Below The Fold

A couple of years ago, for my birthday, Amy took me to Memphis. An avowed Elvis fan—but more, an early rock history buff—a trip to this city for me was akin to a trip to Mecca for a muslim. It was a period of awakening, a discovery of a deeper sense of nostalgia than I had ever known, and it was far more personal and real than I’d ever thought it would be.

We stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel (at the intersection of Lonely Street and Elvis Presley Blvd.), and toured up and down Beale St. We rode the trolley around the city and past the Mississippi River (I never realized just how expansive that river was.), walked through the newly opened Smithsonian Museum of Rock and Roll History, and we toured Sam Phillips’ famous Sun Studios, where rock was unequivocally born. I got to hold the microphone Elvis used and touch the piano he, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins stood around for the taking of the famous legends picture. I got to listen to scratch tracks half-a-century old where Elvis chided Perkins for making faces at him through the sound booth window.

We ended with a tour of Graceland herself, the fabled mythic estates where Elvis lived and died. It was a gray, rainy day in Memphis. It was cold and the foot traffic was light as we meandered through the rooms, listening to the virtual tour guide explain the importance of each one over a pair of Sony headphones. The tour snaked its way through the house, down into the rec room and up through the Jungle Room and then on to the attached converted barn and racquetball courts and eventually, Amy and I were alone, standing at the grave of the King Himself. It was still a rainy, cold day in Memphis, and I remember how striking the color of the cadre of floral arrangements looked, played against the muted background of the gray pallor of the overcast afternoon. A lump grew in my throat as I wondered about the people who still, today, send flowers every week of the year, more than two decades after his death. How amazing it must have been to touch so many so deeply.

Later that day, I took the picture above. Amy’s sitting on the bed in the hotel room, and it’s as grainy and black and white as I remembered the moment. It’s a bit of a paradox, too, in that this was an extraordinarily fun trip, and yet this snapshot is rife with sadness and longing. It says something about the power of a picture… how the lack of context can shape one’s entire understanding of the surrounding events—how the moments and days and weeks leading up to that brief instant are shucked like ears of corn and cast aside unto the tides of indifference, as are the moments and days and weeks afterwards. Anyway, it’s my favorite picture I’ve ever taken.