I watch a lot of YouTube videos.  I cancelled all other pay stations and streaming formats.  A couple of days ago, I watched a video where Riley Keough was being interviewed about an autobiography she co-wrote with her mother.  I thought she was incredibly poised and present as I watched a number of these videos – they kept coming up in my feed as the sort of creepy algorithm YouTube has.

Then I noticed that these videos happened a year ago, which meant that I might find the book, From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough, at the library.

I did.

It only took a few hours to read and I am still digesting it.  I guess if I am going to be as vulnerable, I will tell you that I was jealous of Lisa Marie when I was a kid.  She was five years younger than me and she was placed upon a pedestal from birth.

I remember when her father had died because I was delivering the Syracuse Herald-Journal newspaper at the time, the one with the Elvis is Dead headline on the front page.  He was only four years older than my dad, and at that time I didn’t understand drug and alcohol abuse except to judge that people who do that are scuzzy.

Education was something my parents instilled in me, and I always thought that if I did well in school, I’d do well in life.  I’d be wealthy and happy, and healthy.

But that is not the way life really works.  You would think Lisa Marie had everything since she already had the wealth.  In the book, she talks about her childhood following the loss of her father and how turbulent that was.  Her education was a shit show.  Her mother is depicted as unfit, but really – you have to ask yourself – what part of what happens to you is your responsibility?

I’d say all of it.  She chose to follow in her father’s footsteps with alcohol and drugs.  I think she was in a dark place when she’d begun this autobiographical journey via recording herself sharing her snippets, so the majority of her memories are a downer.  A lot of her life was actually quite lovely, as confirmed by Riley’s poignant additions – her first marriage and the love Lisa found in caring for her children, for example.  She recorded three studio albums and I think she was a great singer with emotional depth.

But, like Julian Lennon, the media’s interaction with her always led back to Elvis.  Julian Lennon sounds so much like his father and looks so much like him, but he is also so talented in his own right and yet, I have never viewed an interview (and I have seen loads thanks to YouTube) where the interviewer did not mention John Lennon.  How weird that would be if I had an art show and instead of feeling like I was on the precipice of success and fame, someone asked me about my parents?

Lisa Marie was very young when she married Danny Keough and fourteen years later I remember reading in Vogue magazine about Riley Keough modeling on the Paris fashion runways.  I was like – what the fuck is this?  Why isn’t she in middle school?  Why is she living this adult life already?

Jealousy, you see?

But this book discloses the dark underbelly of fame and how money cannot buy happiness.  Even though it is told with a loving compassion, it is still unsettling to read, albeit briefly, how Lisa Marie left her husband because she was seduced by what she believed was a common denominator of tragic consequence of being in the limelight, being sought after for who you appear to be rather than who you are – that mutual twin flame thing that Michael Jackson appeared to offer her.  How fucked up that she was so naive to believe that malarkey and it sort of happened again with Nicholas Cage who’d had an obsession with Elvis.  That marriage lasted about one hundred days.

There are lots of things left unsaid in this life story and so you get only a sampling of the family’s inner sanctum dynamics – the tragic death of Lisa’s son Ben is particularly heart-wrenching.  That boy was the spitting image of Elvis and could have probably had a marvelous singing career of his own but had a heck of a time finding his true purpose in life.

I watched a video that suggested that actor Daniel Craig plans to leave no inheritance to his children, which seems like a person who doesn’t understand the family first rule to life.  But maybe this is why – maybe he’s afraid they’ll off themselves via substance abuse or lose it all only to end up homeless.  Like with the Vanderbilts, who squandered everything their patriarch accumulated back when nobody had to pay income tax in the U.S., all because they didn’t think about or care about how they would contribute to society on their own.

I know a lot of people who aren’t particularly happy with their lives, which leads them to slide into drugs or alcohol followed by a never ending array of medical problems, both physical and mental.  They cannot find their way out of that paper bag because the solution can only come from within.

Riley mentions in her prose (which is delineated by a different font in the book) that she hasn’t the stomach for alcohol.  I have the same thing.  I don’t drink.  I used to have a glass of wine or two back in the ’90s, like on the weekends when we all went out to the bars in Armory Square.  I would always get sick afterwards, as well as hate myself for the way I behaved while inebriated.  I was doing it to fit in and to be liked and all that foolishness.

So that is the thing about Lisa Marie:  she didn’t really care what people thought of her because she was hardest on herself.  She pulled herself out of it a few times then spiraled to the point of no return.  It’s really sad.

I still think addiction is scuzzy, because it puts people in an altered state and really, the only way you can be truly happy in this life is if you live it with presence of mind, listening to the guidance of positivity.  But what do I know?  I do what I do and make the choices that I make and that is fine for me.  It is not my place to tell/teach/suggest to/preach to people on how to live.

They won’t listen anyway, and that is the true tragedy for those left behind.

I’m not jealous anymore, although I do wish that I’d had a daughter like Riley Keough.

From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough is available here.