Essay from Norman J. Olson

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a visit to Memphis

By:  norman j. olson

 

“fame don’t take away the pain / it just pays the bills / and you wind up / on alcohol and pills…”  Todd Snyder

 

last Friday, we were looking for someplace to go…  it is summer so weekend flights to lots of places are full but we found some open flights from MSP to Memphis…  so, Friday afternoon, we caught a flight to Memphis…  and rented a car… found a cheap hotel…

Saturday morning, we decided to drive to Graceland Mansion, Elvis Presley’s former home which is the main tourist attraction in the area…  so, after driving around the city on the I-40, we found ourselves on Elvis Presley Blvd…  a ramshackle street of used tire shops, closed storefronts and weed grown lots…  across Elvis Presley Blvd. from Graceland Mansion, is a visitor center which consists of several large gift shops, a museum of cars that belonged to Elvis and two large airplanes that also belonged to Elvis…  the actual house across the road is hidden by trees and a curving driveway that goes up a hill…  there are three prices of tours and we opted for the cheapest one ($29 for seniors) which did not include a close up of the cars or the airplanes… but did include an unguided tour of Graceland Mansion and the grounds…

 

today is Thursday, August 16, 2012, so 35 years ago today, I was driving my 1976 Dodge station wagon on I-494, when I heard a radio news bulletin that Elvis Presely had died…  funny, I don’t remember where I was or what I was doing during most of the big media events of the 20th Century, but I do remember hearing about Elvis…  so, last Saturday, we arrived at Graceland at the start of what is called among aficionados, “Elvis Week” and which has various concerts and celebrity appearances in a tent set up near the entrance to the visitor center which one could attend for payment of a fee…  events, I think, at which Elvis’s old cronies sit in front of a microphone and reminisce about their days with “The King…”  which seemed to me just a bit beyond morbid curiosity…

 

anyway, with Elvis Week in full effect, the crowds at the visitor center were still not really large and the parking lot was about 1/2 empty when we got there a bit before noon…  so we waited in line for the shuttle bus that would take us through the famous music note gates across the street and up to Graceland…  the mansion itself is not really imposing but more a big 1960’s style house than a real mansion…  later we learned that Elvis also had a real Mansion in the Los Angeles area someplace…  the tour through the house only takes a few minutes and thankfully includes only the downstairs and not the upstairs bathroom where the poor guy breathed his last, evidently overcome by a pill induced heart attack while trying to take a shit…

 

still, the cameras were clicking around us nonstop…  it was fun to see the living room with its 50s fancy dancy furniture…  I can remember when the big Magnovox “color” tv was a luxury undreamed of by my proletarian peers… and a 15 foot long white couch…  oh la la…  the kitchen is larger than in the ordinary house of my youth, but not huge and with two refrigerators, one almond and one avocado…  and Formica counter…  with a black and white tv, what we used to call a “portable tv” at the end of the room…  well, it was not opulent by any standards…  at the back of the house is a large rec room that Elvis added in the 1970s full of green shag carpet and that clunky wood furniture that we all had in those days…  well, for me, the house was a time machine…  I remember that furniture and style…  the basement was “professionally decorated” with a yellow and black design painted on the block walls…  in the 1960s, I lived in my parents basement and painting the block walls seemed to us the height of sophisticated city living…  back home on the farm, a basement was a dirt cellar for storing vegetables and canned goods…

 

so, it was kind of funny in the sense of unexpected, as I had expected not to be moved at all by visiting this shrine to Elvis, I found it very moving to see the things a poor boy got rich would have spent his money on in those days…  namely a 15 foot white couch and later a room full of shag carpet…  behind the house were horse pastures and outbuildings with white painted fences…  inside and out, though nice, the house was in every way modest…  but, two of the buildings behind the house were designated as trophy rooms, an old pool house (there was a small kidney shaped pool) and racquetball court that Elvis built…  and a walk through these rooms was not only a ride on a time machine for me, seeing all the old album covers and vinyl records…  but it was impressive…  really impressive to see what this man had accomplished in his short 42 years on earth…  how many musicians have one “gold record??”  Elvis had dozens…  the walls of a long room are lined with them and many many other awards, just about any award a musician of his era could have earned for record sales…  in his lifetime he sold a hell of a lot of recordings and the young men and women who were boogying to Elvis back in the 50s and 60s, and who were growing old while he wasted his time on idiotic movies and growing fat while Elvis grew fat in Las Vegas put their money on the line and bought the music…

