{"id":39813,"date":"2011-08-16T10:44:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T14:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39813"},"modified":"2019-06-16T16:11:40","modified_gmt":"2019-06-16T20:11:40","slug":"deep-in-my-heart-theres-a-trembling-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39813","title":{"rendered":"Deep In My Heart, There&#8217;s a Trembling Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u-pP_dCenJA\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In honor of the day of Elvis Presley&#8217;s death, I post this clip which features one of my favorite vocal performances in Elvis Presley&#8217;s career.  <\/p>\n<p>What he does here in the performance itself is equally interesting to me (it was part of his &#8220;comeback special&#8221; in 1968 and was recorded two months after Martin Luther King&#8217;s assassination). He sings with a passion that vibrates out of his calm handsome face, you can feel the depths he is reaching (watch the expression on his face in the pause he takes at around the 1:28-29 mark &#8211; whatever is going on with him there is very very real), but I am most interested in his gestures, and his use of himself physically.  <\/p>\n<p>This is something that obviously got him a lot of attention early on in his career, with his sexuality expressed through how he moved. There&#8217;s a reason why young girls went nuts when they watched him.  <\/p>\n<p>But here, in the middle of very serious days, he is an adult man now, and he is doing something else.  <\/p>\n<p>His gestures are dialed down, and very contained, but not stiff: if anything they are even more visceral.  <em>When he moves, he means it.<\/em>  <\/p>\n<p>I am particularly fascinated by his swinging right arm in the last buildup in the song (starting at around the 2:30 mark in earnest, although it shows up earlier). The swinging goes on far longer than it seems it should, and therefore the gesture feels honest, almost vulnerable. It doesn&#8217;t seem planned. His body wanted to do this, and so he let his body go. He is swinging himself into the music, driving the music along, yes, but there is an objective in that gesture. The objective is coiled-up and yet innocent too, there&#8217;s a purity in it. It&#8217;s almost like he&#8217;s a little kid, gearing up for an attack on his friend&#8217;s fort in the woods. The swinging arm, repetitive, like &#8220;Come on, come on, let&#8217;s do this thing, let&#8217;s do this thing, we know what we need to do, let&#8217;s do it.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a compulsive quality to the gesture, which shows his inherent musicianship, I think, the sense that he is at one with the song. It&#8217;s not just his voice that is an &#8220;instrument&#8221;, but his body. <\/p>\n<p>But more than anything else that I have said here, what I see in that swinging arm gesture is <em>emotion<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of the day of Elvis Presley&#8217;s death, I post this clip which features one of my favorite vocal performances in Elvis Presley&#8217;s career. What he does here in the performance itself is equally interesting to me (it was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39813\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,39],"tags":[2095],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39813"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147457,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39813\/revisions\/147457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}