Mr. Croxford's Pronouncement

photograph: Somtow's muse deserts him....

At Eton, we had a teacher named Mr. Croxford. He was very bright, and very young, and was interested only in completing his novel, which undoubtedly is the reason he wanted to take a year off to teach; he must have thought it would give him time to write. He was too close to us in age to feel comfortable with discipline. I can't remember what period in history he was assigned to teach us, but it must have been monumentally boring. We liked him, I think; he was always easygoing.

Mr. Croxford said to me, "You are simply the laziest boy I have ever met." Oddly enough, I think he met it as a compliment. You see, it was perfectly obvious to him that I wasn't reading any of the books and was completely faking the essay tests, but he kept being forced to pass me because the essays' blandishments somehow managed to convince. He was obviously the only truly intelligent teacher I had that year, because he actually knew for a fact that I was lazy. I thought I had them all fooled.

Mr. Croxford's book came out and I ran out and bought a copy in Alden & Blackwell's. I thought about him today for the first time in forty years. I wanted to know what ever happened to his book. After all, any man perceptive enough to see through me must have been a brilliant writer. (I can't find the book; after many international moves, I don't know where it is.) He's not on google, and I can't find any mention of his name on addall.com, which lists every used book in every bookshop in pretty much the whole universe. He's in a black hole somewhere, which is wrong.

My doctors and my friends have accused me of not being lazy enough. On the surface, it looks like they're right — I'm about to hand in my 50th book and there are these piles of operas and such lying around my office — and I worked myself literally (almost) to death, it seems. My doctors, my family, and my friends are all forcing me to be as lazy as I can for a while.

In this state of enforced laziness, somehow the wellsprings of creativity have opened up (elsewhere I've mentioned that my seven year writer's block seems to have unblocked itself) and this means that, in this resting period, I seem to have handed in a novel that was two years late, sold two short stories to a U.S. magazine, submitted an 84 page proposal for a new trilogy to my agent, and started working on a film score for a friend in Hollywood.

Mr. Croxford must feel quite vindicated. Because you see, working your butt off does not in fact always produce the required result. Rather, sometimes, you have to just let go, completely, utterly, and fearlessly, and just believe that it will all come flowing through you from some deep place within.

To achieve true laziness is the supreme struggle, it seems. I don't know where you are now, Mr. Croxford, but I want you to know that your words are still resonating, almost half a century away.

Trisdee and Brendan

Posted 1 Hour Ago

Trisdee and Brendan perform an Elton John song at a party at Somtow's house

If you happen to be looking at this in Facebook or some such, I think you have to click the link to actually see the video.

The View from Mars

I'm sitting here at 2 in the morning having an online convo with my nephew, Guy, whom I've never met. (That's not surprising since I've got over 100 of them, I think. Nephews I mean.) He's around 14 and our conversation is mostly monosyllabic (well, on his part ... I say a sentence and he says "Yeah".) But what is so cool about this conversation is that it takes place at approximately 10 minute intervals. In other words, it's a perfect simulation of what it would be like to converse with someone if I were on Mars, which is about 4 or 5 light-minutes away from Earth. I suppose one could use msn or something, but I'm rather enjoying pretending to be a Martian.

I really like talking to Guy, not just because it's very cool that he doesn't mind conversing with my geriatric self, but also because he goes to Eton. And even in the 21st century, it seems, there are things in the world that only other Etonians can comprehend. Recently read Nick Fraser's book about that. He speaks of being slapped around by a drunken Tony Trench and other sordid, faintly perverted things; I guess I wasn't important enough for such a privilege. Alas, he of the rasping voice and apelike appearance is no more and the current headmaster was actually at school with me; he's even a year younger, I think.

Earlier today we had a party to welcome Trisdee back and to send him off again, to which a magnificent total of eight people showed up; five more had come the previous night by a peculiar accident of temporal displacement. One person who came, to my surprise, was Brendan Schatzki, who played "Miles" in our production of "The Turn of the Screw" four years ago. He had just flown in from the States. He and Trisdee began singing Elton John songs together and eventually made a video of one which I intend to post here in a little while. It's awesome. Totally.