 

well, at the side of the house beyond the little swimming pool is the place where Elvis is buried…  due to it being Elvis week, I suppose, there were piles of garish home made wreaths and memorials…  around the oblong brass plaque under which he presumably lies…  kind of sad and pathetic, I guess…  like the whole place…  I sat and made some drawings of the visitors and then left to go eat barbeque on Beale street and visit the Gibson guitar factory…  I played a three thousand dollar guitar that sounded almost as good as my old 1966 Gibson LG 1 (that I bought from a coworker in 1969)…  then in the late afternoon, listening to a very good blues band in a small outdoor market, I made a few more drawings…  then back to the hotel…

 

I am not sure what to make of Elvis…  I have always sort of liked his music in spite of myself…  and thought he had a very beautiful singing voice…  early and late in his career…  his charisma must be unquestioned as his singing and dancing certainly gave everyone, especially screaming hordes of females, a thrill…  back when I was a kid, I had the old pre-Beatle duck bill pompadour haircut, so I can relate to his style in those days, and I can remember the excitement of hearing a song like King Creole, back in 1957 when I was used to Perry Como or some lame ass crooner…  on the old radio in the barn…  at age 9…  still, the music was pretty shallow, compared to where pop music went later with ragged hard edged poetry of a Kurt Cobain, for example…  and his acting career, after a promising start with Love Me Tender, is a farcical footnote in cinematic history…  will he still be remembered when the last of his old time fans dies off, when there are no good old boys left to reminisce during Elvis Week???  well, who knows…

 

his rags to riches story, born in a shotgun house in Tupelo, is certainly the American dream… who after all does not crave a 15 foot white couch??  and his addiction to drugs (mostly speed and other prescription pills) and early death from that addiction as well as from, perhaps eating a pound of bacon a day…  well, his life certainly was quintessentially American…  as we are a fat, unhealthy, wealth and drug obsessed people…  American men are like Elvis, the boy child who never grows up…  dreams of eating pounds of bacon and has all the fantasies that Elvis lived out, a horse with a fancy saddle to ride, success and fame, 14 year old girls named Priscilla to fall in love with, three tvs and a fancy record player, a pool table to hang around with your friends, pills to make everything seem nice and fuzzy and, and a 15 foot white couch!!!  as I said, I am not sure quite what to make of Elvis but, I like the fact that Graceland is a shrine to an artist and not to some general or politician and I find it sort of interesting that in the past year, I have visited the homes of arguably the two most famous artists of the 20th Century, Elvis Presley and Picasso…  hmmmm

 

Sunday morning, on the way to the airport, we stopped at the hotel where Martin Luther King was murdered…  the area now includes a large civil rights museum and preserves the very site where Dr. King was assassinated…  I found this just overwhelmingly sad…  and this unhappy display shows, I guess what happens if an American starts talking about peace, equality and human rights and promotes peaceful non violent solutions to personal, national, international and political problems…  in our gun totin’ race hating country them’s fightin words and whether your name is John Lennon or Martin Luther King some idiot with a gun will find a way to shut you up…

 

well, we flew back to MSP on Sunday arriving in time for Mary’s book club meeting…  I bought a delicious barbeque sandwich to eat on the plane which turned me into one sticky human being, but it was very delicious…  and to my surprise and delight, I did not spill the barbeque sauce on myself or my fellow passengers…  I had forgotten to get a spoon so, wound up scooping the coleslaw out with the cover of the plastic bowl it came in…  yum…  I found the trip very moving and thought provoking…  and I am not sure why…

 

incident in Memphis

sitting outside

in a warm shady breeze

on the patio of McDonalds,

sipping a diet coke, I asked the

server about her tattoos…

she was very young, maybe twenty, and

looked hard and sad with

pretty gray eyes…  I saw

the green wall

of brush along Thresher Creek…  sparrows

darting in and out…

and cars coming by

like giant turbo charged insects…

milky sunlight fell to the ground

like old vinyl records and the

breeze whispered

that music, peace and nonviolence may

still be possible in this nation in

spite of

or maybe because of,

the skinny tattooed arms

of a young server girl

with pretty sad

old eyes…

Poetry from Walter Ruhlmann

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The Hole

(previously published in Madswirl)

 

His obsessions could drive you mad,

they make you feel useful and strong

in the mid-November, warm, low sun,

ants, flies, mosquitoes thrive.

 

Your obsessions are heavy loads

things you believe to be the truth –

absolute, implacable, unavoidable –

while he keeps on mooning all day.

 

He feels useless, hollow and cold,

except when he decorated her flat:

pinning your father’s aquarelles

on the abhorrent clinical white walls.

