Early Morning Elvis Blues

This morning on the plane back from Memphis to Miami. I realized my brain was working in starts and starts and particularly visually. Maybe because I had woken up at 3am to catch a red-eye. Maybe because I was looking out, above the sky above the clouds, onto a magnificent view of the universe.

I had this vision in my head, as I was god knows how many feet up in the sky, of a blue stove, crackling in rust, dripping, as if I were looking at it through a window sill during a rainstorm. Or, like its paint was melting off. Right on top of this blue, melting stove was an orange tea kettle. The orange and the blue were spectacular in the image, next to each other like that.

I think this has to do with Elvis.

Years ago, when I lived in a shit-hole apartment in Washington Heights, I had a gaudy image of fat Elvis in a blue suit on top of my fridge. I also had poetry books in the kitchen at the time, which is where I still think they belong. Blue-suited, bloated Elvis was in a gold frame. A couple of feet to the right, on top of my white, rusting, NYC-shit-hole-apartment-stove was an orange tea kettle I used to have (that I left behind when I moved).

Because I’ve been thinking of Elvis while visiting Memphis, I think these two fused in my head (the Elvis picture and the tea kettle), taking me back to Manhattan from Memphis on my way to Miami (which was merging with a Mozart soundtrack, because I was writing a book based on Mozart at the time I was living in Manhattan…a lot of M’s here, I know. I apologize). In other words, the blue from Elvis’s suit was merging with the orange tea kettle and the feeling of New York and of the kitchen poetry. It was making me remember what I used to think of as Elvis back then. I think differently now, but the image is still relevant.

Now, I’m falling in love with Elvis. Which is a good thing. It’s always a good thing to fall in love with people you are writing about.