Some Clips from Mahler 3

From the Mahler 3 Premiere

Well, the reception was tumultuous and heartwarming, though I personally would have to say that our Mahler 3 was not as technically smooth as our previous performances of Mahler 5 and 9.   Here are some excerpts....

Fleeing for a Day

The world is a savage place.  The woman in the clip above got 60 days' jail when she flew into a rage at not being able to get McNuggets.  She smashed glass, tried to punch out the employee, and so on ... proving that Thailand doesn't have a monopoly on those who would tear up the town when they can't get what they want right away.  So yes, I have in fact receiving some astonishing threats and yes, the police have been looking out for me lately.  In fact, the added vigilance on my street, owing to the fact that I am under police protection, caused them to stop and search me on my way to my house!  Gotta watch out for fake Somtows hiding out among the fake DVDs and Rolexes.

Although I don't mind at all when people comment on this blog and have occasionally even had my mind changed as a result of someone's comments or fact correction, The night of July 30 was unusual in that I received five really virulent blog comments in a row.  They were all about how "the reds" were going to splash my blood all over Rajprasong intersection and cut off my head and so on.  The comments caused my family and friends to get worried and regretfully I closed off the comment section and handed the threats (along with their suspected IP) to the police just in case these threats were actually serious ones.

Of course, anyone who reads this blog would be aware that I have been critical of most of the protagonists in this sorry situation.  Indeed, I gave an interview on the yellow shirts' TV station last week in which I spent much of the hour as an advocate for the opposing viewpoint.

Meanwhile there's another "white paper", this one from Chatham House ... well, more of an essay ... which, unlike Mr. Amsterdam's, makes more of an attempt at evenhandedness.  I've already received a note complaining that Thaksin's "paid them off" but that may well not be the case.  Rather, I think that it's struggling to achieve balance.  It's just that it starts from a place of utter pessimism.  It might be a useful stance to take at times, but personally I don't think it's that helpful to the country right now.   Find the right balance between cynicism and hope is important right now.

I decided to escape with some of the members of the Shounen-Thai Quartet to the Burmese border, because I'd heard that there's an incredible flea market right on the edge.

My dreams of anonymity were crushed when I walked into the Wiang Inn Hotel in Chiangrai and was immediately greeted by "I saw you on TV last night...."

It is instructive to note that one of your last sights on crossing the border is a 7-11 sign.  Burma didn't look, on the surface, to be much different, but their  border town had nothing like a 7-11, or an ATM.  Whereas the Thai side had several of both.  And of course much newer-looking cars.

The Burmese side had beautiful people, and vast shops full of every pirated DVD you can imagine for $1, including rarities like one about Elliot Carter, complete CD boxed sets like Solti conducting the Bruckner Symphonies for around $5 and so on.

There were also plenty of fake Rolexes and Omegas.  Some jade too, perhaps mostly fake, though good jade comes from Burma, as we all know.  I bought a beautiful jade bracelet at a price where it didn't matter if it was fake or not.

But I have to say that to me the most disorienting sight was the one below: a shop selling lovely hand-painted Buddha icons on pieces of old teak (perhaps planks from one of those old-style houses) for about $1 a piece, with an extraordinary, primitive-style Crucifixion hanging beside them.  The juxtaposition of the suffering Jesus with the serene Buddha seemed somehow to crystallize the feelings that this strange outpost aroused in me.

It made me think, too, about the nature of dreams, and of freedom.   Everyone always dreams about "another place".  As a science fiction person living in L.A., I met many Americans for whom "another place" was not even on earth.  "I dream," they would say, "that one day I will go to the Moon.  Or settle in an L-5 colony."  I also knew many Thai people who had had their own version of this dream.  "I dreamt," they told me, "of emigrating to America and opening my own restaurant."

When I was standing across the bridge from Thailand, an imperfect democracy where many have yet to learn to control their rage and to start using the political process in a constructive way, a country where fake DVDs cost ten times as much as they do in Burma....  I got to thinking ... once I cross that bridge, I'll be able to walk into a 7-11.

Could that, too, be someone's impossible dream?  Do we dare to take anything for granted in this world?

15 Minutes of Fame

Okay, so my local paper has decided to fan the flames by putting me and R.A. head to head on the front page.  Which suggests that there must have been no real news yesterday.

I'm a little peeved at being painted with a yellow background: I have not been uncritical of the yellows in the past.  But then again, I doubt that THE NATION is that impartial: their bio of me is all about my awards, while their summary of Amsterdam is about his clients languishing in Russian jails.  And they've used a more flattering picture of me.

In a week or so I'll probably reopen the comments section of this blog, as soon as I get over my fear.  There are plenty of venues for people to exercise their right (if any) to make death threats, but there's no reason why it should happen on webspace which I pay for!  It is interesting that while the blog entry provoked virulent attacks and threats, so far the email on the NATION piece (which is substantially the same) has been very supportive.  Those who read the morning people and those who troll the net at midnight are clearly members of a different demographic.