It's now four in the morning. I will try to sleep, but since the power went off for a moment an hour ago, I think I will avoid "the machine" tonight as well. As I start to sign off, I see that Aberrant Dreams, an online SF magazine, has published my first short story to appear in seven years. To read it, you should go here.... I have to tell you that this story is not the first fruits of my writer's block breaking, but a piece from just before the block happened; when it did happen, right after my sojourn as a Buddhist monk in late 2001 and 9/11, it was so sudden that there were stories on my hard drives I didn't even send out. While I was novelistically out of commission, the online magazine was born and so I suppose it's only fitting that I should first be resurrected in one.

The intrepid Dominic Sargent was at Trisdee's little hello-goodbye party earlier. He says he reads this blog quite often and it seems to appear so quickly that he wonders whether it doesn't appear before the events it describes. Well, he has of course cottoned on to my secret. I use a special ink that dries faster than light, so that the words appear the previous day. This FTL ink is available on ebay. Do you think I'm joking? You don't know ebay, then.

We Live and Die by Technology

Last night I had a near-death experience of a quite different stripe. Yes, this bizarre apparatus with its spaceman-like mask has been very effective, but in the middle of the night I suddenly had a dream of being in the coffin, being talked about by my friends, and being carried about in a funeral procession. So I wake up and I'm suffocating and clawing the air and I'm in complete darkness in a stifling room. Half conscious, I start to rip off the mask. It turns out there's been a power outage. The technology has stopped working. I sort of stagger out towards the fusebox and, working completely blind, I managed to flip the electricity back on. In a second, the airconditioning works again and a few dim lights come on and I can breathe.

Now this is genuinely frightening, because I had intended to take a sleeping pill. Had I done so, I might not have been able to wake up to reset the electricity. I might not have been able to rip off the mask, which, without the current of air, is a death mask. I might, indeed, actually be dead.

If I have to spend my nights attached to machinery, I think I had better look into some kind of electrical stabilizing device/battery backup sort of thing.

It's been quite a sobering morning.

The Rocky Road to Recovery

July 4 today ... my National Day! And one person, the intrepid Colonel Sinclair in Kentucky, my fellow Ky. Col., sent me a card? Were I in better shape I would go to the American community's big event, but instead I'm sitting here doing this blog.

The opera is chugging along without me, albeit a bit clunkily. This weekend I was getting a lot better; the weird breathing machine actually helps; I don't get tired during the day. Then, I suddenly found myself doing all sorts of opera work, like answering endless emails, over the weekend, and then I forgot to plug in the device so today I feel amazingly tired. Also, the weird, vivid dreams came back! That proves that when I stop breathing, that's when I'm getting these mystical visits from God. And I guess this all proves the machine works. Tomorrow, another trip to the hospital but whether I will be admitted for more medical experiments is a matter of some conjecture. Maybe they'll attempt the MRI again, using more drugs....

You'll see here a mockup poster for Butterfly; that's one of the things I ended up having to dash off in the middle of the night; I think that for the next week the opera is still going to be suddenly turning to me for something which should really be done by someone else but never has been ... but that can't be helped yet. In a sense, this illness is the best thing that happened to me and to the opera company itself.

Tomorrow, rehearsals for the chorus of "Butterfly" are already starting up with the resourceful Dominic Sargent at hand. Tomorrow, too, I return to the hospital, but hopefully not overnight. A few days ago, Trisdee returned from the Netherlands and has now learned to do an astonishing Elton John imitation. I can see now that my funeral requiem will be a lot more like Princess Diana's than I originally thought.

I'm preparing myself for attachment to the machine for the evening by reading The Gulag Archipelago. For some reason, despite being a literate person, I've managed to avoid the book so far. Right now I am reading all about Soviet interrogation techniques. Ouch! So, okay, I'm sorry I publicly accused the Ministry of Culture of being Stalinist when they tried to censor my opera. After all, theirs was not a carefully thought out campaign of terror, but merely the power grab of some bureaucrat who never thought it would actually backfire on the entire ministry... Besides, our government is gradually coming round to a proper idea of supporting the arts. It's growing pains, I suppose.

Now that I have packed off a proposal for a new fantasy trilogy to my agent, I have to consider carefully the idea of combining more closely the musical and literary sides of my life. They have always been quite distinct. Now, in the twilight of my existence on this earth, the barrier between them is crumbling. One symptom of this breakdown is, oddly enough, Facebook … I seem to be getting "added" by people from both my worlds. Inevitably, the worlds will leak.... Two days ago, I rejoined the SFWA after, I think, about a 20 year gap. Surprisingly, they still remembered me.…

A Fashion Statement for my Declining Years

Well, I now have to wear this device each night. But life as an idle layabout is not so bad, and it's only for 30 days.

