Somtow Encounters the Grinch

In almost half a century of giving performances in venues of every kind in most of the world's continents, I've never had quite as weird an experience as I did on Christmas Eve this year.

It all started a week or so earlier when Bruce Gaston, my fellow Silpathorn Kittikun Artist, called me and asked me if I'd send the Shounen-Thai quartet down to Phuket on Christmas Eve.  I didn't really want to do it because they were already signed up for Dr. Veena's TV special on Christmas Day in Bangkok, but Bruce was persuasive.  The event would be a glittering star-studded evening at the Amanpuri Resort.  The money would be respectable.  And this would by no means be an event demeaning to the Opera (we have a policy of not doing commercial functions, especially ones in which the audience are simultaneously eating or wandering around, because we work with real artists, not bar bands.  By the time the discussions were finished I had agreed to provide a 90 minute "Classical Christmas" programme with 2 opera singers, Trisdee on piano, myself, and the quartet as well.  In particular, we were asked to do Christmas music in a classical vein, so I spent a great deal of time obtaining arrangements for string quartet of popular Christmas songs.  My two singers were the best ones I could find in Thailand on short notice: Zion Daoratanahong, who recently was chosen to sing the special televised dedication song for the King's birthday, and Stefan Sanchez, who is staying on for a while in Thailand after his well-received performance in CARMEN.

It was a stroke of luck to have Trisdee in the group ... just back from conducting the RAI National Orchestra of Italy, and about to go off to conduct the Verdi Orchestra of Milan in the near future ... by far the best known Thai conductor internationally (Sorry, Mr. Bundit.)

So this gig, which we took on basically to help out Bruce Gaston, was a bit of nuisance, but we took it seriously, trying to fill the "Classical Christmas" agenda with a nicely constructed and varied programme.  Everything was thoroughly rehearsed before we left and we were assured that the Amanpuri, a well known hangout for millionaires, would have the whole thing smoothly and beautifully organized.

We arrived in Phuket around 3 pm and were driven to the Amanpuri.  On arrival, we were met by some kind of assistant F&B person and it became painfully obvious that all was not as we had been told.  "We will now send you off you check in to your hotel.  Be back by 6 for a sound check, and your show begins around 8:30 or 9.  You must play until 11:30."

I wasn't too suprised they were putting us up elsewhere, but rather irritated to discover that the place was an hour away.  From 4-6, with travel in both directions, that would have allowed precisely zero rest time, after which we were expected to be on call for almost six hours.  There was not even going to be a room provided for us to rest, and the concert was an open air one, next to the ocean.  I offered to check into the resort (at $852 a night) at my own expense; I was doing the gig as a favor, not to make money. so I didn't really care.  The F&B scoffed, behaving as though I were a presumptuous insect for daring to imagine that "the entertainment" might be accommodated with their great and powerful clients. That was when I started to get a bad feeling about this.

In the car, travelling to the hotel they had booked for us, we discussed our options.  It was clear right away that the Amanpuri had no clue who any of us were.  If it hadn't been for Bruce Gaston, I would have simply gone home.  I don't need this.

Stefan Sanchez then pointed out that, if he were not doing this gig as a favor to me, he would have already had a tantrum and refused to perform.   After all, it's been about two centuries since the time that renowned artists had to wear livery and expected to be treated like servants.  The Bangkok Opera, which is a pauper compared to the Amanpuri, never treats its artists in such a shabby manner.  When Zion was invited to perform at the King's birthday event in Sanamluang, she had a an earlier engagement the same night singing in one of my concerts ... and the ministry actually had her delivered to their concert in style, by motorcycle escort.  I have never given any performance in any hotel or resort where they did not provide a complimentary room (the Oriental gave me a huge suite and free run of room service including all the dinner guests I wanted.)

But it was not so much that the accommodation was insulting.  It was the idea that hard working artists who take their craft seriously and who had just flown in that afternoon would be fine to perform for twice the amount of time specified without having any rest after flying in and being bused from place to place for what would by then have amounted to three hours.

As we suspected, the hotel we were sent to was an incredible dump.  But by then we needed the rest and could ignore the fleas.  Calling the F&B person elicited no response, so I talked to Bruce and explained the situation.  I told him the artists were mutinying.  We had a beautiful 90 minute programme prepared, not a 150 minute one.  Whatever happened, we would be insisting on taking our rest now,  and still arrive in plenty of time to perform.  We also asked Bruce to tell the Amanpuri we wouldn't play unless they gave us the cheque upfront.  This is because Stefan, by far the most experienced among us with "hotel dealings", was having strange vibes about the whole thing.