Anti-Semantics

I was forced to close the comments section of the last blog post when five extremely violent, death-threatening posts came in quick succession.  I can't tell whether they're real, but they also made threats against other people, so I handed them over to the police along with the posters' IPs.  I'm going to keep the comments section closed for a while.  It's a pity because I have always taken pride in allowing those who disagree to state their opinions freely in comments on this blog.  But remarks like "you half-blood pseudo thai-chinese hi-so fem chink - the reds will be painting ratchaprasong with your blood" (and that was one of the milder ones) scare me.  I'm only human. 


My discussion of Mr. Amsterdam has drawn a lot of virulent commentary, but also some praise even from people like the Secretary-General of ASEAN, who said in an email: "it was brilliant... It's the style, the structure of and substance of your argument that are more decisive and critical to publications and readers. Your style reminds me of philosophical debates of the enlightenment...stimulating, entertaining and illuminating at the same time.   The part critical to the PM ... is particularly effective and fundamentally correct. It is powerful in that sense."

Unlike some of the other commentators, Dr. Surin didn't fail to notice that I have no compunction about being critical of all sides in this.

I was flattered that Robert Amsterdam himself would respond to my blog on his blog, but all he really does is try to push the dialogue back to ground on which he feels more comfortable.  He is of course too intelligent to actually have missed my point.  He complains that I only addressed one of the myriad points in his White Paper, but of course, that point having been addressed, he does concede that my methodology for addressing that point is proper and fair.  Well, exactly.  A "fair fight" is in fact possible on Mr. Amsterdam's turf.  As soon as someone pays me as much as Mr. Amsterdam's getting paid, I'll gladly tackle such a fight.  I don't mind giving up my time to do the research if the fees can keep the opera going for the next five years!

Mr. Amsterdam understands that the point of my "rebuttal" (It's not a rebuttal — see preceding paragraph) is to explain that the entirety of the White Paper has validity only insofar as it is understood in the context of Mr. Amsterdam's strategy as a paid advocate.   It may masquerade as truth, but "whole" truth will only be possible if other "white papers" from all the different sides (there are not, despite Mr. Amsterdam's courtroom-based black-and-white portrayal of the case, only two sides in this conflict) are presented at the same time.  He also understand that there is no defense against this point.  His only viable strategem is to drag the argument back to his own turf.  He's a good lawyer and he did what a good lawyer must do.

I am a little saddened that Mr. Amsterdam and others decided to play the seventh card in the shyster deck.  I avoided mentioning it in my post because of all the possible cards, it can only be played "after all else fails."  I am referring of course to the race card.  It's the "Well, if you don't agree with me it can only be because you hate Jews/gays/African-Americans/name your own oppressed minority."

In this case, my use of the word "shyster" has caused him to paint my arguments with a racial bias.

Now, the dictionary in my iPhone, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary as well, both say that this word means "a dishonest lawyer or politician".  There's no racial element in this definition.  I've lived in Los Angeles for twenty years, totally at home in the extremely Jewish culture of neighborhoods like Encino, and I come from a family of highly distinguished lawyers.  English, American English in particular, is my native language.  I don't know every single word in the language, but my novels are twice cited as a source in the Oxford Dictionary of English Idiom.  I have used this word among lawyers, and among Jews, and heard it used by them, my entire life, without racial coloration.

It is my understanding that a minority view that this word has a racial implication comes from an erroneous conflation between the word and "shylock" — a word which is in fact frequently used as a racial slur.  (Although I would have to say that in Shakespeare's play, Shylock is by no means painted as an utter villain, and his speech "hath not a Jew eyes" is as potent an anti-racism statement today as it was five centuries ago.)

Robert Horn, a Jewish writer who works for Time, wrote to me:"I'm Jewish, and I don't regard your use of the word shyster as anti-semitic at all."  I believe that this opinion would be shared by most literate native speakers.

I'm not that sad to lose a word like "gay" to a narrower definition, because its original meaning has many synonyms.  However, I know of only one good word for "dishonest lawyer".  To eliminate that word from the general vocabulary would be a loss for the English language.

I'm a passionate advocate of music by Jewish composers, was the only person in Thailand to contribute a concert to the Daniel Perlmann World Music Days, was the only person in Southeast Asia that I know of to stage a big concert in memory of Simon Wiesenthal.  I'm an anti-Semite?  If there is a jot or tittle of anti-Semitism in my heart, it is known only to ha-Shem!

Now that that is dealt with, I would have to add that I could have played the race card in my article.  For example, I could have said something like "For Mr. Amsterdam to attempt to equate those tragic deaths to the Holocaust is a betrayal of his own racial heritage."  I didn't say that because it is not kosher.  Not cricket. Dirty pool.  And it is something you would only do if you were losing the argument.

One of the commentators said that Amsterdam and I should get to know each other, even work together. I'm not entirely averse to that.  Maybe we could have a TV show, like CNN's "Crossfire".  If you're reading this, Bobby, let's do lunch.  

Don't Shoot the Shyster!

Once again I've been dragged, kicking and screaming, into political punditry.  For the past week now, friends of mine in America and elsewhere have been emailing me a document which appears to be by the controversial lawyer-apologist Robert Amsterdam.  The header reads "The Bangkok Massacres: A Call for Accountability:  The Thailand White Paper Final by Robert Amsterdam".   These emails to me invariably include comments like "Do something about this!" Though what I am supposed to do, I am not quite sure.   Procrastinating as long as I could — after all, I did have Mahler 3 to conduct — I finally got around to double-clicking the icon today.  It was then that I learned that the document is seventy-five pages long.