Your emails and letters and even flowers (from as far away as Shanghai!) have been just wonderful. Catherine, who is running the opera company along with members of my family and the intrepid Ratana and Noo, is rather astounded at the sheer volume of what I used to have to take care of each day before getting to the creative work; after a week, she's already casting around wildly for a team of volunteers or ersatzSomtows.

And I'm hearing from friends I haven't talked to in absolute years ... here's what Alan Dean Foster says to me: "I get a chuckle out of envisioning you, of all people, after all the creatures and critters you've dealt with in your work, being terrified of something as prosaic as an MRI" … and Marti McKenna has just told me that her "baby" is now 25 years old. At least most people are seeing the possibilities for comedy in all this as well; I would hate to depress anyone; indeed, I am planning my funeral as a stand-up comic routine, with Trisdee's Requiem as a sort of intermission piece. (It will be pretty funny when my corpse stands up; it will have to be rigged with 1980s style special effects hydraulics, like the pizza of death in Nightmare on Elm Street III).

I must say that the apnea-controlling device itself is a nuisance. In my sleep, I often end up unhooking it. There must be a nice Greek-derived medical term for people who unhook themselves from medical apparatus in their sleep. If there isn't, with my trusty Greek dictionary in hand, I'll just coin one: autohypnoekiatromechanoapankistronysis. Who says I've lost my touch at creating catchy new words?

Well, now that I am back home at least for a few days (the lab may require me for more medical experiments on Monday) knowing that I'm allowed to work as long it is on creative things and not stressful organizational things, I've already written the first five chapters of a new fantasy trilogy set in Bangkok which is a sort of cross between Bangkok 8 and Harry Potter. You may not think this possible, so we will just have to see. I'm hoping to do for Bangkok what Neil did for London (or maybe what Emma and Will did for Minneapolis!) By the way, if any of you have read both Will Shetterly's novel Dogland and my novel Jasmine Nights, you will know that he and I had exactly the same childhood -- 12,000 miles apart. It is one of those extraordinary things.

But what of the opera? Well, it is not exactly running itself, but one thing that is occurring as a result of all this is that it is learning to run itself. Whether it will complete the learning curve within 30 days is an unknown quantity, but circumstances are forcing our hand and it had simply better learn.

I do of course have a new opera in the works, Dan no Ura, and I had to give up the premiere in order to place Die Walküre within this calendar year. I am not currently suffering from composer's block, so we will simply have to see how the return to two creative streams can play out.

I'm proud because this visiting young trumpet player from Belgium, Stan Nieuwenhuis, showed up in Bangkok (he was supposed to play in the Wagner, but he's come anyway in order to have his holiday) and I took him for a tour of the notorious software stews of Bangkok; I stayed on my feet for four hours without getting tired and I think they had a great time; though now I'm feeling a huge fatigue.

I just have to remember not to overdo it....

The Horror … the Horror … Reddux

Dear Friends

In response to many notes of concern which Catherine has forwarded to me and others which I've discovered on my computer today, I'm writing a note which you are free to forward to any others who might be wondering if I'm okay.

A certain writer who was at Cambridge with me, and became far more rich and famous than I ever will, once said "Don't Panic".

I would say that to you, but I would also have to point out that having dispensed this brilliant piece of advice in "The Hitchhiker's Guilde to the Galaxy," Douglas Adams subsequently dropped dead.

A fate I am now trying to avoid.

By now many of you have heard rumors so I am sending out this letter to all of you. Probably around the end of this week, I will be back home from the hospital, and I will be able to correspond by email in a limited sort of way, and to have visitors.

I have not had a heart attack (at least not recently), nor have I had a nervous breakdown. I have not been driven to a state of clinical depression by the spate of recent personal attacks and bizarre censorship scandals. What has happened to me *is* life-threatening, but I am assured that it can easily be taken care of if I only do what my doctors say I should do. So I want to say upfront that there is no reason to panic.

At the recent concert, "Sacred and Profane", many of my friends noticed that I was in a state of apparent near collapse. Some commented on it. Even some people who didn't know me personally thought that something might be wrong. After the admin meeting which was held at the Four Seasons after the concert, Catherine Cushing and Guy Pace had to actually sort of carry me to my car.

