The View from the Clouds

People like me are often accused of having our heads in the clouds, but this isn't really true. Our heads are where everyone else's heads are. It's just that clouds seem to form around them.

I've been having a very cloudy month. First, the Bangkok Opera is going through a massive reorganization which is going to have, it is hoped, the end result that I will only have to worry about the "vision thing" and not about juggling admin, fundraising, PR, and so on. They actually have meetings in which I am asked not to say anything and I'm sure my friends realize how well I take to muzzling.

Yet, it all seems to be working. They really have hammered out a plan, and things for the opera have never looked better. I feel as though I've led the opera to a hill overlooking the promised land, and yet.…

We are still so far from utopia. Recently, a very powerful crop of dreams would seem to indicate just how far. To understand this you must realize that I'm desperately allergic to vinegar. If I can hold it down at all without vomiting, it often leads to violent attacks of peristalsis (aka Montezuma's revenge.) Last night's dreamfest was a veritable orgy of eating and eliminating. I suspect that when one's dreams deal so intimately with eating and eliminating, then we are engaging with the most basic levels of our being. (After all, even sex isn't strictly necessary, but those two functions are....) I talk about these dreams in my last blog, but I have to admit they are haunting me far beyond their apparent content would indicate.

Now, this temporary committee has done its work and we must move forward into a brave new world.

An opera blog in Singapore recently commented — "Why is opera in Bangkok and even Hanoi so much more adventurous than in Singapore?" (In the case of Hanoi, they were referring to the Bangkok Opera taking Rape of Lucretia to the Hanoi Opera House.) — I half-jokingly posted that they should lobby to have me run the Singapore Lyric Opera. This has prompted a bit of a conversation as you can see if you go here: http://themadscene.athenarts.com/?p=350 Now, I say "half"-jokingly because at one time I did offer to run it, but they didn't answer my letter!