As I started to read it, I realized that this document has something in common with a novel by my friend Norman Spinrad called The Iron Dream.   In this book, Spinrad used novelistic license to alter one tiny moment in our past.  He takes a real-life historical figure, a mediocre artist named Adolf Schickelgruber, and instead of leaving him in Europe, causes him to emigrate to the United States where he becomes a mediocre science fiction writer.  The book, then, is the "award-winning novel" that might have been written by this person — and it's a bizarre epic fantasy about blonde, noble Aryans conquering evil, quasi-semitic lower orders of humanity to bring about a shining future.  It's the Lord of the Rings version of the Third Reich.

Now, in real life, Schickelgruber didn't emigrate to America, but did change his surname to Hitler.  The rest you know.

Mr. Amsterdam's White Paper has a great deal in common with Norman Spinrad's novel, although it doesn't purport to be a novel.   Both pieces change a little bit of history and extrapolate an edifice of the imagination from that little change.  The White Paper is, in its own way, as much of a masterpiece as The Iron Dream, but to understand why, one must first consider what it is that a novelist does, and what it is that a lawyer does.

Both novelists and lawyers build houses of cards.  But although a novelist may invent anything that he likes, he is only successful insofar as the foundation he builds on is one of truth.  A novel only truly speaks to the reader if in that novel the reader can recognize himself.  As the Dutch novelist Gerard Reve said, "Ik lieg de waarheid."— "I lie the truth."

What a lawyer ostensibly does is very similar.  He builds up, through what is hopefully an overwhelming preponderance of evidence, a viable, sequential story — a sort of novel, if you like.  But a lawyer's primary loyalty is not to truth.  It is to the client.  His sole motivation is convincing the jury — you, the reader in this case — that whatever it is his client is supposed to have done, he didn't do it.  The cards from which the house of cards is built may all be "truths" ... but the foundation of the house need not be the truth at all.

In other words, a novelist must use invention to reach a truthful conclusion ... whereas a lawyer may well use truth to get to a conclusion that is pure invention.

Of course, truth by itself seldom leads to untrue conclusions.  This is where the lawyer must have recourse to the most important weapon in his armoury: the half-truth.

Recently, when some journalist (I misremembered her as Amanpour, but they all look the same without my glasses) was badgering Mr. Abhisit on Hard Talk, she tried to ambush him with the challenging statement "You weren't elected."  Our prime minister decided to respond by giving an elaborate explanation of Thailand's parliamentary process.  This was not the ideal way of dealing with her.  Although everything that the prime minister said was true, his interviewer did not make the statement in order to elicit the truth.  It was to provoke drama, and the proper response should have been something like, "What a stupid statement: in a parliamentary democracy, the prime minister is never directly chosen by the electorate.  Didn't you learn that in school?  And you call yourself British!"  Our journalist uttered a half-truth as though it were a whole one; she should have been called on it.  To start explaining, to start justifying, is already to concede the validity of the half-truth.  You're letting the other side choose the terms of discourse.  You're agreeing to fight on their turf.

Let's not start by falling for this.  

If I were to take every half-truth in the 75-page treatise and respond to it, I could probably win every single argument; but by then the war would have been lost.  And that is, of course, what Mr Amsterdam wishes people to do.    If he can set a few dozen officials in the Thai government to work denouncing his arguments and dredging up the facts, no one will notice what all this is actually about.

We will take Mr. Amsterdam at his word when he says that he is Mr. Thaksin's lawyer.  But it may seem a little odd for him to be defending someone who has already been convicted.  Nevertheless, Mr. Amsterdam has a history of doing just that.  While one of his previous clients, Mr. Khordokhovsky of the Yukos case, was already in jail, he went on a international whitewashing binge.  He was, in effect, Khordokhovsky's lobbyist, not his lawyer.  His efforts were not entirely effective, however.  There is no reason his methods would work any better now, unless we allow them to.  Nevertheless, there is a real danger that Thailand's government will miss the point, rise to the bait, and waste a lot of valuable time trying "handle" Amsterdam's posturings.

I'm not a lawyer.  Therefore, I see no reason to answer point for point, as a lawyer would.  Rather, I would like to respond as a novelist.  Because Amsterdam's White Paper is as fictitious as any novel.  But if it somehow manages to illuminate some fundamental truth, it may still be considered valid.  And that is the question we need to answer: is it valid?  is it necessary?  or are we simply being distracted from what we should be looking at?

So let's start by cutting to the chase.  Who is Mr. Amsterdam working for, and what is the actual purpose of this so-called White Paper?  The answer, of course, is that his employer is Mr. Thaksin, and Mr. Amsterdam has been employed to rehabilitate his boss's reputation with the eventual goal of returning him to Thailand with his wealth intact and without having to suffer any prison time.

Once we understand that the White Paper is not actually a serious call for this government to come to account, nor a genuine, balanced analysis of the political situation in Thailand, but simply one of the tools Mr. Amsterdam has fashioned in order to realize his employer's goals, it will all make very much more sense.

