A Terrible Beauty

It was early in 1995 when we were practicing for our big concert "Rhythm of the Earth." We'd gathered about 300 musicians, traditional, modern, blind, rich and poor and were trying to put them together into a real show. In the middle of this chaos, a big woman stepped in sweating. She grabbed my arm and said, "We heard about your concert and you must hear my daughter sing. She can sing in five languages, really, listen to her."

The young daughter presented herself meekly. Her face was discolored, her cheeks swollen. Her speaking voice was discolored, her cheeks swollen. Her speaking voice was almost unintelligible. I thought she might break - and then she sang. Her eyes rolled back and the powerful beauty that lifted from her throat made me think she had to be from some place else.

As she floated through songs in Thai, Chinese, Japanese, even Lao, the entire group gathered to witness. Finally the little one put Mariah Carey to shame with her rendition of the ballad, Without You. This Badfinger classic was not longer a song, it was a rage against the gods, it was the voice of anyone who had known loss, pain and the beauty they hold within. When she finished, there was silence. And then the applause broke out.

My mother was in tears. She called the little lady's voice "terrible beauty" as the poet Yeats had described the legacy of the martyrs of Easter Uprising.

"I' m Fon, " she smiled, "I want to sing with you. I want to have friends. I want to laugh and learn with you."

Soon Fon was singing with us all the time and had made new friends in the young blind men who sang and played, too. They didn't care what Fon looked like. They only knew that she was brilliant, funny, kind and the best singer they'd ever heard. They all tried to get into her group when we had songwriting camps. Fon didn't just sing, she wrote songs from her head and heart, fascinating lyrics, strange melodies that seemed to dance between beauty and suffering. But not everyone thought highly of Fon.

"At school I don't have a single friend," she confided. "Everyone looks at me like I'm monster. I have a blood disease called thalassemia. It makes me swell up and turns my skin green and grey. I get sick a lot and have to go for blood changes every six months or so. Once I thought I had a friend next to me in calss. I helped her study and we even talked about music. But one day, all of her friend came and asked if she knew me. She laughed at me and said, 'No Way!'

Since then I just study and go home. I get all A's in my classes, but I can't get a single friend. My mother is my only friend. She does any job - laborer, garbage picker, to get money to buy my medicine. Often we can't afford the hospital. So, we buy folk cures to get me by.

"It isn't easy to get by," she continued. "Lately, we've been going out to cafes where I sing for tips. The other night, they had me sing for two hours. As we left, they gave me 20 baht. 'Imagine that,' I told my mum, 'that's what my singing is worth - 20 baht. 'But it' s okay because singing makes me happy."

Fon's singing made a lot of people happy. As my mother was leaving Thailand to go back to the US, Fon asked to go with us to send her off. In the middle of Bangkok International Airport, my mother stood holding Fon. She pulled off her ring, one she had kept since childhood, and put it on Fon's middle finger. I protested, "Mum, I've been asking for that ring for 20 years."

My mother turned to me and ordered, "Take care of this little lady, son. Give her her moments.

We shared a lot of moments. Fon came on tour with us and taught a lot of people about "terrible beauty," her voice mixing pain and joy. We took Fon to china to represent Thailand in the Asia Wataboshi Musis Festival.

In Shanghai, I held Fon in my arms one day. Thalassemia ravaged her body. She told me I was the first man ever to hold her. She had never met her father.

On stage in Shanghai, Fon sang with her blind buddy, Huak, a sky kaen player from Khon Kaen. She even acted as a translator to try to find him a Chinese girlfriend. We didn't get Huak a wife. But we did get to host the Asia Wataboshi Music Festival two years later, in 1997.

As hosts of the festival, many called on us to bring in movie stars and famous singers to close the show. But I was sick of famous singers to close the show. But I was sick of famous singers with fake boobs, fake noses, even fake hearts. I remembered my mother's words, "give her her moments" and decided that Fon would close the show - alone. Few people agreed with me but it came to be.

On a rainy Saturday night, October 18, 1997, about 2,000 people in the Thailand Cultural Center witnessed terrible beauty. The entire hall was electric with excitements as the lights went out and a bare spot caught a little lady walking out on the stage, through smoke, looking more than beautiful - she was radiant. No music, no effects, just a naked voice that filled the hall and every heart in it like a candle in the darkness. We all stood with mouths open, listening to the words of the Wataboshi theme song, witnessing "her moment."

"Oh, little Wataboshi, soon the wind will blow and it will scatter your seeds as white as snow......the seeds of love will grow all around the world."

Fon was joined by all 200 artists and musicians. We all knew there was a language, a strength in the terrible beauty of that October day.

Thailand's Festival was hailed as the best ever and letters soon poured in from around the country and Asia celebrating that little lady Fon all alone.

By now, the little lady had become a young woman who answered with her usual mixture of smile and sadness. "That was my moment. Thank you. I don't think I have many left. It's been very painful lately and I' m not getting better."

On a rainy Saturday night, on October 18, 1998, about a score of people couldn't fill the hall at Anongkaram Temple. The smoke of incense bathed the room and the little lady in the picture next to her coffin looked hopeful, lonely. No music, no talking. I could hear her voice as I read the letter she lelt.

"The pain is too much now. But I hurt most for my mother. She has given everything she can for me to live. She got nothing in return. I can't put the feelings that a mother and daughter share on paper. She's all I have and it hurts to see her cry. Soon it will be over. The doctor says there is nothing they can do now. My mother had done everything."

Outside the temple, it began to pour. The rain falling sounded like applause and I wondered if maybe this wasn't Fon's real moment. Or maybe it was our moment - the life we had the chance to share, the voice we had the honor to hear. "You have to hear her sing," her mother had implored. I still do.