Somtow as a Talking Head

This might amuse you, since English language Thai cable doesn't exactly penetrate the world market....

Tom Mintier was in every home in the universe in the CNN days. But now that he's hanging out in Thailand, he's probably a lot happier....

A bit of Ravel

Here is a little excerpt from our last concert ... Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin". I think you'll agree the Siam Philharmonic keeps getting better, though of course the journey never ends....

Eternity

Now that I am well past the midpoint of my sojourn on his this planet, I suppose I must start thinking of the past; after all, for me there is a lot more past than future. Yet one still cannot help thinking that one will live forever. Perhaps that's true; if not in the flesh, then at least in people's dreams; or haunting their houses from time to time; if not as a spirit, then perhaps as a cloud of particles, a matrix of energy.

I wonder whether dreams come from a place within, or a place beyond. Sometimes, within and beyond are used almost interchangeably, but in fact one's choice dictates, ultimately, whether one believes in a solipsistic universe or whether we think there is such a thing as objective reality.

I use the word reality rather than the more emotionally charged word truth, because I already believe that the two are wholly separate concepts.

This morning I woke from a highly significant dream of which I can barely remember anything. I know it must be significant because I have been struggling to remember all day. But there is another dream which came to me in November, which I cannot forget. It has informed everything I have done since then. But I'm enjoined from discussing it for now. The dream I mean, because some might interpret it in a political way.

Instead I should probably talk about Trisdee's piece Eternity which he premiered last week. The raucous whine of the pi java over the slow-moving chords ... all semibreves ... in the strings ... is strikingly original and strikingly simple. Simplicity is something I have been trying to impress on Trisdee for seven years. He has such a convoluted intellect that it is hard for him. Why not? It took Shakespeare decades of carbuncle-encrusted verse to reach the sublime simplicity of Lear's "Never. never, never, never, never."

After my writer's block broke a few months ago, I started a new novel … well, trilogy, actually. The trouble is, though everyone keeps telling me how great it is, New York doesn't seem to be biting. I'm a little bewildered at this, because it's been a long, long time since I had this kind of trouble, and it was always some work that departed radically from my previous work — Vampire Junction and Jasmine Nights both, for instance, rejected by a couple of dozen publishers before proving to be my two most popular novels. Well, it seems to be happening again guys, so either it's really original, or I've lost the touch.

I gave a reading of a couple of chapters at the local library, however, and they were so riveted they have asked me to read this book monthly ... and are going to charge a $30 subscription fee! So ... this, at least, is going to make me finish writing the novel....

Well, then again, the entire publishing industry is collapsing anyway. Soon we're all going to be self-publishing our POD books and the Publishing Megalith will wither away....

Unanswered Questions

A bit of a panic all week when we discovered that the score of Charles Ives' Unanswered Question was missing from the house and office. I'm doing a concert on Sunday that was inspired by Charles Ives' piece ... in the sense that all the pieces that the orchestra will play seek to deal with unanswerable questions of life and mortality.
***
... and now it's Tuesday, and we've had the concert. Thanks to www.sheetmusicplus.com, who were actually able to express a score from America in three days! And as for the concert itself … the orchestra has really been pulling through. And the world premiere of Trisdee's new piece, Eternity, was a shattering experience for all. In many ways it's the best concert we've done. I am now starting to feel like a real human being again. I will soon be posting some excerpts from that concert, perhaps on our youtube channel, so you will all see....
***
Well, I had a very strange dream about the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra. I dreamed that I stumbled upon them trying to play Parsifal in a shopping mall....
***
What, indeed, is the Unanswered Question? Is the answer "42", as my late college contemporary Douglas Adams would have it? There were times, during that concert, when I finally thought I could glimpse the answer. But I haven't figured out the question.

Silence isn't Golden

Well, I did in fact play John Cage's music at a concert for almost an hour and a half ... just me, four pianos, a plastic rake and a spare USB cable.... surprisingly, everyone stayed until the end.... the peripherals shown in the video aren't normally used in One(2), but just as Cage used the I Ching to select what notes to put in, I've used the score itself as a kind of giant I Ching, often going off on tangents....

Okay, so it's not the Times, but...