 

Dizziness as you walked back home,

guts out, sickness, disgust, your eye blinked;

sharp glass debris, broken plastic,

as obsessive as the western wind.

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Poetry from David Estringel

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“Smooth Whiskey” (originally published by Cephalopress)

 

tick…tock

tick…tock

The days are long in a life of slow motion. Waking up takes too long, despite the violent assaults of the alarm clock, unchained by a snooze button—-like me—worn down to the circuitry.

tick…tock

tick…tock

Get up late, again. Take a whore bath in the bathroom sink. Wash what needs it and get out the door. Shower’d be nice…really nice. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not, again.

tick…tock

tick…tock

Office clocks–harbingers of death to my soul–lament the dying of the fire, within. Telephone rings perforate the recirculated air of lungs and mouths like a symphony of electric crickets, tuning-up beneath the hepatic glow of fluorescent suns outside my cubicle’s walls.

tick…tock

tick…tock

Driving home in the same car, down the same roads, in the same rancid clothes that need more than just a good airing out, stuck in this bad track mix, playing on a loop, I need a drink. There’s a bottle at home. Whiskey, I think–a gift for my 50th. It goes down, rough, but smooth, after a glass or two or three.

Smooth is good in a life of no motion.

tick…tock

tick…tock

(Repeat All)

 

“Blue Room” (published by Former People Journal)

 

Nights are hardest to bear,

alone, atop these unwashed sheets

that smell of you and me, still,

crinkled and heavy with ghosts

of our sweat and loving juices.

I am tethered

to flashes of smiles and kisses

that linger beneath the sweetness of heated exhales.

To smell your breath, again,

and taste you on the back of my tongue.

To pull you into me by the small of your back

and sink into the warmth of white musk–

a tangle of tongues, fingers, and limbs.

To have you, know you, again,

Inside and out, is all I want.

Need.

Laying here, drowning in us,

my legs brush against the cold rustle of sheets you left behind,

cutting the airlessness of this room.

Rolling over, I close my eyes

and sink my face into the depths of your pillow,

escaping the void that even silence’s ring has forgotten,

and take you in, drowning in us,

this lover’s kaddish.

The scent of your hair—

blue fig and oranges—and spit,

are but pebbles on the gravestone.

 

 “And the Beat Goes On” (originally published by littledeathlit)

 

Dropping from the air

upon ears like paper blotters on willing tongues,

raging at the bloodlessness of cardboard cutouts against a shrinking sky,

through psychedelic lenses

let me seeeee, let me beeeee the pulse of silent rage

that rails against the vulgar machine

with words

that organize, legitimize, minimize, super-size, tranquilize, proselytize, tantalize, infantilize,

sexualize, stigmatize the suckled teats of long-conditioned truths.

 

Poking the bear, disturbing the seas of featureless beige,

stirring the comatose anima with battle-cries of sight and sound

that pierce dusty eardrums like sterling icepicks,

repressed wants teeeeem, solemn faces beeeeeam,

liberated in the warmth of a sun that breaks just beyond the horizon on coffee-house stages,

rousing thoughts

to gestate, ruminate, conjugate, propriate, sublimate, fornicate, obliterate, determinate,

propagate, exfoliate dangerous visions, birthed from the unfetteredness of a purple haze.

 

Fueling the scribblings of furious hands upon white sheets with whisky and cigarettes,

Making, naked, ugly underbellies of the angst-ridden and inflamed

with the glorious promises of their ecstatic treasure-trails,

let’s revel in the coolness of poetry’s heeeeeat, indulged in pollen-dusted skin so sweeeeet

within the honeyed tangles of poets’ asymmetries

to detoxify, dulcify, intensify, demystify, purify, glorify, magnify, beautify, electrify, sanctify

our bodily streams of light that sugar lips and candy the fingertips.

 

Tearing away at the fabric, unraveling, woven from Gloopstick youth and plasticine smiles,

repulsing at the hoards in their mindless quests for extra-flavor and double-coupon days,

looking for a steeeeeal, wanting to feeeeel,

as hollow dollars crumble to coins when plopped upon unsated palms and countertops.

Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think!

We are on the brink

of the Fall of the American Empire.

 

Dig.

 

“Old Filament, Broken Bulb” (originally published at Expat Press)

A white bolt from above

rips

through the clouds before our eyes—

an epiphany—

showering cuts upon the kitchen table,

releasing bad blood,

testing our guile

and gristle.

