feel led to mark the loss of a loved one in a traffic accident with a roadside shrine. But Graceland is not the Cenotaph… Are we just victims of the cult of the deified celebrity, mourning vicariously for a loss that isn’t really ours when we mark Elvis’ passing 30 years on or, as will be happening soon, Diana’s 10 years ago? Or is this evidence of a healthy identification with the lives of others?

There seems something weird to me that when we remember the death of an overweight and at the time unfashionable middle-aged singer in a toilet it doesn’t so much make us think about the sweaty self-parody of the final years in Vegas, but somehow opens the door for us to get back to the raw vitality of the Elvis of the 50s, lean and mean in monochrome, turning culture upside down forevermore with a flick of his hips? Or is it that this is one of the ‘good’ angles to loss? Can loss and the sadness it brings be such a wholly bad thing then, when remembering what we’ve lost, dwelling on the pain even, seems to put us in touch with the essential stuff we really valued about people and situations in the first place?