Elvis and His Daughter

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

On 1/14/2023, two days after Lisa Marie Presley died, a WSJ columnist, Bob Greene, wrote a short piece in memoriam.
Lisa Marie was 9 years old when Elvis Presley died at his home — Graceland — in Memphis in 1977 at the age of 42.
Elvis was already divorced from Priscilla but that day, Lisa Marie was staying with him.
The cause of death was reported to be cardiac arrest secondary to his addiction to prescription barbiturates and its side effects.
Mr Greene’s piece was very touching and captured the sadness in Lisa Marie. He had written about Elvis already and wrote some more after his death. Once, when he went to Las Vegas as part of his writing, Mr Greene had been allowed to stay at the suite atop the Las Vegas Hilton, a suite built for Elvis since the hotel was his preferred venue for his performances in Las Vegas.
In his piece, Mr Greene wrote that Elvis had chosen ‘a life of fanfare and notoriety’.
That statement caught my eye.
Do we really choose our lives or do our talents choose them for us?
It’s hard to imagine a man like Elvis, with such oversize talent, to hear music and not jump with it, saying, ‘no, I’m not going to do that. It’s too much. It might take me places too elevated.’
It’s hard to imagine Elvis looking at a guitar and saying, ‘no, I’m not going to tinker with you because who knows what kinds of sounds I’ll make and I will be late for trade school where I’ll get to learn how to make a living.’
Hard to…