5/22/98.. Iconography.

It's a bit eerie: all the flowers blooming at once. What used to be spread out over 6-8 weeks, as Maine sidled toward Summer, now happens in a rush. There are still daffodils, and the last bronze sprays of forsythia, but the tulips are already passing in the sunny spots. Apples, cherries, dogwoods, lilacs, and azaleas are all shouting together. There are roses. Lupines. Even some irises. You want to cry out, "Whoa. Wait for June. July." Is it all the CO2? Global warming? Should we be planting tropical veg? Bowdoinham is even full of ORIOLES. Spooky.

I've been conjuring other rara aves in my aerie. Working with the ghosts of Marilyn and Elvis. Trying to figure out what makes a cultural icon. Why these particular blooms endure.

The more you look at Marilyn, the less there is to see. An unremarkable face, with a fat little nose, full mouth, and oversized second eyelids. Heavy makeup. By the standards of today's exposure, her body is a yawn. The letch in me barely leers at those old pinup pictures. But she's still the mythic American femme. And I feel THAT charge in the images. Why?

We bring our own history to the myth-making, of course, so pop idolizing has a taint of nostalgia. My introspection is muddled on this one. Marilyn reminds me of my mother, another beauty of that generation, with the same makeup, the same hairdos, the same costumes, the same flirt. When I told that to Mr. Earl the DJ, he said, "Don't go there." Good advice. And maybe that's why Marilyn never really did it for me, then or now. Too close for comfort.

Mr. Earl is my prime pop resource. He lives in a world of heavy rotation and passionate enthusiams. When I need a jolt of Rock and Roll, or pictures of Elvis, I wander up the road. After noon is best. His shades might be up, and the house pulsing with bass lines. Mr. Earl DJs in bars, and for parties, coaches Babe Ruth League baseball, and does stringer sports reporting for the local paper. He used to deliver the paper here in town, but was so casual about it that his customers complained, and he got canned. He's a goldmine of contemp culture. Even has an autographed copy of Mailer's MARILYN.

Well, I tried, Norm. But I still can't read your neo-Freudianisms and Jackson Pollock writing. Maybe you stood too close to the spot lights to be a useful reporter. I'll have to puzzle out this culture hero thing without your help.

IS it nostalgia for our youth that makes MARILYN so evocative? Or simply the nostalgia for YOUTH? Tragic young beauty? Even in her last poses there was a bloom of freshness beneath the heaviness. The little girl who was too excited to sleep. Lines around the eyes, but before the sags. Back when our sap was rising. But, if the tingle is simply Lost Youth, any dead starlet would fill the bill. And that doesn't explain MARILYN's survival across generations.

Is the enduring mythos because she was a boundary figure? The first Playboy playmate. The vanguard peeler of a sexual revolution? The one who taught nice Boomers it was OK to look? And take it off.

Or the fact that she was a blank slate? The sheer vapidity of Norma Jean, the lack of surface affect, the fact that we can project any fantasy we like onto that silver screen, makes her everywoman. Or everylover. The power of the later photographs is that a personality is peeping through, and it shocks us to find a real woman behind the mask. Is that the grenade in the handbag? That our lusty imaginings slam into the difficulties of real women. Does MARILYN survive because she's a dream that turned into a wakeup call?

I've finished the Lawn Goddess on the Grate. No matter how I mixed acrylics, her flesh tones were too pink. Her nose too small. I concluded that was how we see MARILYN, and left her smoldering and perky. Jo suggested my mechanical version of the upskirting should be a pay-for-view, and Angie saved me a JFK half dollar from the till, as the appropriate coinage. Is this a feminist commentary?

I've got a new Elvis ornament roughed out. THE KING is much easier than MARILYN. A few quick strokes tell that sneer and wiggle. Is it because he's more elemental? You'd think it was the same material. Youth and lust. Sensuality. The way he could wrap his tongue around a lyric. But somehow Elvis is more clearly drawn. Although, I fear, I'm getting too trained for pure Yardart. My earlier Elvii were nice and crude, and now I may be past it as a Folk Artist. This is the danger of evolving technique.