“And the Beat Goes On” was originally published at littledeathlit, “Smooth Whiskey” was originally published at Cephalophress, “Blue Room” was originally published at “Former People Journal, “Old Filament, Broken Bulb” was originally published at Expat Press.
BIO: David Estringel is an avid reader, poet, and writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, & essays. His work has been accepted and/or published by Specter Magazine, Literary Juice, Foliate Oak Magazine, Terror House Magazine, Expat Press, 50 Haikus, littledeathlit, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Route 7 Review, Setu Bilingual Journal, Paper Trains Literary Journal, The Elixir Magazine, Soft Cartel, Harbinger Asylum, Briars Lit, Open Arts Forum, Cajun Mutt Press, Former People Journal, The Ugly Writers, Writ in Dust, Cephalopress, Twist in Time, Merak Magazine, Salt Water Soul, Cherry House Press, Subterranean Blue Poetry, Printed Words, Sunflower Sutras, Tulip Tree Publishing, Salt, PPP Ezine, Digging through the Fat, Haiku Journal, Foxhole Magazine, The Basil O’Flaherty, Three Line Poetry, Agony Opera, Siren’s Call Ezine, Alien Buddha Press, Channillo, and The Good Men Project. He is currently a Contributing Editor (fiction) at Red Fez, Lead Editor/columnist at The Good Men Project, an editor/writer at The Elixir Magazine, fiction reader at riverSedge, and columnist at Channillo. David can be found on Twitter (@The_Booky_Man) and his website at http://davidaestringel.com.

Poetry from Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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Snipers on the Roof like Angry Pigeons

 

Another terror threat

in the city

 

come down

from the politicos

at Queen’s Park

 

and it’s snipers on the roof

like angry pigeons

 

seizing the high ground

like Clausewitz once

demanded

 

catching the snazzy dinner crowd

in the scope

 

and when I wave to them,

no one waves back

 

Quite rude,

I say,

I’m not mounting the curb

and driving a car into

anyone.

 

Stop waving at them,

she yells.

They’ll probably shoot you

in all the panic.

 

And back

at the hotel

I climb out onto the

16th floor lookout

beside the exercise room

full of sweaty treadmills

and keep waving.

 

With a liquor store tall can

raised to mouth.

 

I can feel them

all ignoring me now.

 

The whole of the rapid

response team.

 

As I take off my shirt

and try to lick my own nipples.

 

Half expecting a bullet

above the kneecap

for all my trouble.


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Poetry from Jeff Bagato

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Grasses Revolt

 

Donkey belongs in the race for no reason

but to provide laughter, ass

laugh heard round the world

as America shifts sighing on dinner

table stool—meat for meals

and keep on chewing carnivore,

these our platforms, cherished

like coal oil sugarcane

and gasoline sirens, burning

once started and can’t shut ‘em off—

until the grasses revolt and run

screaming with blades akimbo

to cut money pie out from under

the bean counters and their owners,

the leash slicing tight like necktie

for the asphyxiated blind—

blades bearing castration complex

to new dominions; blades

slashing and getting the red out;

blades horny with new blood

running up roots and drunkening

the vegetable spirit to recklessness

greater than ever absolutely—

blades in and out hearts like pistons

on deep throat double feature,

matinee mimes keep the business

end tickled to a sharper edge;

blades running free, piercing

tires, cutting heads, dueling

with Steven Spielberg for the cinema

of our times; blades so dashing

they shame Barrymore & Flynn;

blades to make momma cry;

blades caught in the toilet

with their heads held high;

blades upon figurehead,

cost of business rising

till Wall Street tears flowing

ticker tape red, their eyes

filling up with a green

of a different swallow

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Co-Editor Rui Carvalho’s New Book

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The book Pieces of Hope by Rui M. is a collection of poems and short stories written in English and translated into Portuguese and Spanish, and also four poems translated into Italian and one into Danish. All work was revised by native speakers and this makes it an excellent tool to learn different languages. The book also contains inspiring artwork.

Please contact the author for preorders or queries: ruiprcar@gmail.com.

With Synchronized Chaos’ team’s best regards.

Moving owards being creaturely: Amy Sass’ play “Time Sensitive” at Oakland (CA)’s Flight Deck Theater

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Ragged Wing Ensemble’s Production of Amy Sass’ play Time Sensitive at Oakland’s Flight Deck Theater.

Simone Bloch, right, as the Clockmaker with the Ice Monks. Photo: Serena Morelli for Ragged Wing Ensemble.

In a recent article in Counterpunch, Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue for the return to a ‘creaturely’ worldview based around self-organizing renewability coming out of complex and vibrant ecosystems. They believe that it will better equip us to care for the planet and survive as a species than the industrial worldview, which is non-renewable, specialized, mechanical, and requires large amounts of concentrated energy to maintain.

