I’ve never felt at home on streets like Beale Street. I seem unable to give into the revelry, unable to release my inner party girl….there is only the buttoned-up librarian inside of me. These places, a street of bars and the smell of beer and the press of people, tend to disappoint me if not for the music. Music is in the air in Memphis.
The first thing I saw as we walked through Memphis was a statue of Elvis, and I thought of my mother. The first thing I heard as we walked through Memphis was music, and I thought of my father.
My mother and her sister didn’t like each other much as adults, but when I watched them talk about Elvis when I was younger, I saw the hint of the teenage girls they used to be. They blush and gasp and wink and clutch their chests whenever they talk about him as if the music did something to them, something wild and a little bit dirty. Lots of women of a certain age get that look when they talk about Elvis. Youth passes over them for a split second and a glimmer of sweet 16 shows on their faces again. I see the appeal...the reckless hair, the roguish smile, the boyish charm beneath the black leather and the Love Me Tender lyrics.
Whenever I hear an Elvis song, I get lost in the past and a seventies montage unfurls in my mind and like in a strange dream Elvis always gets mixed up with the men my Mom dated after she divorced my dad. This 1970s Elvis of my youth is a little overweight, a little unstable, a little flashy just like some of the men in my mom’s dating life. The statue I see in Memphis though looks more like the 1950’s Elvis with a guitar and sculpted in the pose that made girls shriek and swoon.
My husband’s thoughts are elsewhere. When he thinks of Elvis, he only hears Public Enemy fighting the power by calling out kings ascending to thrones on the backs and beats of black people with Chuck D rapping, “Elvis was a hero to most/But he never meant shit to me you see.” He always surprises me with what he knows and what he is thinking. Fight the Power isn’t a deep track, but still I only know the hook. While I’m staring up at Elvis, Chris breaks out the verse 3 lyrics.
We stroll on past Elvis to Beale Street and the blues come calling, horns and drums and something deep and full, something sure and knowing. I may not feel at home when there’s a party in the street, but when there’s music, I ease into a chair and listen like I do when I am at my father’s house. When my parents divorced and my sister and I spent weekends with my dad, we always went to the record store. And in his apartment, there were stacks and crates of albums, so many in his tiny apartment they seemed like furniture and artwork to me. Even today, albums feel like the decorative essentials in a room. The most familiar gesture of my father more than a hug or sharing a meal is his hand lifting the needle and placing it on the groove of a record and filling my world with music.
We came to Memphis for the music, but we found the river too. The great river with its own rhythm and sound and history. So many days the river is smooth flowing on the surface, the calm face belying the raging currents running underneath. On the day we stood on the banks of the Mississippi, the river seemed to carry the world with it, tree trunks flowed by fast and furious, logs and broken branches, a forest drowning.
We watched the sunset over the river, a dusky, sultry, muted sunlight that made me feel far from my Atlantic Ocean in a new place, in new waters with this family of mine swirling around me… Henry’s curiosity, Jack’s insight, Emma’s honesty and my husband’s love as constant as the river flow.
The view is stunning and we all notice the million dollar homes and condos with the water views. The rich occupy the beauty in every city, hoard it for themselves, in a cocky, self-assured way ---the homes on the high hill beside the river look down on us all as we come to the water and stare up like subjects.
Before we left the river, there was one more music man to remember. Jeff Buckley’s Grace seems like the soundtrack for my first years of marriage with Chris. We would play the songs over and over luxuriating in the beauty of Buckley’s voice and the poetry of his lyrics and the lust of his guitar, the rock and roll roots of it all. When he died tragically in the river, so much music drowned in the Mississippi, songs sunk to the bottom like treasure. But we keep playing the songs we have, and so death has no sway, the reaper river can’t contain all that it takes. I think of the poet Mary Oliver who addresses death in her poem “I Am Pleased to Tell You.” She writes, “Mr. Death, I am pleased to tell you, there are rifts in your long black coat.” She tells Death that “Today Rumi (obit 1273) came visiting, and not for the first time.” Rumi offered poems to her and “then sauntered on.” She tells Death that Rumi “has no trouble slipping out of [his] long black coat.” Jeff Buckley slips too from Death’s long black coat.
So the music keeps playing on Beale Street, in my father’s house and in our car as we cross the Mississippi River.
Michelle
FOR A MORE MEANINGFUL READING and TRAVEL EXPERIENCE, check out the following links from Chris.
History of Memphis from Memphis Travel
Getting Elvis's Legacy Right by Noah Berlatsky
HBO Documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher
Public Enemy - Fight The Power (Official Music Video)
Chuck D on Dissing John Wayne & Elvis on "Fight the Power" (Part 7)
Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know by Jordan Runtagh
Mary Oliver from Poetry Foundation
I have this exact same photo with my oldest son when he was a toddler, pretty much on that bench in Memphis. I could smell the BBQ and beer as I read this! Beautiful story, my friends, and a perfect capture of the good (and less good) of Memphis! To your travel recommendations I'd add this lovely hotel: https://www.peabodymemphis.com/peabody-ducks. The story of the ducks is worth reading (and visiting!)