I dreamed that I moved back to L.A. I found that Ohm, the orchestra librarian, had been watching my house for years. My house was a long long house in the Valley and you could only only enter through the kitchen. Stacked up on the counter were hundreds of envelopes; in my absence, various agents and producers had been submitted my screenplays and these were piles and piles of rejected ones.
I also found that I was giving a performance in a week's time, organized by George R.R. Martin. It was a big, solo, improvisatory performance that no one had told me about, but it was a one-man show. I went outside to the sidewalk where there was a newspaper machine and for two quarters I managed to get a newspaper and much more .. the paper came with a stack of manila envelopes and a letter from Ginjer Buchanan, a book editor, to other editors saying that they were all flying in from New York, and guess what, Somtow is doing a show and let's all make a date to get tickets and surprise him.
I also saw a notice in the calendar section of the paper about the forthcoming show. But then, I asked Ohm to put away the paper, and when I wanted to calendar section again I couldn't find it.
Instead I found a lot of old newspapers and a carefully printed out bound copy of my score "A Catch of Waters" for six chamber orchestras, composed in 1974, which has never been performed. I was thinking, I should retype the whole score into Finale so it can at least play back.
Ohm said to me, "It smells awful in this house." I said, "Why didn't you tell me when I arrived so I could clean it?" I walk through the living room, comparing it with my house in Bangkok, and decide that it is bigger. It is a long, long living room with green wall to wall carpet and sofas line the sides of the room.
II return to the kitchen and look with dismay at the piles of rejected screenplays. Some of them are close to being produced and even have complimentary notes from someone or another ... but what they all have in common is that I don't recognize any of them.
I discover more manuscripts poking from the side of the sink and discover the cupboard under the sink full of more of them. I open more cupboards and I find hundreds upon hundreds of pale green polo shirts. Someone has been wearing exclusively green, living in my house, and has taken over. I wonder if he has been slieeping in my bedroom.
I wake up.
I think this is a bit of an alternate universe dream, showing me what things might have been like had I stayed in L.A....