A Rain of Frogs

An Historical Downpour is a new featurette of Rain. It won’t be common, but once in a while I will feature something I wrote on a different blog under a penname. I hope you enjoy.

Originally posted as “Fat Elvis rocks” at 10:14AM on April 23, 2004.

Say what you want, Fat Elvis was COOL.

For some of you, this might be a stretch, but travel back, if you will, to the 1970’s. The era of excess. The era of labels on Cheese Whiz proudly proclaiming “Another Edible Oil Product!” and cars with hoods bigger than a king size bed. A time of pants so flared that a simple recut would result in not two, but THREE pairs of straight-leggers. Nine inch platform shoes, occasionally with goldfish. A time of polyester. A time of funky soundtracks and hair too big for its own good. A time, above all else, of conspicuous consumption.

Enter Fat Elvis, as much a symptom of the times as an icon of them. Remembered for black-light velvet portraits and white sequined jumpsuits, Fat Elvis has become more than just a bloated rock star, he became a poster child for the 1970’s, and a grim reminder of the inevitable end that awaits the path of excess.

Elvis was eventually destroyed by the very decade he helped create. To forget him in his fat incarnation defiles the memory of him, and the sacrifice he made to show us that excess isn’t the way. It doesn’t matter that so few hear the message.

I don’t consider myself an Elvis fan. I doubt I’ll ever walk the gilded halls of Graceland. I don’t actually own any Elvis music, for that matter. But for me, Elvis will always be fat, a quivering Las Vegas personified, and a reminder to walk the middle path.

We created it, and yet we fear it. We fear it and because we fear it we try to tame it. We capture it, mete it out in tiny rashers, split down further and further. We tie a yoke around its neck and strap it to our wrists. We decorate our living spaces with it.

It’s a mystery. We never have enough of it, but when we do we try to waste it. It heals all wounds and blurs all memory. It grinds down mountains and dries up oceans. We try to catch it in a bottle.

Humans fear time. We fear it so much we try to kill it.

We remember the past, we look to the future, but we never live in the fulcrum of the now. Now, when the sands of the future slip into our past. We never live in the now, but it is only in the pinch of the now that we can change the courses of the future. The past is immutable. Only the now is in flux, the nexus of free will.

I will live in the now. Perhaps yesterday cannot be changed, but tomorrow can still be made anew by living right now.

Everyone thinks that North American’s are infected with apathy. Well let me tell you something. Not only are North American’s infected with apathy, we’re simultaneously and shockingly addicted to drama.

We, as a people will sit in our extra-wide seats and watch someone else’s artificial life unfold on the television, reveling in the strife of these make-believe people. We’re amazed at the level of drama in these fictional lives. Not just amazed. Dazzled. Infatuated. Our lives are stunningly boring in comparison. I’m not a human being, I just play one on television. No wonder we’re so damned messed up.

What’s interesting is the effect this is having on us. We subconsciously create drama in our lives so we can somehow compare to what we’re being shovel-fed on the screen. We blissfully let the television warp our self-image by injecting us with the attractive artificial lives of attractive artificial people while real drama unfolds all around us. Ten thousand children starve to death, but that’s not as compelling as Tom Cruise being engaged to a girl young enough to be his daughter. Or, it won’t be, till Angelina Jolie shows us a new fashion bracelet she has for sale, the proceeds of which will be used to feed starving children. Then we too can pretend to care. Or least be able to claim we know why everyone’s wearing them.

We’re a mess. We don’t know what we want, because we don’t know how to think about our own lives without comparing them to exaggerated caricatures of lives we see on television. Our marriages have to be full of stress, deception and grief, because that’s how they do it on television. Our divorces have to be messy, because gods know you can’t be friends with someone you shared a part of your life with. All the law shows on teevee say so.

Life imitating art indeed. I don’ t know about you, but I find that so frightening I’m shitting my pants.

If you were to ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, what would they say?

Doctor, lawyer, fireman, astronaut, president, graphic designer, rock star, they will most likely answer. Some profession or other. Some might want to do the same as their parents. Be forest rangers, or soldiers, or police officers.

How come nobody ever answers “When I grow up, I want to be happy.” Isn’t that the first and most appropriate answer? It would be, if we weren’t so intent on teaching our children the wrong lessons.

We condition our children, from a brutally young age, to believe that happiness means material things. Toys, clothes, jewelry. We don’t teach them that happiness comes from inside and that all that other stuff is, at best fluff and at worst an anchor dragging us down. We don’t teach them that the more we have, the more we need.

How much misery can you hide in the trunk of of an expensive BMW? How much unhappiness can be tucked out of sight behind a big-screen television?

How much money do you have to make to be happy?

I don’t have a lot of friends.

When I was younger, I wasn’t the sort of person who collects a large cadre of people, and that hasn’t changed with time. I’ve always had one or two close friends, and several large circles of acquaintances, the intersections of which I float freely about.

This has always struck me as a little antisocial. While I consider them meaningful, my relationships with acquaintances are relatively shallow – they barely scratch the surface.

I am not the sort of person who remembers everyone’s favorite color, or which foods they hate. I can’t remember birthdays, even for people close to me. I am often a shoulder to cry on, but usually as a matter of last resort.

With my “close” friends though, I have always been in deeply meaningful relationships. Intimate (occasionally in the biological sense). I consider them family, and treat them as such.

I don’t have any friends like that any more. One by one, my closest friends have drifted out of my life, leaving me standing alone. The cheese. It is not that I am not happy for them – they all had to do what they’ve done for themselves, and I am fully supportive of that. I do miss them, and I miss the role in my life they played.

The spaces they filled.