Bruce called the F&B people and got them to agree to the upfront cheque and the time constraints.  So, on balance, we decided we would just not worry about the demeaning treatment and do the best we could, put on the finest "Classical Christmas" we were capable of, and then go home and try to forget about it.

We had been told that the "brilliant sound people" would have everything ready and a sound check wasn't even necessary, but on our arrival at the venue, we discovered that there were no music stands, no light by which the musicians could see the music, and the "piano" was an electronic device set at a height where Trisdee would have to stand to play it.  It was clear that these people had not the slightest clue about how to set up for classical music.  But okay, we sorted all that out, and after a lot of hemming and hawing we were also able to extract Bruce Gaston's cheque from them, although they started by saying that they weren't aware that they were supposed to come up with this cheque.

The "audience" consisted of people wandering around at a rather upscale buffet.  Well, never mind.  We began.  Zion sang a lovely rendition of "O Holy night" with a heart-stopping top B flat at the end and got a nice round of applause.  It seemed that the music itself would at least be okay.

The string quartet played a bit of Mozart.  More applause.  Then they launched into Jingle Bells and all hell broke loose.

First, the assistant F&B manager descended on the quartet.  He said, "No Christmas music!  The boss's orders!"

Well, considering that the programme we have painstakingly worked up consisted almost entirely of Christmas music, this was going to be a tall order.

Nevertheless, we got in a huddle and next we despatched Stefan to sing the "Toreador Song" from CARMEN.  He had just after all done the role to enormous acclaim in Bangkok, and you can never go wrong with this song.

Except at the Amanpuri, rated the world's No. 1 Spa, where a blonde, perhaps German, woman, who was Mr. Assistant F&B's boss, now asked us whether, as well not playing any Christmas songs, we could also avoid playing anything classical.

I called Bruce.  "It's worse," I said.  I explained the latest developments.

He said, "Well, they knew they were getting opera singers and a classical quartet ... and they knew it was Christmas music."

I said, "Well, I guess getting the cheque upfront was the right thing to do."

At that moment, it began to rain.  It looked like providence was going to get us out of this tough spot.  Well, the F&B people immediately suggested that we might as well leave.  "We'll worry about the details later," they said.   One of them said to Trisdee, "It would be better if I wasn't seen talking to you."  They couldn't wait to get rid of us.  It was clear they were all very nervous and that heads were about to roll.

As the van left the premises, the heavens began to open.  Rain was sluicing down in sheets.  The huge open-air seaside buffet was clearly not going to withstand the forces of nature.

As we entered the main road, Zion, a devout Catholic, said, "Jesus must be angry they wouldn't let us sing his songs on his birthday."

I found her simple faith curiously comforting in that moment.

I have no idea what the Amanpuri resort was thinking if it accepted the idea of a classical Christmas concert without realizing that such a concert would contain both classical and Christmas music.  I haven't a clue why, if they were told that two well-known opera singers would be in the group, they didn't realize that they might be singing opera.  And why a ban on Christmas music on Christmas Eve?  And if so, what about telling the performers in advance?

It is, I suppose, a salutory lesson.  I've never been fired five minutes into a performance before, but there's a first time for everything.

The Dead

I decided some weeks ago not to ask for a special seat at the cremation of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana because my feelings are profoundly personal and private and because I thought I might have an emotional breakdown if I was there in person. Even several miles away from it all, as I am now, I am terrible affected by it and trying not to be seen by anyone.

I'm not there now, but I am still on the verge of a breakdown, because I'm thinking back on a wild, almost unthinkable seven years of my life. In those seven years I've experienced a Sophoclean tragedy ... from hubris to massive achievements to ignominious yet heroic self-destruction. I seem to have reached, rather messily, the end of (or the beginning of) a period ... or Period, I suppose, since the lives of us Artists are supposed to be divided into Periods. (The final Period of P.D.Q. Bach's life, according to Dr. Schickele, is "usually referred to as 'Contrition'."

For months now I have been seeing the Dead (mostly in dreams, and occasionally in the flesh). The night before Trisdee left to go to the cremation (unlike me, he did ask for, and received, a seat in the special VIP area ... and many of my other family members are there too, right now) ... I dreamed about them again.