So it's been heavy hey-hey-hey on the noisebox. Sun Records to Vegas. From "Hound Dog" to "My Way." In the media of which res, Sinatra passes. And the radio is awash in crooning. Now, if you've been listening to THE KING singing "My Way," you realize how pale a flame Sinatra is, in the long cathedral of pop culture. The commentators are yammering about "enduring cultural icon", but I don't think so. So why not?

It isn't about images. There's only one that says MARILYN (on the grate), but there are hundreds of THE KING, and they all shake and shimmy. What says Old Blue Eyes? Snapbrim fedora and bowtie? Cigarette and martini? Is there one picture of Frank that shines, untainted? Not for me. Is it because he was a creep? That's never been a bar to iconography. Look at Picasso.

How does Sinatra differ from Elvis? Both poor boys who lived the American Dream. One was a good old boy who wiggled his way out of the Delta. The other a Jersey Boy who made it across the river. They both ended up in Vegas. Elvis was passionate to the point of surfeit. Sinatra was the essence of cool. Hokey vs. sophisticated. Color vs. text. THE KING was devoured by his success. Sinatra became the Chairman of the Board. Is martyrdom a prerequisite for canonization? Iconization?

I have to confess being a bad judge of enduring value. Marilyn didn't do it for me, back then. I was sickened by the gushing of my babysitters over Elvis, and never really got it in his heyday. But Sinatra's Columbia recordings were the top of my charts, of an age. The trumpet phrasing, the throwaway timing. The literate jazz singer. If you'd asked me 30 years ago who would make it into the mythos, I'd have been dead wrong.

I came to THE KING in my 40s, and it was as much about kitsch as about music. Although I'm hooked on the music, too. The master mimic's voice. He can schmaltz any lick to perfection. And I do mean present tense. Elvis is still with us, while Sinatra was frozen back in the 50s. Old Blue Eyes can bring a tear of nostalgia, but THE KING makes me laugh with new joy every time. Lap up all that treacle, and laugh at myself simultaneously. And now, I find, MARILYN embodies something very present tense, despite the old hairdos.

Here's a theory: it's a perennial human foible to deify our culture heroes. When someone epitomizes a cultural trait for a generation, they are first revered as an individual exemplar, then they become emblematic of the type, finally they (may) enter the lists on Olympus. Individuals who show us new roads, Toynbee's "creative minorities," are especially apt to become such heroes. The halflives of such petty gods depends on how deep the trait they embody is entangled in our story. How profound the cultural transformation they avatar.

THE KING was the door that Black music danced through into White pop culture. It wasn't about the hips, Mr. Sullivan. It was the beat, and the soul voice. Sure, there were lots of crossover artists present at the birth of Rock and Roll. It was "in the air." But it was Elvis who became the first White Boy to sing Black, and mean it, and get us to listen. Western music heard the drums, and so long as they beat, THE KING will sit on his throne.

Man, is this ever nostalgic. I wrote a paper for Dudley Fitts, the most important teacher I ever had in school, back in 63, about Rock and Roll as an artform. He gave me an A for execution, and a D for concept. My concluding line read, "Rock and Roll is here to stay." He scribbled underneath, "I sincerely hope not." I bet he loved Sinatra.

There's the rub. Blue Eyes took the drums out of jazz, substituted finger snapping and lyrical sensibilities. He appealed to the head, not the gut. For an Italian guy he was particularly WASP. If pop music had evolved from Sinatra, instead of Elvis, we would still be nodding archly to clever texts over light brushwork. Instead:Rock On.

THE KING personified our transition into soul music. MARILYN stood on the threshold of our sensual awakening, lifting her skirts. She, too, is a being of the dawn time. And we aren't through with the sexual revolution yet. Until we are, MARILYN will be among our deities. Pop stardom isn't enough for enshrinement on Olympus. Neither is the wearing of masks. Nor martyrdom. The lost innocence of Elvis and Norma Jean isn't merely evocative as personal tragedy, it echoes in us because we were forever changed as a culture by the transitions they symbolize. Let us shimmy.

Such idolatry is what comes of spending too much time mowing the lawn. Three times a week, minimum, in May. And still the dandelions bloom. Sharpie has all her new parts, and splashed overboard yesterday morning. Now she's swelling in the river. Taking up her caulking. Hope your vessels are tight.