Unexpectedly, we find Graceland immensely moving. It surprises us – we'd heard it was awful, terribly kitsch – but we find it restrained and moving. Elvis's contemplation garden, where he went to think over things. The grave of his twin brother, who died at birth, and of his beloved mother and father, who lived in Graceland with him. And, of course, his own grave, marked Elvis Aaron Presley, 1935-1977 - how terrible! how sad!
Graceland's surprisingly small, we agree. The kitchen, for example – it's like any suburban kitchen. The living room, the dining room. Elvis was a man of modest tastes. We admire his Bauhaus style squash court, which he designed himself. Imagine it – Elvis the architect, Elvis the modernist. But this really was his design. He drew up the blueprints, he had them approved, he insisted on building a modernist squash court in the grounds of Graceland.
In retrospect, we agreed, we wish we'd signed up for the V.I.P. tour. After all, you come to Graceland just once in your life. It's a one-off. We missed the Elvis By Night exhibition – Elvis, we learned, was largely nocturnal – and the tour of his planes, one of which was named after his daughter, Lisa Marie. 'Taking care of business', it read on its tailfin.
Still, we saw the jungle room, with its famous indoor waterfall – and we admired copies of the cheques Elvis had sent to local charities which covered the whole wall. We only saw one of his jumpsuits – again, the jumpsuit tour, magnificent as it sounded, was for V.I.P.s only. If only we'd paid those few extra dollars …
And we arrived out at the contemplation garden, the perfect end of the tour. What did we contemplate? The squash court – Elvis's Bauhaus squash court. His short life, which ended in the bathroom almost directly above the main entrance to Graceland, above the stone lions. And the mediocrity of our lives, with so little achieved, compared to the King.
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