Introduction

**Table of Contents**

If I am able to complete this description, it may at least go down on record as history’s longest suicide-note; a dubious honor perhaps, its pages flipped through briefly in summation. And before we begin I am compelled to comment simply on how foreign it is, for me, relying on the written word. I am a composer. And in that sense accustomed to the ways in which a sequence of pitches and rhythms will transcend assertions words left on their own would be required to defend. But words are what are left to me, by circumstance. And so I am defensive. That’s a joke, Son.

You know who I think about a lot? Rod Serling. By all accounts, toward the end of his life he’d considered himself a failure. And at about my age (in that I wrote this at the age of 50) when his chest finally exploded, the surgeon was said to have remarked, ‘His heart was in so many pieces, there just wasn’t anything left that we could put back together again.’

And it’s true he was a failure, if judged by his ambitions. His shows were off the air. His last stab (a moralist western which attempted to tackle racism) never made it out of pilots, and he’d found himself devalued by an industry he’d once helped to create. Unaccompanied then by former colleagues, I wonder if he hadn’t been blacklisted; a perplexing situation when experienced first hand. Haunted as I am by the quotation of an interviewed friend: “To look back and feel that the best times of your life are all behind you, while still in your 40s…”, this statement punctuated by a pause at its suggestion. Teaching then to make ends meet, his wife described him as severely depressed, and I’m inclined to believe her. Or at least, it’s easy to imagine how living next to a depressed Rod Serling may leave a strong impression.

Fig. 0.1: Rod Serling

And yet, he was The Twilight Zone; not unlike a Marilyn or Elvis. And if that matters, time will tell when no one’s there to hear it. But in the there-and-then a million Western-worlders simply neh’d the first few pitches of its theme-song, to denote any experience uncanny; one’s karmic separation from the pack. He added basics to our language as Americans without quotation, as our camera pans to find him resting out of frame, and commenting from remove on our inclusion. For an ‘idea man’ I’d call that successful! And yet he didn’t know it.

In the view which humanity afforded Mr. Serling, he had suffered a humiliation. Reportedly what followed, was an obsession with the frightening and hallucinatory effects the word ‘home’ will have upon a grasping mind at the end of life. And I can say I share this melancholy. A word of constant employment, yet denoting an illusion. Mr. Serling’s life does not exemplify that if we are forgotten as artists in our own time, then we are destined to be remembered in another. But here we speak of mythology; this desire to have journeyed and then to be remembered for it — impervious to culture and technology. Whenever consciousness finds a degree of separation it is, in that same moment, cast to play a role of hero.

Pursuing these thoughts, I spend my time observing the details of what feels to me a timeless soi of Bangkok; a place that I’ve hallucinated to be a home, although currently under martial law and my facing sure imprisonment if detected by a military junta. I am in danger, again. Having overstayed my visa during a political coup (as others wisely fled) I found myself financially unable, emotionally unwilling, to relocate yet again after moving through locations at the pace of falling dominoes over decades prior. Home and for the first time. Verbal skills between us nil, the routines of daily need have since traversed us far past introductions: shattered so believed. The gentle acknowledgements amid the laughter and slow pace of balmy evenings, crescent eyes and smiles; you have become familiar to us here, Farang.

Fig. 0.1: a shrine in Bangkok, Thailand

There is a shrine near my apartment, out of many I look forward to. And I go daily to this miniaturized portrayal of eternity, to observe again the way a spirit-tree has woven patient path around its corners; over decades tucked away between two buildings so that if you didn’t know to look, you wouldn’t notice. Tied with colored ribbons and small amulets, each beyond my understanding, here an unseen few have brought fresh garlands and cool sodas, to present to it as offerings. As it is dear, this object. To be maintained as a reminder that loss and letting go are soon ahead: all of this which will, one day, transcend our fairy-tale of this material world. These concepts so removed from Western thought I find they isolate me further than burnt bridges ever could. This is where careening quest for home has led an artist, who now holds key to oblivion.

I am unaccompanied by former colleagues. And my heart is in so many pieces. This is my inclusion.

A Potter’s Field is composer John Moran’s serialized, illustrated audio-visual memoir. Subscribe here on Medium to receive upcoming chapters directly in your inbox. Complete sequential reading is available on the main pinned Cover page.

**Disclaimer:** This publication is a literary memoir reflecting the author’s personal recollections, experiences, and perspectives over a multi-decade career. The events, dialogues, and figures detailed herein are drawn strictly from the author’s memory and personal archives. To protect individual privacy, some names and identifying characteristics may have been changed. Some timelines may have been compressed, and minor details altered, for narrative fluidity or simple misremembering. This text represents the author’s subjective artistic history in purely poetic terms and should be read as a work of creative nonfiction.