It’s her birthday today.
Her absence still seems a little unreal. My reaction to her untimely death was so strong – and had nothing whatsoever to do with her dad, but with my own experience of her presence in the culture – an experience which seemed generational in nature – and all of this felt like a unique phenomenon … one I had never thought about, actually, until she died, so I tried to put into words. I launched my Substack with it. I was invited to come speak to an NYU class on non-fiction creative writing to discuss it! Which was fun. It ended up being about things other than Lisa Marie, about my generation, and how we absorbed things, without an Internet. What she somehow meant. I try not to speak for my generation – because we are not a monolith. What I AM talking about is a time period, and how people of a certain age experienced certain things: we all remember where we were when such-and-such. Lisa Marie’s death seemed to hit us harder than other people of other ages and I was curious as to why.
So here it is.
Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis: Lisa Marie Presley
Last year, I read the book Lisa’s daughter Riley Keough put together from her mother’s cassette tapes, where Lisa dictated her memories. It’s a painful gorgeous read, and I am so glad it exists.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