Here it is ... No. 1 on the best seller list.... at my advanced age, beating out Kite Runner and Lee Child. Perhaps Thailand is the center of the universe after all.

Coping with Cage

In a few days I will be giving my first piano recital since the 1970s. It all started because I've been asked a lot, recently, about why I've become so ... retro, so musically backward-looking. "Why don't you have any of those wild avant-garde music happenings like you used to in the 1970s? Those were the days," they tell me. So I decided to give them more than they bargained for … a whole evening of John Cage.

I think that the instructions in Cage's piano piece Seven Haiku say it all. "There are times when the notation may seem irrational. In such cases, the player may use his own discretion." Well, guess what? It's all irrational on some level. And so.…

I've taken this to be a carte blanche to interpret the scrawls, scribbles, and weird proportional notations in a completely personal way. When Cage has indicated a few notes to fill a sixty second space, I see no reason why those two or three notes can't be an excuse to take off on a massive flight of fancy (without straying from those notes as such) nor do I see any particular reason to play the notes by striking the keys with my fingers — there are many other ways of coaxing these same notes out of a piano, from keychains and pingpong balls to old-fashioned plucking the inside of the piano.

Most importantly, I have refrained from any sort of practicing — well. I have tried to do so, though at times I couldn't help myself. I think that Cage would have wanted me to play as though these vistas of strange notes were being unveiled for the first time. Just as Cage used the I Ching and other chance mechanisms to select what appears on the printed page, I'm using the printed page as a sort of I Ching in and of itself, a springboard for a leap into the unknown.

Eschewing conventional practice means, also, that I will playing from music … and I am extending this even to the infamous 4'33" of silence; after all, Peters Edition, publishers of Mozart and Beethoven, have a handsome, 4-page edition of this work which set me back $20. No pirated editions, nosirree; Silence will be played (or rather not played) from a proper score. I may even hire a page turner.

Why is it still important to play Cage's music? It's all pretty old hat by now, and the radical ideas seem curiously passé. But I think there's life in the old rebel. It's worth reiterating the philosophies for this new and increasingly materialistic generation. And, while there are few who would consider Cage the greatest twentieth century composer, he might well arguably be called the most influential.

Divergences

Trolling the internet for mentions of oneself, as one inevitably does, can be both rewarding and disheartening....

Here's ONE review of my new story, written after I hadn't done a new short story in seven years:

In “An Alien Heresy” by S. P. Somtow, Inquisitor Jean Lenclud is called to the French village of Tiffauges where he meets two unexpected things: the first is his illegitimate son, Guillaume, and the second, an odd, green humanoid in the cellar who claims to be from the stars and seeking his way home.

Somtow’s depiction of the mindset of the Inquisition is brilliant, never descending into facile clichés of torture-obsessed fanatics. His portrayal of Jean as a man struggling against his faith is made all the more poignant by the presence of his former sin, in the person of Guillaume, and the decisions Jean has to make concerning both his son and the alien. The depiction of such an alien mindset makes for quite an uncomfortable story, but ultimately a rewarding one. Recommended.

And here's ANOTHER: An Alien Heresy -- Somtow (Sucharatkul) -- beautifully written cliche, absolutely nothing new and with an ending that was both a complete downer and, being totally predictable and without the least surprise to it, a pain in the ass. Why did I bother? I gave up on Sucharatkul long ago. His stuff is beautifully written and a total waste of time.

It's good to know that people still disagree about me....

The Age Passes

When I found out yesterday that Arthur Clarke had died, I realized that the Holy Trinity had departed this earth. I mean, in the 60s, we always spoke of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke as a sort of three-in-one and one-in-three. Clarke was the only one I didn't know personally, though I did correspond with him once. (Ray Bradbury was a quasi-member of the trinity, though a little suspect to many of us diehard fans because he could actually write, and because one had a strange suspicion that it wasn't really science fiction....)

Apart from the sudden realization that my autographed first edition of The Fountains of Paradise was now worth a lot more money, I can't say I'm too delighted at my childhood's end. I think it should just go on and on forever.

In a couple of days, my fiftieth book will officially be out. It's called OPUS FIFTY. Well, I did sort of get the idea from Isaac Asimov's OPUS 100, but I figured I would be dead before I could produce a book by that title.

