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Memory is not only vain, it is also dangerous.
There is nothing but ashes and dust to remember.
Pascal Quignard wrote: "le fleuve qui est
dans l'estuaire ne montre plus rien de la ténuité
de la source. Sauver la source, tel est mon délire.
Sauver la source du fleuve lui-même que la
source engendre et que le fleuve engloutit [...]
Les grandes cités des temps anciens ne sont pas
retournées à l'état des forêts qu'elles
avaient défrichées. Elles n'y retourneront
pas. Les civilisations laissent place dans le
meilleur des cas à des ruines. Dans le pire, à
des déserts irréversibles. Je fais partie de
ce que j'ai perdu." (1996, p.200)
Elvis is dead. The dead betray us but we betray
them too. We bear a grudge to the dead, not only
for being dead, but for death itself of which
they are proof. Beyond the conspicuous
adoration, we blame Elvis for dying.Elvis, Elvis,
why hast thou forsaken me?
Places of memory are places of deception,
betrayal and loss. We are the bereaved, the
lonely and we gather at Graceland to cry out our
anger and our fear, and mourn our youth. We
cannot summon Elvis, we cannot summon our youth,
we can only summon dead memories. Graceland is a
mausoleum, a funeral parlour overwhelmed by
sickening music which tries to mask the void,
the silence and the grief.
 Why
then are we attracted by places like Graceland?
Why do we want so much to satisfy our craving
for memory? What is this desire to remember
Elvis at all? Because it is suave.
Because Graceland is a suave place, where the
sounds of our youth necessarily come to us
filtered, from a distance. In the opening lines
of Book II of De Natura Rerum, Lucretius defines
suavity as being away from sounds and noises: it
is watching from the shore a ship sinking during
a raging storm, or overlooking a tumultuous
battle from a hill, or living on top of the
highest mountain above the din of the city.
Suavity
results from this distance, the physical and
temporal distance between myself and the aural
source. Elvis's songs are like childhood
memories, bitter and sweet. At Graceland, the
bitterness of our lost childhood is sweetened,
filtered by layers of time, the stench of the
crowd and the necessities of trade. We remember,
and we forget. It is perhaps better this way.
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