Let us examine this piece of Mr. Amsterdam's arsenal for what it is.  You are the jury.  Cutting through the PR and the rhetoric, Mr. Thaksin is, at present, a condemned criminal on the lam.  The governments of the major powers have accepted the findings of Thailand's legal system.  And by hiring Mr. Amsterdam, Mr. Thaksin himself has acknowledged what the terms of discourse are.  It is up to Mr. Amsterdam to shift the war back to more congenial turf.  

What are the methods by which a lawyer gets a rapist, corrupt politician, or mafia don off the hook?  Well, there are several main ones, and the White Paper uses every single one of them. 

(a) Put the victim on trial.

(b) Overwhelm the jury with irrelevant facts and figures.

(c) Construct elegant arguments from flawed premises.

(d) Use emotionally-charged "power words" to alter the jury's perspective on events.

(e) Engage the jury's sympathy for the perpetrator

(f) Try the case in the court of public opinion and the media.

Once the White Paper is examined from the point of view of its author's motivation, most of its blandishments become irrelevant.

I'd like to discuss how the White Paper adheres to the classic rulebook.  

We'll start with (a): Put the victim on trial.  Well, here's where the fun begins.  "She made me do it" is the rapist's first line of defense and the white paper's title makes it quite clear that this will be the main thrust of Amsterdam's argument.  A historically selective introduction soon leads to an equally selective rundown of the events we all lived through this year, culminating in the chapter heading "crimes against humanity" in which Mr. Amsterdam makes much of the legal definition of such crimes.  He then tries to link this definition with the Rajprasong events, but by using the phrase "appears to be present", he manages to let himself off the hook.  Indeed, the phrase "appears to" is a constant mantra here, because he's not really accusing the government of a perpetrating a massacre.  He is saying that there is an appearance of a massacre.  This legalistic hairsplitting allows him be as sensationalist as he wants, while affording himself deniability every turn.

When I say that Mr Amsterdam is putitng the victim on trial, I am not saying that the victim is the government, the democratic party, or Mr. Abhisit.  The victim is Thailand.

Mr Thaksin has been convicted not of stealing from the democratic party, but of stealing from Thailand.  It is the judiciary system of Thailand that has convicted him, not the yellow shirts and not the elite.  When Mr Thaksin's government ordered the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged drug dealers, when it permitted the torture and slaying of Muslims in the South of Thailand, these were crimes against Thailand.  He has not yet been convicted of these latter crimes, but by painting Abhisit as a vicious murderer, Mr. Amsterdam is launching a preemptive strike against against the bringing of such charges against Mr. Thaksin.

As a lawyer Mr. Amsterdam knows perfectly well that the springtime violence does not rise to the level of a crime against humanity as defined by the laws he himself cites.  If this were true, U.S. presidents would have been on the dock for Kent State and Waco.  These were terrible tragedies — but hardly the Killing Fields or Buchenwald.  Surely Mr Amsterdam knows better than to equate an attempt by a recognized government to restore order, when a city has been held hostage by lawless ruffians for months, with the Holocaust.  

So let's return to the rapist analogy.  What is Mr. Amsterdam's point?  It is this:  "Okay, so maybe my client raped Thailand.  But Thailand was a bad girl.  She brought it on herself."

Let's look at (b) now, the irrelevant facts and figures.  I've already shown how Mr. Amsterdams quotes masses of legal data, makes it look as though it's relevant, then squirms out of the whole thing with the phrase "appears to."  His second chapter, a reductionist summary of the history of Thailand's constitutional development, is full of indisputable facts, but for real analysis one might want to read the commentary of a genuine historian such as David Wyatt.  This is the icing without the cake, and it's there to provide a cloak of verisimilitude to Mr. Amsterdam's specious arguments.

The flawed premise (c) is evident from the very opening sentence of Mr. Amsterdam's thesis.  "For four years," he says, "the people of Thailand have been the victims of a systematic and unrelenting assault on their most fundamental right ... self determination through genuine elections."

Powerful stuff.  But it is a half-truth.  The entire logical thread of the White Paper leads outward from this half-truth. and as the truth gets halved again and again, recursively, we finally end up what I would call a near-lie.   It is only the constant repetition of the word "appears" that prevents the paper from being actual lies.

You see, Mr. Amsterdam is protecting his client, but on a deeper level, he is protecting himself.  Proud as he is of the elegance of his constructed arguments, he is forced to tell us, in the small print, that it's a house of cards.  

To tell the whole truth version of this opening sentence would be to try to understand both sides of the issue, to comprehend not only that some people's rights were violated in the last four years, but that the reason they were violated may have been a reaction to similar, in many cases more egregious, violations during the Thaksin era.  This is not about an evil military elitist monolith clamping down on a noble, pro-people regime.  Rather it is the story of a regime that began with great optimism and with the highest of hopes, supported by almost everyone as a breath of fresh air ... a regime that moved steadily away from its professed principles towards repression, darkness, and corruption, until the only mechanism that could be found to stop the country's self-destruction was the unpopular and outmoded strategy of the military coup — a strategy that the military itself realized, almost immediately, was not working.  That military came to its senses and restored an elected government almost immediately and has so far in fact resisted the temptation to have another coup — though it has been at times needlessly meddlesome.  It is the story of groups of people, yellows and reds and others, unable to accept that a democracy thrives on diversity of opinion, and that in a mature democracy, when you lose an election, you don't seize airports or burn down shopping malls — you try to win the next one fair and square.  It is also the story of a leader having to choose on a daily basis between unacceptable alternatives, and finally coming up with a plan that has pleased no one — and which is therefore almost certainly the only correct one.

