Oxford & Tupelo, these two worlds could never collide, even in a Hawking universe where stars swivel & twist, then disappear into black holes. But some girls swear that Elvis could sway the heavens and flutter an angel’s wings with his satin voice singing, Love me tender. And some men have been known to spend a life studying time and space and the ten other dimensions that curl into a ball and usually fall into a deep galactic sleep.

Stephen & Elvis, I like to think, might one day meet in some future galaxy where a day lasts forever, the nights are just as long, only here the girls will faint over Stephen Hawking, at the depth of his long gaze when he takes off his glasses and rubs a silk handkerchief across them, making the girls in their pink polka dot pajamas giggle and squirm on their slumber party pillows until they can barely sit at the sight of his swiveling hips and then Elvis saunters in and sighs at the sight of these girls and their teenage yearning, but he grins and opens a slim volume of his poems, A Briefer History of Time and begins to read.

Elvis & Stephen, once worlds apart, will one day be together in our ever-expanding universe for a January 8th birthday party where all the people whose lives they’ve touched will be there. People will bring many gifts, so they’ll patiently laugh along with the crowd and sing Happy Birthday, one to the other and each will make a wish as the candles flicker, the ice cream melts and the wine glasses tilt. Years later, after all the presents have been unwrapped and the ribbons tossed aside and the last guest has finally headed off for bed, they’ll sit at a long cosmic table and talk about the one subject they both know so well: music – and how easy it is to dance in the space of a musical note, a lifetime or star.