Let’s Get ‘Creaturely’: a New Worldview Can Help Us Face Ecological Crises

Amy Sass’ new play Time Sensitive, now showing at Oakland’s Flight Deck Theater, echoes some similar sentiments.

‘Ordovician. Silurian. Jurassic. Cretaceous,’ chants a swaying ensemble, dressed in silver monk-like robes, during at least one interval in Time Sensitive. This and other interludes connect the characters’ individual stories with the broader narrative of humanity’s search for its place within the natural world.

Suspended blocks of melting ice provide a constantly dripping backdrop, alluding to climate change while reminding us that the rest of the world operates according to different timescales than that of our modern city life.

Many of the characters’ stories incorporate time as a theme, while suggesting that we can only go so far in modern society to cover up the biological and emotional realities of being human. A bank employee goes to great lengths to create perfect events for her company, even speeding up her pregnancy in hopes that it won’t interfere with work. Yet, she still ends up demoted and her subordinates replaced with robots. The fact that she and her fellow employees compete for roles where they literally carry plates filled with trash highlights both the environmental themes of the play and the disposability of workers in her office environment.

Rachel Brown as Employee One. Photo by Serena Morelli for Ragged Wing Ensemble.

A childless elderly craftsman builds a robotic device to maintain his clocks, and the device, called a KID, ‘grows’ up to realize that the energy it’s absorbing from the city isn’t as pure and clean as it needs. The bank CEO and building owner stares out at the view from the top of his building, ordering an engineer to build higher and higher – then realizes he’s terrified of heights. Even the impoverished pair who survive by any means necessary in the shadow of the skyscraper experience internal struggles: are they going to strive for the money, power and control everyone else in the city wants, or could it be possible to envision a different world?

Time Sensitive brings a great deal of physicality to the stage, as characters carry each other, leap, dance, and move in groups to convey various moods and states of being. Telling these stories through movement that’s as prominent as the dialogue further highlights the theme of how our bodies and the natural world reassert themselves despite our efforts to impose the urban life that we consider ‘civilization.’ The dialogue also reflects this physicality, as characters speak directly, even scatologically, at times.

Birth and death are two major ways that nature imposes its timescale onto our lives, as we have limited ability to reschedule either of these events. And the characters here grapple with nativity and mortality, ultimately finding, through some cleverly juxtaposed stage pairings, that both can be better faced together.

This story left me with many points to ponder. Certainly the universe is much larger and more enduring than our short-term desires for career success, and we’re not going to be able to overwrite our own, or our planet’s biological makeup in a few centuries. And we do need to think about the impact of our decisions on future generations and on the Earth.

I was left wondering, though, if scrambling for resources and being in a constant hurry is really that unnatural, given the short lifespan of many animals and their constant quests for food. If we’re going to go back to a more natural way of living, if we’re going to embrace our own natures and the ecosystems around us rather than completely replacing them, let’s think about how to do that without just replacing one ‘rat race’ with another.

And, how far can we judge the impoverished character who sought to grab some of the wealth of the city? His character devolves into greed for much more wealth than he needs to live and he rejects his friend who doesn’t share his passion. But is there a middle ground between being so sweet/flighty that you give away your last pair of shoes to a pigeon and bring yourself harm, and mimicking the values of the most powerful people in mainstream society? How do you care for yourself and meet at least your basic needs while still living in harmony with the earth and without becoming obsessed with success and power?

Rachel Brown left as Penny and Alicia Piemme Nelson as Roach. Photo by Serena Morelli for Ragged Wing Ensemble

Some of the play’s most poignant and thoughtful moments came from the old man and the KID, who takes a Velveteen Rabbit-like journey towards becoming real. They, more so than the people at any socio-economic level within the city, had the time and space for thought and feeling, and could envision a better and more integrated and balanced life.

Their journey together, their ‘birth’ and death, most brings to mind Jackson and Jensen’s concept of being ‘creaturely’ – and it is they who ultimately show the way out into a broader world beyond the confining city.

From Ragged Wing, note on the production: 

Originally created in workshop five years ago, Ragged Wing’s new production features an updated script as well as a deep collaboration with climate artist Carter Brooks and his ice-art, and environmental scenic design by Oakland School for the Arts Chair of Production Jean-François Revon.

Time Sensitive runs at Oakland’s Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway.

Apr 6 – May 4th, 2019

FRI & SAT 8pm,  SUN 5pm

*SAT MATINEES 2pm:  April 27, May 4