To tell the whole truth would be to describe this last year as only one of a series of dramatic milestones in an arduous journey towards democracy that has had reverses in the past, but is still clearly, inexorably, moving in the right direction.

He may or may not be a lawyer in this case, but a historian he's clearly not.

Mr. Amsterdam does not have a responsibility to tell us the whole truth.  His responsibility is to the source  of his paycheck.  His reasoning, by the very nature of who he is and what he does, is necessarily tainted.  

Semantics are Mr. Amsterdam's stock in trade and this falls into category (d).  Words like "dictatorship" are bandied about with reckless abandon.  His use of the word "truth" in his conclusion (that there can be no reconciliation without truth) is positively Orwellian.  And as this farrago of half-truths is destined to provoke conflict, his paper in fact proves his point.

Point (e) — to engage the jury's sympathy for the perpetrator — Mr. Amsterdam takes care of right at the beginning by trotting out our "rapist" in a nice clean suit, smelling like a rose.  He has instructed his client, slayer of Muslims, to speak of inclusiveness.   "We must renounce all violence", says the man under whose watch over two thousand alleged drug dealers appear (yes, I'm using legalspeak here too) to have been murdered to fulfill a quota requirement that could lead to a declaration of victory in a "drug war".   I think we're also supposed to feel sorry that the coup took away Mr Thaksin's right to vote, but of course in countries like the U.S., criminals in many states lose that right.

My final item in my catalog of the shyster's arsenal is the "court of public opinion."  In this case, it is the only court that matters, because the conviction has already taken place.  

You may wonder why this long review doesn't actually take apart Mr. Amsterdam's arguments piece by piece. It is because, by and large, the arguments are perfectly sound —they are just based on incomplete or selective evidence.  

Yes, of course, Mr. Amsterdam, there should be accountability.  Yes, of course, the government has made some missteps, and the clumsy handling of internet censorship is one of them.  Yes, of course Thailand has a duty to investigate and prosecute.  Of course, actual accountability and actual investigation might land Mr. Amsterdam's client in more hot water.  So why not turn off the hot air for a moment and think about what would really be good for your client?

In short, this seventy-five document is a waste of our time, and a bad use of Mr. Thaksin's money.  It's unlikely to convince anyone except the already convinced.  It fails to connect the dots.  It's a failure as a logical construct, and it's a failure as fiction.  It is, however, like Norman Spinrad's novel, a triumph of the imagination.  Not only have the people of Thailand been had, but I fear that Mr. Thaksin has as well.

If Mr. Amsterdam cared a little more about his client and a little less about his paycheck, he would give him the following advice:  Mr Thaksin, bend a little.  You're not in exile, you know.  Stop pretending that you were "kicked out of Thailand".   Come home and do your time.  Everyone will forgive you if you show just a little contrition.  If you want to be a real saint, and not just "play one on TV", you must be prepared for a little real suffering.  You did a lot of good things for this country, but you got greedy.  You got careless.  But the Thai people are actually pretty good at reconciliation — it's built into their culture.  Put away your wallet and start trusting them.  

In the meantime I will try to think of a practical use for this White Paper.  I can only think of one so far, but it's not going to stay white for long.

Sneak Preview

This video shows the orchestra sight-reading the first movement at the first rehearsal.  So .... in three days, the Thailand premiere of one of the world's most spectacular symphonies is going to happen!

Go here for tickets:

FOR ENGLISH, please go to:

http://www.thaiticketmajor.com/concert/mahler-symphony-3-eng.php

FOR THAI, please go to:

http://www.thaiticketmajor.com/concert/mahler-symphony-3.php

Don't miss....

Mahisorn Hall, July 21 at 7:30 pm!
More info: (02) 231-5273

China (continued)

Sorry to tell all these stories in the wrong order, but I think I should go back and continue the tale of the China summit while it's still relatively fresh in my mind.

The day after the curious production of La Traviata, the Chinese planned a long day of speeches in which all of us had to talk for 20 minutes about the state of opera in our countries. Interestingly enough, they had a lady with a bell to go "bong" when the minutes were up, but most speakers seemed to ignore her.

Some of the stories people had to tell were far removed from our experiences.  Many of the European houses wanted to tell China to find its own voice, develop its own style, rather than spending this kind of money in imitating the west ... with the unspoken implication that no matter what the east does, it will never be the west.  Which is of course quite true; insofar as opera companies attempt to be neo-colonial imitations of European companies, they will have little to contribute to progress in the arts.

Eventually the time came for my speech and I did mention some of the interesting things I had learned over the last few hours, including the fact that our annual budget is only 0.75% of that of our equivalent in Japanese, the New National Theatre of Tokyo's budget.

