"A Hunk of Burning Love" - Elvis

I'm seeing everything through "trickster" glasses lately, (see previous posts), cultural figures who kind of straddle the margins of society and there's evidence of "trickster tracks" everywhere I look. Last night, the Lovely Carla and I ventured out to our local multi-plex to submerge ourselves in "Walk the Line," a movie about Johnny Cash and June Carter. We both thoroughly enjoyed the flick, and I was especially taken with the portrayal of the desperate cast of characters in C&W that surrounded the Man in Black, and the Woman who loved/saved him. The biggest stars were also the strangest characters, emotional gargoyles, flawed human beings, willing to "live large," willing to display their wounds, their deep flaws in order to entertain other people, to seek some kind of recognition, some kind of acceptance of their "freakiness." I'm thinking especially people like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash himself. Maybe these people become "stars," because they are willing to get up on a stage, to expose themselves, to act out in front of others, and these "others" sitting in the audience, see their own strange freakiness in a new light. So, going with this line of thinking, it's all one big "Freakshow," with the "stars," being the ones willing to show their wounds, and by some strange human alchemy, use them as elements in their "talent," their "genius." Of course in many cases, it doesn't make their lives any less freaky (see Peter Guralnick's two volume bio on Elvis), or tragic; celebrity, fame, money, sex and drugs don't heal the wounds, in fact, usually they maginifiy them, but this too adds to "the legend." In some sense these "tricksters" are performing a ritual sacrifice for the audience. They display the emotion, they express the feeling, they conjure the picture that the audience secretly wishes they could express too. "I'm a freak, no one understands me, no one loves me!" Maybe that explains all that crazy panty tossing! Caution: this post was composed under the influence of TRICKSTER!