Just now I finished copying and revising my new piano piece "Love on Screen" . The piece itself was begun & finished in Mexico, at the beginning of September of this year .
"Love on Screen" will be a movement of my ballet for Chendra Panatan entitled "Fast Music" . The title does NOT refer to the tempi of the music ; it refers to the state of globalization (but I personally call "Americanization") of everything in this era. Like fast food, all instant, all fake . So, I modelled my music on something, and make something fake out of it, just like Kentucky Fried Chicken makes a sort of meat from real (well, sort of) chicken . Love on Screen is, obviously, "about" romance on those trashy soap-operas. I took a phrase of my own, a very "innocent" sounding one, from the introduction of my second song from "Tiga Sajak Pendek" on poems by Sapardi Djoko Damono, and deliberately twisted it into something that sounds "fake", but maintaining all the original notes intact.
Oh yeah, I plan each movement of this ballet to be not lasting for more than 3 minutes, since it's now a kind of rule for writing those "instant" music . I will use a material that can (and must) be quite fully developed in 3 minutes or less, so it is a good exercise to limit my material. It's also the ideal duration for serving you at MacDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I still don't have any slightest idea about the other movements (any suggestions welcome !), and Chendra doesn't have the premiere planned yet. He's still busy thinking of the choreography for my cantata, Ars Amatoria, to be done on the first day of next year. I was inspired to do "Love on Screen" being in a short stay in Mexico and watching those crappy "tele-novelas" in my hotel-room to get me to sleep .
Now you can call me an authentic avant-gardist . At least, I have one common intention : trying to make cheap trash . No, to be precise, what I am doing is trying to evoke, or depict, cheap trash, without being trashy (hopefully I succeeded in doing this !). All I do is being inspired by something that is very contemporary, that is happening NOW. But I don't share with those avantgardists the intention to cheat the public ; on the contrary, I want them to "understand" my music and honestly express what I need to in less than 3 minutes. It took me more time than I thought to compose, though.
Oh, and someone asked me what's my favorite opera. Well, since we are in this globalization era, I shall answer : Opera Winfrey .