Our experience in Bangkok has been quite different from those of China on the one hand and Singapore on the other.  China has made a concerted effort, deciding that it needs parity in opera to get international respect.  Singapore, in its post-colonial way, has been slowly evolving its way towards a national opera, but in a more commercial perspective.  Both countries have mostly been mounting "top ten" works, but China has also produced some of its own operas, though I cannot tell if these are sort of assigned by committee or whether they spring from a single person's vision.

As a person with a European sensibility myself in most ways I am more drawn to seeing the operas composed by Chinese composers.  I don't want yet another Traviata.  This is I suppose how the Bangkok Opera differs as well; we keep trying to exercise a uniquely Asian perspective.

Later came the signing of the "opera treaty".

It was amazing to be on this document, which pledges mutual cooperation between instiutions like the Deutsche Oper, La Fenice, and little old Bangkok.

Amazing, too, to be taken to the restaurant where Peking Duck was invented, though I must admit I found it a little dry.

Most fun of all — the sitting around at the bar when it was all over.  A lot was achieved in terms of cooperation there.  I discovered that Korea is producing Lulu.  I'm going to organize a mass tourist trip to see it ... a weekend of Berg and Bulgogi sounds like just the thing ...

Of Kids and Compasses

After the big Sinfonietta concert last Sunday, which raised money for those affected by the Bangkok's recent violence, I was feeling very good about our kids.  I mean, here is this orchestra of 13-20 year olds, just four months old, and they're tackling really difficult music, like Beethoven 7, and sounding very believable indeed.  And doing the concert for the city of Bangkok was the kids' own idea.

Then, an odd thing happened.  One of our M.P.'s, Anik Amaranand of the democratic party, had the idea that this orchestra, assembled as it is from some of our most talented kids without any consideration of their social background, might provide be a sort of microcosm of our country -- in its best aspects -- and that the Sinfonietta might be almost a poster child for reconciliation.  

I am opposed to using the Sinfonietta as a political tool, but I agreed to let her hand out an anonymous questionaire to test her theory.  It is of course only a small sample, but there have been some fascinating results.

Are these, the most talented and creative young people (14-21) in our community, "yellow" or "red"?

It's a surprise.

42% of our kids don't sympathize AT ALL with the reds, and 35% don't sympathize AT ALL with the yellows.  15% are fairly sympathetic to the reds, while 21% are fairly sympathetic to the yellows.  NONE OF THEM is "very sympathetic" with EITHER color.

What I found even more impressive was the answer to the question: "Would you do something illegal or immoral if asked to by a beloved and respected authority figure?"  44% strongly disagreed and 36% disagreed.  This means that 80% of our kids have a problem with being asked by authority figures to do things they know are wrong.

63% strongly disagree that it is acceptable for a leader to be corrupt even if he benefits the country. The rest either disagree, or only agree "somewhat".  NO ONE AT ALL agreed totally with the premise.

This proves to me that, among the brightest and most creative young people around me, there is a far more centered moral compass, and a far more balanced view of right and wrong, than we might have imagined. 

This survey has given me an unexpected optimism about the future of this country.

What follows is the opening statement that I made at the kids' concert earlier this month.  I was thrilled to discover that what I said has been proved by the results of M.P. Anik's survey.  (I realize now that it was eccentric to be quoting Isaiah to an audience of Buddhists, but then again when I was a Buddhist monk, I preached a sermon comparing Phra Wetsandorn and Abraham and Isaac.)

WHAT I SAID AT THE CONCERT

When the young members of the Siam Sinfonietta, Thailand’s newest youth orchestra, told me that they wanted to do something special to help heal our wounded city, I was moved by their sincerity, their commitment, and the purity of their vision.   Reconciliation is truly a pathway of which it can be said, “A child shall lead them.”

I was moved but I should not have been surprised, because this is a very special group of musicians.  We spent an entire year finding them and they represent many segments of our society, many regions of this country, and an entire spectrum of religions and ideologies.  They are united only in their superlative musicianship and their absolute determination to perform the greatest music ever written with the greatest commitment and passion they are capable of.  In that these children have have come from such diversity towards a togetherness of purpose far greater than themselves, they are a microcosm of an entire nation.

We have all felt a special affinity with the governor’s initiative because he is a person who is clearly seen by all to be reaching out to all sides.  M.R. Sukhumbhand, you have proved yourself to be a governor not just for one segment of this city, but for all of us.  Every baht donated today will go toward your fund to help those affected by the crisis, regardless of color.  You have our absolute trust and our abiding hope.

Finally, I would like to say to our young people that the world sees what you do.  Your gesture of generosity and empathy has not only been noted by the media in Thailand.  A reporter from the Associated Press filed a story, and two days ago news of this concert was carried in the New York Times.  By yesterday morning, the news was in a dozen major newspapers around the world and by midnight last night I counted over a hundred mentions worldwide, including news organizations like NBC and Fox, and more than eighty newspapers.

From this we may learn that in the eyes of the world what these children believe, and what they have done, is as important as any pronouncement by a politician, or any act of a political entity.   These children have a voice.  The road to a peaceful future is difficult and dark, but their dedication and compassion may give us light enough to see our way.