If anyone happens to be in the Siam Paragon on Thursday, March 27 (the Paragon being, of course, the center of the universe) between 6 - 8 pm, drop into Asia Books ... I'll be there, and so will the book....

Juvenilia

To my astonishment, my mother found a large box of my material in storage, books, letters, and even a manuscript from the years 1969-70. It includes school essays, letters from my friends, an entire book of handwritten poems which I had completely forgotten about, and even a bank statement which shows that at one point I possessed the princely sum of one pound four shillings and tuppence. There are all these letters from my school friends, and even an invitation card to the first party I ever got drunk at.

Further to my astonishment, I was chatting with my nephew Guy, who goes to my old school, and he told me that four 14-year-old Etonians are in trouble for roughing up and sexually assaulting a young girl in the playing fields (yes, the same fields on which the battle of Waterloo was supposedly won.) The gang of Etonians called themselves "The Posse".

This piece of news, coupled with these ancient pieces of correspondence from Etonians in 1970, prompted me to seriously wonder what the world is coming to.

I mean, back in those mediaeval times, one would have thought a group of 14 year old Etonians would be too busy sexually assaulting each other to inflict themselves on anyone else ... although I suppose there was a time it when it was positively de rigeur for the upper classes to go around randomly raping the local peasantry. Still, by the 1960s, all that was definitely frowned upon, what. And "the posse", indeed. I'd like to see them last five minutes in the hood.

Meanwhile, back to my personal correspondence from those dark times, it amazes me that Etonians of the late 1960s habitually used classical allusions, pretentious archaisms, and elaborately thought-out metaphors in their letters to each other (well, to me, at least). Was it a kindler, gentler time?

My old poems are another matter as well. I find them exquisitely embarrassing. I think I will put off burning them for a few days, however. Perhaps I'll even print one in this blog.

Beauty and Sadness

So I found myself making my way toward the Grand Palace at about eleven o'clock at night, knowing that the nightly service for HRH The Princess doesn't end until about midnight. It was a very still evening and the palace deserted except for the perpetual honor guard. The palace brilliantly lit, the evening service only attended by about six people, all people who loved the princess very much, I think. Incredible chanting … these monks are the Jascha Heifetzes of Buddhist chanting, with virtuoso trills, portamenti, and other peculiar vocal effects, and frighteningly in tune....

HRH The Princess lies behind an impressive façade; there's gold everywhere, and a brand new seven-tiered umbrella signifying her posthumous elevation to an even higher rank, yet the coffin itself, concealed from public view, is elegant in its simplicity, seeming more in character with how HRH was in life. In Thailand one should not really cry at funeral services, but I cannot help myself. There is a stately beauty to this chanting that takes you to a place far outside the tangible world.

Outside the throne room, on the grounds right outside the royal pavilion, there are about a hundred wreaths on display. These have all been offered by the rajasakuls, or royal families, whose surnames indicate some level of royal blood. The Sucharitkul wreath is there, too, but it's the only one not marked as a rajasakul, but instead as "rajinikul" ... that's because our family has contributed a line of queens to the present dynasty, starting with the reign of the Fourth Rama. It's curious to see this wreath; I had a photo taken with it as you can see above.

Today I opened the file of all the faxes that have gone back and forth between myself and HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana, many of them in her own handwriting. It was curiously moving to see them all and to realize how much she cared about every little aspect of the classical music world. Perhaps, one day, this correspondence will see publication.

I recently made (with the help of contributions from friends and relatives) a new recording of the "Galyani Symphony". I hope to release it in due course. The orchestra played really brilliantly. But listening to the recording (still unedited) makes me sad....

Me Writer — Again, Finally

Okay, so today's copy of Asimov's magazine which came in the mail says ... "coming soon ... after too long an absence ... a story by S.P. Somtow".... now, I haven't seen that in an issue of Asimov's for a very long time. Am I making a comeback in science fiction in my old age? Perhaps. The story deals with the same issues as The Thirteenth Utopia, which was my first professional sale, to Analog, in 1979.

Meanwhile, I am going back into the concert circuit, and I'm even going to give a piano recital consisting entirely of works by John Cage. You can probably imagine what work I will play for five or six encores....