Like any good work of religious architecture, perhaps, the First Second Life Church of Elvis creates a paradoxical container that is at once about being woven together with others in a community yet completely naked before a higher power. In this case, that higher power wears a pompadour.
But then again, so did I. They were handing them out at the door.
The build sits on a mere 512 square meters of First Land in the sim of Nampo (slurl link). Its 117 prims, while representative of one of the humble gable-roofed churches found in rural areas across North America, also happen to be hovering in the air, fused with bling and iconography of the The King. Fittingly, a yellow porcelain toilet sits at the apse end from which the clergy (including the Right Reverend Elvis Faust and his associate SpaceProphet Jay (who kinda looked like a young Darth Vegas)) deliver their services. The pews are emblazoned with the visage of the man originally known as The Hilbilly Cat, allowing attendees to take part in a ceremonious sitting on of his face.
I arrived on a Sunday, just before the noon service. The congregation was waiting on a small grassy space outside the sanctuary, engaged in conversation with Reverend Faust and the particles emanating from his crotch that might only be described as blue suede ooze. The service that followed was profoundly hilarious and and yet for some reason to me also quite touching, as the tiny space was completely packed with avatars, some standing and swaying, some wearing hot dog(ma) costumes and waving placards. The intimacy of the service as constrained by the minuscule space had the effect of making the sermon more thought-provoking, the music more moving, and me more prostrate at the possibility of another Comeback Special.
No less powerful and no less absurd than a religious experience in Real Life, for me anyway (although I have only the garden variety sectarian franchises from which to compare, and yet to sample any of the numerous RL churches also dedicated to the consecration of fried peanut butter and banana sammiches). As they exist in both the real world and the metaverse Places of Worship seem to be much alike one another, providing a context for functions that are in some senses quite ‘virtual’. We trigger animations, speak in strange codes on different channels, and rez objects for their communal effect with entities existing in some life that is somehow ‘secondary’ to our own.
Yet as the good Reverend Faust comments, “The FSLCoE really is all about the people – without them, the church would be little more than a floating, white, Elvis-themed box.” And people there are, to the point where things really started getting laggy by the end of the service (which for some it could be suggested is a spiritual journey in and of itself). With surging popularity comes talk of expansion, getting a bigger space to meet the demand. I’ll have none of it, and beg you not to go all Crystal Cathedral on me. You might as well take a picture of Richard Nixon shaking my hand. No, wait… OK, well, expand as you must but in my humble opinion the First Second Life Church of Elvis as it exists today is a fitting testament to the people and spirit of Second Life. Not so much a gem as a rhinestone, a glimmering like a sequin in virtual airspace, and the kind of worship I could really get into, if only for tax purposes. Unless there was a Church of Wayne Gretsky. Waikiki Hockey, anyone?
Chip Poutine is the author of Virtual Suburbia – the Architecture of Second Life®, reviewed on the fly.