I checked into Piyavate Hospital and have been under the care of one of the best cardiologists in the country, a member of the royal family's medical team. The reason for the cardiologist is that, 18 months ago, around the time of "das Rheingold," some tests I had indicated that I might have suffered a minor heart attack, and my doctor told me to take a month off right then, or suffer the consequences later. I didn't do that and went on to have the most active year of my Bangkok career. "Later" has now arrived along with some of the consequences.

The good news is that, although at first this is what was feared, I did NOT in fact have a minor heart attack this time. And though there have been in the last six months symptoms that could have indicated a minor stroke, such as being unable to think of words and losing track of things, and some bizarre numbness that began in Holland in January, I do not appear to have had one of those either.

My medical problem is actually much simpler than all this.

You see, for my entire working life, I have been a night person, composing or writing from midnight to about 6 am each day, sleeping until the early afternoon, and taking care of business, shopping, etc. in the late afternoon and evening.

When I started running the Bangkok Opera, I started having to wake up at 8 or 9 am because there was all the administrative functions to perform, meetings to take, and so on. However, I didn't stop also working from midnight to 6. Since I also work on weekends, and have not taken a holiday in seven years, my basic problems in fact stem from a massive and chronic stress overload which is exacerbated by a sleep disorder. Even the few hours of sleep I get are constantly interrupted by sudden stoppages of the flow of oxygen, so that I'm always getting up disoriented all night long. The results from the sleep lab show that even with a full night's sleep, I never enter "Stage 4 sleep" at all, and that during REM sleep I often stop breathing completely with the result that I actually suffocate. So, there's a simple biological explanation for these wild metaphysical dreams I've been having about encounters with God, angels, dead people and so on … which certainly takes the romance out of it all. I think I'll prefer to believe there's a metaphysical aspect to these near-death moments.

Basically I've crammed about 14 years of activity into 7, and if I don't take the rest that the doctors told me to take 18 months ago NOW, I have been assured that I will, in fact, drop dead, or at the very least be out for 3 to 6 months instead of just one.

Certainly the hate emails, the financial stress of the opera, the censorship nonsense, the slanderous faxes to members of the royal family, and all the other rubbish that goes with musical politics in Thailand haven't helped, but alas, my many detractors can't really take the credit for causing this. I did it to myself. It wouldn't have happened if I'd stayed in L.A. And I would have to say that it was worth it. When I look back at everything I've helped to make happen in this country, all the careers I've helped to start (even of those who are trying desperately to pretend I don't exist!) I really don't mind that I'm paying for it physically right now.

At first, I was extremely dismayed at all this, especially since the debut of part two of our Ring Cycle is going to be delayed until November. But Catherine is of the opinion that she and my family didn't intervene a moment too late. Perhaps they are right. I finally have a moment, literally, to catch my breath.

I've probably got only about 20 years before death or Alzheimer's takes me, so I'd like to make sure that as much as possible of what I've planned for my life can actually happen. Establishing permanent, serious classical music institutions in Thailand that will still be around in a few centuries is part of my agenda. (Doing my own Ring cycle is a small and slightly self-indulgent part of this big picture.) Also, I have a few major works of fiction and music that I need to complete. Please bear with me while I step back for just 30 days to organize the rest of my productive life.

One result of this crisis is that I will not be running the opera 24 hours a day when I come back, not for seven more years, not even for another season. The inner board of the opera company is going to search for people to take over all the administrative and fundraising aspects of the company so that I can concentrate on being artistic director, which had always been the original plan. Although the opera season will probably expand when I come back thanks to -- at last -- government subsidy and a more stable fundraising base -- I will only conduct or direct a a small part of the season -- which was also always the original plan. This is because I also have to have to compose, write my novels, and work in film (several offers have come as my Hollywood colleagues have finally managed to track me down despite my having escaped L.A.)

The postponement of "Walküre" is in the grand scheme of things is not that huge an interruption in the season. With the extra time to get things right, I am sure it will be more satisfying. I'm excited that they are allowing me to keep "Butterfly" in August and that I'll be working with many trusted friends like Henry Akina, Nancy Yuen and Colin Morris. The good news is that, although it's driven me to illness, the last two months have seen an important upturn in our fortunes, with two government bodies finally interested in providing genuine financial support, a U.S. grantwriter coming on board, and so on, and it is now clear that the opera company, with or without me, will survive and do better than before.

