{"id":136,"date":"2012-02-02T07:41:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T07:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=136"},"modified":"2012-02-02T07:45:21","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T07:45:21","slug":"the-elvis-of-the-ganges-at-his-height-in-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2012\/02\/the-elvis-of-the-ganges-at-his-height-in-1968\/","title":{"rendered":"The Elvis of the Ganges, at his Height (in 1968)"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Gord Sellar<\/em><\/p>\n

No more chariotside lectures for Krishna. He\u2019s ridin\u2019 high.<\/p>\n

Coat scruffed with mantric sequins, pinned by lights
\nand screeching guitars to the wall, a sort of rock\u2019n\u2019roll insect;
\nforget rivers and fiery oblation. Forget statues bleeding milk.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s done his time in limos, in flower-decked tour buses,
\nonce kept George Harrison awake all night as he drove
\nfrom somewhere in Italy all the way to the Western coast of France.<\/p>\n

He gets fan letters from teenaged girls, smeared throughout with cheap perfume.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not willing to fake it, you know, act a little,\u201d <\/em>he says,
\n \u201cthen you need to find another line of work. If you can\u2019t<\/em>
\n stand a little crappy music and bad breath, you\u2019d better forget it!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Lately, he\u2019s cutting in on the Devil\u2019s market, swapping record deals for souls.<\/p>\n

Worst of all, he hates it. The music is crap, and nobody talks
\nto him straight anymore. They figure him for a con man. But he\u2019s
\nnever been other than what he is now. His own hair stirs his abhorration.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s he supposed to do? Business is business is business.
\nIt\u2019s the fashion. And he\u2019s damn good at it. If only it weren\u2019t for all
\nthose annoying bald kids making noise in all the bloody airports.<\/p>\n

Must do something about that,<\/em> he resolves\u2026 they could give a fellow a bad name.<\/em><\/p>\n

— 2001 (from\u00a0The D\u00e4nikbharata<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n

“The Elvis of the Ganges, at his Height (in 1968)”\u00a0was published (under the title Shivaji”) in Matrix<\/a><\/em> 59, Fall 2001, along with “Shivji”<\/a>, as “Poems from The\u00a0D\u00e4nikbharata” <\/em><\/em>(for more about which, see below).<\/p>\n

The\u00a0D\u00e4nikbharata<\/em><\/em>\u00a0was a series of poems I worked on in 2000-2001, in which the gods of various historical pantheons turned out, as Erich von\u00a0D\u00e4niken had suggested, to be aliens who had been stranded on Earth. The tale was to focus on the gods who ended up in India, and what they had gone on to do in their long wait for rescue; the epic was to mainly concern the war between the various gods and pantheons when a rescue ship arrived, but only limited seating was available. The project is currently incomplete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Gord Sellar No more chariotside lectures for Krishna. He\u2019s ridin\u2019 high. Coat scruffed with mantric sequins, pinned by lights and screeching guitars to the wall, a sort of rock\u2019n\u2019roll insect; forget rivers and fiery oblation. Forget statues bleeding milk. He\u2019s done his time in limos, in flower-decked tour buses, once kept George Harrison awake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-danikbharata"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-2c","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}