Week 12 - The Sincerest Form of Flattery
What do I do? I make my living as an Elvis-impersonator.
In a way, it feels like you’re profiting off people that don’t quite have all their marbles, yanno? You put on some makeup, some glitz, you go out there to the dance halls and the weddings and sing some off-key lines that they’ve heard a million times, and they pay you good money for it. And you don’t even have to be perfect: the second you start looking like what they imagine the King to be, they ignore all the imperfections, the extra ten pounds here, the stubble he didn’t have there, the bad hairdo and the cheap clothes you bought from a Halloween place
It’s sort of a weird feeling, let me tell you, when people pay money just to see you be someone else. When they call you by a name that isn’t your own, when they scream for you and claim they’re your biggest fans and that you never died. Those ones are creepy, when they think you (and every other impersonator out there) is the real deal.
But it’s their nostalgia, and it makes them happy, so who am I to judge what they want? It’s a free market society and all that, and if there’s demand, then there should be supply to meet it. I’m just givin’ the people what they want, and I’m not harming anyone. I’m just playing my - well, his - music, and singing my heart out, and giving chicks snappy lines.
And I have to say, there are times when I’m beltin’ out those lyrics, right, and I really do feel like the King, like his spirit is moving through me, and it’s just magical. Sometimes, it stays after, and I just stay in my costume - they feel so natural on me those times - and walk down the streets, doing what he’d do. Because it’s what I’d do, you know? I’m him, in a way, carrying on like he would, and I really think that his spirit touches me. Like we’re linked, and all that.
I mean, if you think about it, what’s to say that he didn’t pass onto the next world and then come back, living in people like me? Sometimes, I ask chicks to call out Elvis when they’re in bed with me, because, man, it gives me such a rush, and--
Wait, wait. You’re not recording this, right?
In a way, it feels like you’re profiting off people that don’t quite have all their marbles, yanno? You put on some makeup, some glitz, you go out there to the dance halls and the weddings and sing some off-key lines that they’ve heard a million times, and they pay you good money for it. And you don’t even have to be perfect: the second you start looking like what they imagine the King to be, they ignore all the imperfections, the extra ten pounds here, the stubble he didn’t have there, the bad hairdo and the cheap clothes you bought from a Halloween place
It’s sort of a weird feeling, let me tell you, when people pay money just to see you be someone else. When they call you by a name that isn’t your own, when they scream for you and claim they’re your biggest fans and that you never died. Those ones are creepy, when they think you (and every other impersonator out there) is the real deal.
But it’s their nostalgia, and it makes them happy, so who am I to judge what they want? It’s a free market society and all that, and if there’s demand, then there should be supply to meet it. I’m just givin’ the people what they want, and I’m not harming anyone. I’m just playing my - well, his - music, and singing my heart out, and giving chicks snappy lines.
And I have to say, there are times when I’m beltin’ out those lyrics, right, and I really do feel like the King, like his spirit is moving through me, and it’s just magical. Sometimes, it stays after, and I just stay in my costume - they feel so natural on me those times - and walk down the streets, doing what he’d do. Because it’s what I’d do, you know? I’m him, in a way, carrying on like he would, and I really think that his spirit touches me. Like we’re linked, and all that.
I mean, if you think about it, what’s to say that he didn’t pass onto the next world and then come back, living in people like me? Sometimes, I ask chicks to call out Elvis when they’re in bed with me, because, man, it gives me such a rush, and--
Wait, wait. You’re not recording this, right?