I want to thank all of you for your letters and emails. There have been a lot, and I can't respond to them all right away, but I will try to. I'll be able to see people in the afternoons, starting next week, and I'm postponing the "Sacred and Profane" and "Dido" cast parties to around july 7 so that Trisdee can participate.

With love to all from
Somtow

Somtow in the Hospital

Posted Today

Dr Frankenstein's latest victim

Re-living Poe

I didn't realize how terrifying "The Premature Burial" was until the doctors tried to give me an MRI. I was only in the machine for a minute when I began screaming! So, they said, don't worry. We'll knock you out. The nurse took the above photo as they were about to try for a second time. The "knock out" turned out to be about 10 mg of Valium, and as this is perhaps only 5% of the average Hollywood producer's daily recreational dosage, you can imagine what little effect it had, especially upon someone of my immense fatness.

After what I thought was hours (but which they assured me was only 10 minutes) a huge panic attack occurred.

I guess that if there's something wrong with my brain, they're not going to find out.

Meanwhile, the prognosis is quite encouraging. "Sure, it's life threatening" my doctor said, but he seemed very jolly about it. Then he added, "But don't worry, I'm going to cure you."

More when next I can sneak away.

Becoming Alien

This is a pretty good depiction of how I felt before being forced, kicking and screaming to the hospital. This bulletin is short. I'm in good spirits. Everyone is certainly making a fuss. I hope I shall prove worthy of it. After the "sleep lab" experiment next week, I'll probably be able to deliver a full report. As some of you may no, I've been given the option of either taking it easy for a month now and then resuming a normal life, or continuing the normal life and dropping dead a few months hence. It's therefore no exaggeration to say that by compelling me to take option one, taking the matter entirely out of my hands, that is, Catherine and my family members have actually saved my life (at least for now.)

Until I'm subjected to the scientific experiments next week, I'm resting up in what Catherine has asked me to describe as an "undisclosed location." Okay, I am in pain and all that, but I'm still able to see the humor in all this. I am it seems able to sneak online once in a while.

If, after all this mollycoddling, I still manage to croak, I want Trisdee to compose a new requiem.

I'll have a less tongue in cheek missive about the state of affairs in Somtow's World in a couple of days....

I'm not at all well so here's a video

Vergene Bella by Dufay

Posted 1 Hour Ago

Orpheus Choir of Bangkok and Musica Ficta Consort performs the Thailand premiere of this gorgeous piece by Dufay, "Vergene Bella", (600 years later) at the Pridi Auditorium under the direction of Somtow Sucharitkul.

I'm going to be in and out of hospitals, having hideous tests, and so on for a while. They say it's not life-threatening (yet). I'm home briefly to pick up a few things and sort things out. I know they have the internet at the hospital, so I will try to post in a few days.

Notes from the Banquet

Well, all right, I'm still staggering around and limping and so on, but here's a brief report on the Renaissance Banquet. The food wasn't exactly 15th century, and we received a full complement of knives and forks to eat it with, and there weren't any boars rotating on spits or anything like that. Still it was a pretty passable imitation of a feast. The Four Seasons, indeed, outdid itself.

It was a strange mix of guests. About a third were members of Thailand's upper crust, including three (count 'em) Khunyings (real ones, that is, i.e. members of royal families rather than "created" ones). They included the wily M.R. Sunida, the winsome M.R. Benjapa, and the wild M.R. Malini. Another third were local music lovers and/or lovers of fine social events. Yet another third were graduate students from Golden Gate University's Faculty of Law, who were in Thailand for a summer international law course.

To make the evening more merry (or "merrie") there was a raffle whose prizes included a pearl necklace and a spa holiday in Chiengmai.

Of course, these three audiences were not exactly afficionados of the music of such 14th century greats as Landini and Dufay. Nevertheless, they seemed to have a great time. One of the great advantages of music of this period is that it's considerably shorter than Wagner. Your attention doesn't really have that much time to wander. There were many high points, among them the animated poetry readings.

I'll be posting a video as soon as I get one....

Another Cheap Shot

Bless its elitist heart! The Tatler has taken a cheap shot at me this month! Well, as Oscar Wilde said, there's only one thing worse than being talked about — it's not being talked about. Well, I won't tell you what they said – you'll have to buy the magazine. I might as well help them sell copies.

I'll report soon on last night's concert which seems to have been wildly successful, but at this very moment I'm sort of a cripple from being on my feet too much last night ... crawling to the bathroom and suchlike ... I'll write again when the agony subsides....