Message from the author Hector O. Santos

Towards the end of July a year ago, I wanted to write a story where the main character was a singer from the Philippines. I wanted to use a name that no one was using so I emailed a friend in Manila and asked if he knew of any singer using the name Amapola. He said he didn't and since he runs the Philmusic forum, I took his word for it.
I wrote the story and put it aside. I normally do this--I let a couple of weeks pass before making the final changes. This helps me look at the story more objectively when I make the final edit.

With this story, it was different. It stayed on the shelf a long time and, although I gave copies to two close friends for them to read, I never made the final changes and didn't send it out to magazines. (The copy you read is exactly the way it was when I put it away.) I had written other stories since then. I had finished them all and a couple have even been published already.

Fast forward to June 2000. I was doing a search on the web for Philippine radio stations that had streaming audio. On the list of sites found was Philradio International. Although not Philippine-based, it looked interesting enough so I clicked on it. I saw the name Kathy Llamas. I didn't know her but I knew she was my friend's sister. I remembered he had a sister in Florida who was working on a project related to broadcasting Philippine music on the Internet. Further browsing Philradio's pages brought up an article about Amapola.

I was stunned. The character I thought I created was for real. She was even from Cebu, just like the Amapola in my story. I emailed Kathy to let her know and attached a copy of my story.

I used a friend to make sure there was no Amapola. A year later his sister whom I hadn't even met takes me to the real Amapola.

That night I tried to work on my writing but I couldn't. I put together a playlist of songs on my computer and had them loop over and over. I do this when I want to relax. I couldn't do any work--I had this strange and indescribable feeling I couldn't understand. I spent the night drinking wine and listening to the same songs over and over. I later found out that those songs meant something to the real Amapola--she had learned them from her dad's records and used to sing them a lot.

With some trepidation I decided to contact Amapola a few days later. One can never be sure how people will react when they think you have been writing about them. I had already thought up excuses in case she was mad. As it turned out, I shouldn't have worried. Kathy had already sent her a copy of the story. Amapola had read it and was amazed at the coincidences--for that's what they were, nothing more.

In the months that followed, I got to now Amapola better. She is quite a remarkable and warm human being that one wishes there were more of her. We ran into more coincidences, but they weren't so surprising anymore.

Now if only someone would explain to me how coincidence upon coincidence can continue to pile up, perhaps I can understand my cosmic existence better.

To Hector Santos Story: One More Song To Sing