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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Elvis's Greatest Legacy?

"________was Elvis's greatest contribution to rock 'n' roll and to our cultural life in general. That's his greatest legacy."

Fill in the blank, and then read the article below, comparing answers:

"I really think he was trying mostly to escape the pain
of the guilt, the pain of believing that he was tapping into voodoo and the
spirit of the devil. All of that must have affected him because of his
Pentecostal upbringing. And he must've known, instinctively, that when he sang he was touched by the Spirit of God. And he apparently did read countless books trying to figure out such questions., but I don't think he ever got a satisfactory answer. It's the thing that Bob Marley lived, and not just in terms of the sex and the spirit but interms of the politics. He had that three-chorded strand. That's the wholeness I'm looking for. It says in the Bible 'the
three-chord strand cannot be broken.' That's a reference to the Trinity,
obviously, and the Trinity is God the Father,God the Son -- which is the flesh,
Jesus wanting to understand what it's like to have a body -- and the Holy Spirit.
That's what we must aspire towards. But Elvis didn't reach that state of being,
he was crushed under the weight of not figuring out how to draw together those three strands. And crushed under not being able to accept that God loves him, loves his creations as they are, and where they are.That's the tragedy. Though the problem also is learning how to live with the tensions between those forces and the thought that you may never pull them together. Maybe even feeding off that, which I think is what I do in terms of all the music I create, and my life.
Elvis was left with those two great energies,sexual and spiritual, and even
though he never resolved how to draw themtogether, with the the third strand,
his music did help so many of us to pull together at least two of those strands.
That was his greatest contribution to rock 'n' roll and to our cultural life in
general. That's his greatest legacy."

-Bono http://www.u2station.com/documents/variousarticles/irishtimes_article.txt

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