China's NCPA

The level of attention paid to us was astonishing.  I had my own personal assistant, a very helpful young man named Zhang Ye, who told me had been on the security team for HRH Princess Sirindhorn during her recent trip to Beijing. I was escorted everywhere, my every need anticipated ... if there was a flavor of Big Brother here, it was soft-pedaled ... but let's just say I couldn't even go to the bathroom without a friendly smiling helper at my side....  Arriving desperate for a meal, I ended up going with the hotel's version of Hainanese Chicken Rice ... comfort food in an alien world.

Now, this National Center for the Performing Arts is absolutely staggering.  It doesn't have the gaudy "chinoiserie" of some late Empire art ... it goes all the way back to the purity of form and sweeping lines of the art of the Song Dynasty in my opinion.  The building itself is in the shape of a gigantic yin-yang, so it speaks to us of the balance of the cosmos. It has an opera house, concert halls, regular theatres, recital halls, and all sorts of nooks and crannies, as well as a lovely Chopin exhibit.

On the way to the NCPA I met my colleagues for the first time.  I think we were all a little disoriented (except of course for those already working with the Chinese on coproduction.)  I soon saw familiar faces, though.  Toh Weng Cheong of the Singapore Lyric Opera and Warren Mok of Hong Kong were both there, as well as one of best friends, soprano Nancy Yuen.

We were escorted to an impressive opening ceremony, where Lorin Maazel gave a speech denouncing Regietheater and the dignitaries of the NCPA, such as Chen Ping, president of it all, were present.  Then came the first entertainment of the weekend, a performance of Traviata in the new hall which certainly showed off all of its technical specs to great advantage, though some of the western opera company heads were less than enthralled about its musical aspects.  Nevertheless, this was an ambitiously designed production and gave us a great taste of what the NCPA is capable of....

I'll try to catch up on this narrative tomorrow.

China....

So, last week I found myself in Beijing, as a guest of the Chinese ministry of culture, representing the Bangkok Opera at an international summit which featured all sorts of Big Names ... the Deutsche Opera Berlin, La Fenice, Opera Australia, den Norske Opera and so on ... celebrities like Lorin Maazel ... a big production of Traviata in a huge architectural phantasmagoria of an opera house ... and so on.

I wanted to do a day by day blog about it from Beijing, but to my amazement I discovered that blogger was blocked in China, as were Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.  So China was truly another universe.  It was in a sense like a three-day mission to Mars.  Yet it was an alien world that had many points in common with my own world.  And shared many of our hopes, fears, dreams, and ambitions.  Despite many differences, I felt welcomed and very much at home, and left China with a powerful feeling of wanting to help, and to accept their help.   Clearly, our strengths and weaknesses complement each other well.

The Chinese have built an incredible cultural center and are investing enormous amounts of money into creating an internationally viable opera.  Thailand, on the other hand, has an ageing cultural center and have invested very little money in creating an opera company ... yet its opera company has a surprising amount of international traction, with real coverage in Opera, Opera News, the New York Times, and all those "real" media.  It does seem that we have things we can offer each other, and by the end of the conference we were figuring out what those things might be.

So, from a wild opening ceremony where Lorin Maazel gave a speech blasting Regietheater to a closing dinner featuring duck done a dozen ways, from stuffy panels to deals in hotel bars, there's a lot to tell about those three days in China.  But now that I have almost daily rehearsals for our forthcoming kids' concert this Sunday, I can only blog in bits and pieces, so I'll have to tell more tomorrow....

My Own Private Road Map

Before I went to China last week, M.R. Usnisa of the Bangkok Post happened to ask me "Well ... if you were prime minister, what would you do?"

This is the kind of question we all ask ourselves sometimes.  And most of the time, we realize that, much as we would want to change the world, we ourselves would rather have that responsibility belong to someone else.

Nevertheless, it's true that, just as a private little fantasy, I had already drawn up a road map of my own.  When she found out, she asked me to email it her ... which forced me to dig it out and look at it.

Well ... it is impossible, and it would cost too much, and it would annoy too many people, and it would shake too many monkeys out of too many trees, but here it is.  Anyone can play at this game.

Somtow's Road Map


1. A Complete Overhaul of the Educational System.
Make high-quality education genuinely universal.  Work to end the "unquestioning rote learning" philosophy of education that pervades even the best institutions in the country.  Take a good look at revisionist textbooks.  Encourage schools to teach openmindedness in analysing the lessons of history.  Teach kids to question their teachers.  Teach teachers how to teach.

2. Work towards inclusivity by battling linguistic and ethnic prejudices and by decentralizing.
Dialects shouldn't be treated as "second class".  Speakers should be empowered and not made to feel inferior.  It should be acceptable to teach school and make official pronouncements both in standard Thai and in regional dialects.  Speakers of standard Thai should be taught the linguistic principles of these dialects in school so that they stop being able to pretend they don't understand them.  This should extend towards minorities as well.  If a country has a single center, that center is an Achilles heel.  Make regional centers more important and give them the ability to decide for themselves how local issues should be handled.  In giving up some control, the center in the end becomes stronger and more credible.