I think I was at some huge hotel or reception (in the dream) I somehow I already knew that aliens had invaded the earth. In any case, travel had become difficult, and a young man asked me for a ride home. In my dream, I realized that this man was Andros Sturgeon, the son of someone I have always loved very deeply and still think about; he died more than twenty years ago, and after he died, I never felt "young" again; Ted Sturgeon's death really did change my world. Well, the thing is, in my dream, Andros was the same age he was then, so my dream was happening in a sort of between-place, half way between life and death. It was a sort of haunting by proxy. I am wondering where to put him because I am living in a small apartment with Jay.

Well, he asked me for a ride home, and I agreed, but I found myself hitchhiking on a huge motorway. The aliens were eliminating - or transforming - all life in the world. A huge motorcade of uniformed generals was riding past, on their way to the Big War against the Aliens.

And at that point Andros had disappeared somewhere and it was Jay I was hitchhiking with. (This makes sense I suppose with the temporal duality of this dream, because I always felt that Ted Sturgeon was like a father to me, and Jay is like a son to me....) As the generals rolled past, in tanks I think, I looked up at the sky. There were flocks of birds. Huge flocks.

We managed to climb into a car and headed for a city. We flew right through the flocks of birds and I realized what was so different about them. These were not birds at all, but skeletons of birds, flying without flesh.

We finally reach our apartment which is in this strange city, in a tawdry neighbourhood. As I open my door, the smell of cat piss assails me. There is a paper on the floor explaining that if you are human, you will be reanimated as half human half animal, but birds can have four different alternatives including half airplane. There's rubble everywhere. It really is a disaster movie.

My cat is in a plastic bag next to a filthy kitchenette. My pet bird, or rodent, is being kept under huge pile of debris. There is another side room with another dead animal. As I pull the dead cat out, perhaps to bury it, I notice that it is pissing, even in death. The urine is absolutely steaming and smells awful ... and the cat stirs a little in the plastic bag ... it's not entirely dead .... As I turn, I see that my dog, Leilani, is also dead by the door, but now she is also stirring and pissing.

All very very disturbing. I wonder what it all means....

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.

Valhalla!

Tomorrow the sun will rise on the first official production day for "Die Walküre". So here I am, the Roger Corman of the opera world, embattled but not embittered, still waiting for Godot, though God will do very nicely.

We've got an interesting new production manager coming on board. I haven't had the greatest luck with production managers — they seem to turn out to have been coke addicts, Trojan horses, or schizophrenics — but with each one comes hope. Hans Nieuwenhuis once told me that it took him eleven years to find the right one, and then, miraculously, many of the traumas of running his operation evaporated into thin air. Perhaps this will happen this time!

I've had a lot of comments (mostly private emails) about how to deal with "that clause" in the cultural center's contract. So, I want to say that I've signed it. Why? Because the provisions about what might constitute "the culture and good morals of Thailand" are so vague that I don't think they would hold up. Certainly, if the police should rush in and close down the opera on the grounds of protecting cutural purity, it would be a publicity bonanza the likes of which I've never seen in my life. I've signed it, but I haven't actually sent it back yet....

I'm sure Richard Wagner would be proud of me, even though I am a member of an inferior race!

I've also found out that the indefatigable Sophie Tanapura is putting on "Figaro" in July. This is splendid! One of the joys of having turned Bangkok into the "operatic hub of Southeast Asia" is seeing other people put on their own productions. It's never easy to put on an opera. More things can go wrong in an opera than in any other type of performance. That's what keeps us on the edge of our seats. Everyone needs to buy tickets and show their support.

I really look forward to the day when people in Bangkok will no longer say, "There's an opera next month" but rather, "Which opera shall we see tonight?" or, "Which did you like more, Somtow's Wozzeck or Trisdee's?" This, ultimately, is the vision that I had when I sold my house in L.A. and allowed myself to be worked like a dog with no pay. This is the reason I shrug off all the idiots dragging me through the mud, sending lying faxes and emails about me to each other, and so on. There's a higher purpose to all this and even my gratuitous torments have, in the end, helped to bring about the fulfillment of my vision.

And speaking of Trisdee, I told you that yesterday night he sent me a pop song he wrote in Garageband! Splendid lyrics, the use of the "f" word guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows ... the most surprising thing of all is that kid's got a great pop singing voice. If he tires of conducting Charpentier, he'll have to work for MTV.

I remain, at this dark moment, guardedly optimistic. In the words of Little Orphan Annie and Scarlet O'Hara, I have only this to say —

Tomorrow.....