3. Prosecute all sides equally if egregious breaches of law have occurred.
Don't let anyone who performs acts of vandalism get away with it even if the government thinks their viewpoint supports their own.  If the government does decide it should deal gently with those who break the law, it should still set clear limits, boundaries that no side may cross. Such limits should include seizing airports, city centers, arson, and intimidating people with opposing viewpoints with physical threats.

4. Make corruption socially unacceptable.
But don't just keep saying it's a bad thing.  Attack the root causes.  Make sure officials have real salaries instead assuming they will eke them out with bribes.

5. Make freedom of speech a central tenet of policy.
This doesn't mean endorsing hate speech or speech that incites violence.  But when such speech occurs, it should be dealt with through legal channels or with clear, unambiguous guidelines, and there should be judicial review of any government attempt to deal with such speech before any action can be taken by the government.

***
I sincerely believe that if those five points are addressed, the end result would be to address most of the things that people find problematic about Thailand's society today.  Elections would become real expressions of the well-thought-out opinions of real majorities — something that has never been true in any election in the history of Thailand.  Society would understand that agreeing to disagree is already a step forward.  It's not just that parts of this country are way behind the education curve; it's also that the parts that are ahead are not always told that thinking for yourself should be education's ultimate goal.  Real education is the key to narrowing the income gap as well.

In fact, I would submit that everything may well derive from this point, so perhaps the road map should actually consist only of a single item.  Too simplistic?  Yeah....

Truth About Thailand

As a result of certain things I've written in this blog, I was invited to a meeting at Thammasat University a couple of weeks ago.  Members of the Thai press and other media were there.  The purpose of the meeting was whether something could be done about what many people around here believe to be highly unbalanced coverage of Thailand in some of the western media.

Although the exchange of views started off in a pretty sane way, it was clear that there was a lot of anger and eventually one part of the group got into how we should all direct our energies in punishing CNN, banning it, and so on.

I got up and I explained my view, which is that this is precisely the kind of thinking that feeds into the preexisting prejudice that this country must necessarily have an evil military regime going around oppressing everyone.  I said, "What you are complaining about is that these people provide only a half-open window to the truth.  The answer to this problem is not to slam shut that window, but to open all the other windows and let in all the light.  If you do so, you have to trust that most people are smart enough to form a balanced opinion."

The combination of my plain speaking and humorously quirky Thai must have got through to some people because I suddenly found myself being nominated to lead a task force to do just that ... "open the windows".  Well, it's more of a think tank and I don't "lead" it, because I don't think there should be a leader.  It's more of a group effort.

One thing I did do was put up a website, truth-about-thailand.com, and invited several people who (a) could communicate well in English and (b) weren't affiliated with the government or any news station strongly identified with a political party ... to post any articles or letters to that site.  So far I've invited half a dozen people and about four have put up material.  The idea is that if all this material is in one place, it reduces the amount of time needed for a responsible journalist to round out his story.

The site is not a chat board, so comments are disabled.  There will be links to a variety of news clips as well once they are identified and made available.

While I was away in China last week, I felt quite incapacitated at times, as someone who is used to constantly blogging, leaving messages on FB, and tweeting; all three things are blocked in China as is youtube.  It was strange to be in a situation so techologically advanced, so similar to our society in some ways, yet so cut off at the same time.  The internet at the Regent was faster and less quirk-ridden than the Internet here in Bangkok, yet I couldn't reach many of the sites that are my daily bread.

It did make me appreciate the fact that Thailand is a far more open and tolerant society than most of its neighbors, despite the recent horror.  Anyway, I couldn't blog about China although my trip there may well have huge consequences for the arts in this country and the way this country can be perceived by others.  Now that I'm back, however, I'll talk about all that soon.  There is so much on my plate now that I have to snatch the time to write this blog.

While I was gone, I did receive some emails congratulating me ... but didn't know what I was being congratulated for.

I found out from Bruce Gaston on my return than many people were crediting me and my "Dan Rivers" article (which seemed to have gone viral) for the fact that CNN has in fact started to acknowledge the existence of more complex issues and that the issue of the armed militants has finally been discussed.  Even though the acknowledgement seems to have come almost "through gritted teeth" it is nevertheless real progress.

Of course, my blog was only one of probably hundreds of reactions that may have come to their attention, but it may have put the issues in terms that someone there could appreciate.  Anyway, I received an email from no less a figure than the secretary-general of ASEAN, offering an appeciation of my help ... and also reminding us all that Thailand's international perception is far from salvaged at this stage.

On my return, the kids in our youth orchestra told me they wanted to do something to help those affected by the recent tragedy (of whatever political color) and they wanted it to be the thing they do best.  So, on June 20, a Sunday afternoon so that the whole family can come, they will perform a concert at the Thailand Cultural Center ... a REAL concert, with big works like Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. All the income from this concert will be handed to the Governor of Bangkok to help his "Together we can" fund.  I've agreed that giving it directly to the Governor is okay because I saw that during the troubles, despite his political affiliation, he clearly tried to function as the Governor of all Bangkokians, not some of them.

So, you can reserve seats by calling Ratana at (02) 231-5273 or send an email to ratana@bangkokopera.com.