RIP Sitor Situmorang, and my deepest apologies

If I have to regret one thing this year, perhaps it is the death of the great poet Sitor Situmorang, and what I have (not) done. You see, I set to music several poems of his, and in my newest CD "An Essay on Love" I recorded two of them : Malam Kebumen (Kebumen Night) and Surat Kertas Hijau (Green Paper Letters, which is one of his most well known poems). Sitor has been living in Holland for many years now. I told him last month (November), through his wife, that we were going to release the CD in mid December, and of course they were very keen in receiving the CD. Sitor himself had listened to some of my music based on his poems, either live or through the only existing online recording of it, sung by Samuel Tandei : http://wuol.org/tenor-samuel-tandei/ . In the CD they were sung by Widhawan Aryo Pradhita, who has been famous overnight last week for his great, I mean reaaallly great, interpretation as the policeman in CLARA. In fact, now after watching him live and through youtube, and read the raving reviews on the media on him, people buys the CD and ask "in which songs / tracks does Clara's policeman sing?" .............................................................................................................................................. Now, the CDs themselves have been finished in print a week prior to the world premiere of CLARA. But that was the busiest week for us all, me, Chendra and all staff of The Ananda Sukarlan Center. The rehearsals took so much time, especially with the complex music, choreography and stage settings ... and to add them all up into a whole show! So, we just ignored that pile of CDs in our office and did nothing with them, although people had ordered them from all around Indonesia. Anyway, it was supposed to be officially launched during CLARA, where our former President of the Republic, Mr. BJ Habibie was invited but still was sick and gotta cancel all public appearances, even until today. So, as usual, things could wait, and people could wait for it too .... until yesterday, that we received the news of the death of the great poet, and realized that death could NOT wait. Anyway, I wasn't aware that he has been sick. In fact, I wasn't aware about anything else during the preparation of CLARA and even a few days afterwards. The only people I talked to are those who are involved in CLARA. And so, the CDs which were sent to the poets were sent a few days after the premiere of CLARA .... and one of them arrived too late to be listened to by its poet. .............................................................................................................................................. Apparently Sitor Situmorang wasn't just sick. He refused to go out of his appartment for the last few months, and his weight had dropped to a mere 37 kilograms. I remember, when I met him for the first time like 4 years ago, I had the same sensation as when I met Indonesia's great composer Amir Pasaribu. Both have been rejected by our own country, both had to live in exile by the same regime. There is that look in their eyes, the look of ... suspicion? .. , but mixed with a kind of love and pain. Perhaps that's the effect of hypersensitive people being inflicted by violence and suffering. Sitor spent 8 dark years in prison without trial right after the rise of Suharto, and certainly the scars of that period remain open until now. Suharto and the New Order era erased the names of a number of intellectuals and writers, including Sitor, from textbooks because they were considered left-wing. However, Sitor kept the line clear between the regime and the country he loves. Sitor was always faithful and sincere in defending his country and nation. He was 91 when he died. It is now OUR task to put him in his prominent place in Indonesian history, as one of our greatest poets who has inspired many people, me included. Requiescat in Pace, Requiem Aeternam, Sitor Situmorang.

Fun (and not so fun) Facts on CLARA

Thank God the premiere of CLARA went very well. All my artistic worries proved to be unnecessary, since I got great support from Chendra Panatan who had done an impressive concept of choreography, stage decor and even lighting (to those who don't know, he also studied stage lighting with one of the best experts in the world, Jennifer Tipton from New York). His spectacular visual art could dissimulate all the shortcomings in my music! Anyway, as any live performances, there are things that have gone wrong, but hey, that's the beauty of live performances, eh? Since then, many reporters, music students, or just curious friends asked me about things in CLARA, so I guess I just share all those here. Let's consider this "Everything you wanna know about Clara and are afraid to ask", hehehe .... .............................................................................................................................................. G minor is the predominant tonality throughout the whole opera. Not only it is easy to be played on string instruments, but it is also the minor paralel of B-flat, which I usually employ to express love (such as in my song Dalam Doaku). Since hatred is the theme of this opera, I employed this tonality coz as we say, love and hate are just two sides of a coin. .............................................................................................................................................. Clara's original car in Seno Gumira's story is a BMW. But we couldn't find a BMW from the year around 1998, so we got a Mercedes instead. Luckily, the word Mer-Ce-Des has the same amount of syllables as B-M-W , and they even share the pronounciation similarities in Indonesia. So, that's how we changed it into a Mercedes. We borrowed it from a friend of mine at highschool, Prasodjo, who is also the founder of Jakarta Drum School, whose drummers participated (and became one of the highlight of the opera!) in CLARA. .............................................................................................................................................. In all my music the materials, which might be motifs, or "inspiration" if you wanna say it in a cool term, can come from anywhere, anything or anybody. There is one motif, sung by the Policeman in my opera CLARA, which is made from the figure of a penis. It consists of figure A and B: A is 2 adjacent notes (mostly with an interval of a major second) and then B is another 2 notes with a pretty "sizeable" interval. The first two of course reflects the 2 balls, and the real penis is the last two notes. This is employed when the police is feeling horny. The B part can vary their interval, especially if it depicts the growing erection of the penis. The last, largest and most obvious use of this motif is in the policeman's last aria, where he sings "Ayolah sana, tidur" (Come on, sleep). .............................................................................................................................................. I was very much pressed in time in writing CLARA, but during its actual composition I managed to write Two lullabies for piano. The last one was written on the 19th of November, the birthday of my daughter Alicia, since I just got the news (in this internet era is there still a belated news? Yeah, yeah if you are immersed in writing an opera!) about the birth of Daphne Gabriella Irawan, daughter of my good friend Catherine Tanujaya (founder of The Piano Institute in Surabaya) and her husband "Hungry" Jeff (he owns a restaurant hehehe). But in fact, her daughter was born exactly on the same day of Darleen Kristianto, daughter of my highly admired pianist friend Henoch Kristianto, and since I knew about his daughter the same day (even hour!) of her birth, I wrote her lullaby on her birth, 31st of October. In fact, since she was born in the morning, I sent the lullaby in the evening, so it's so valid being a welcoming present to Darleen, eh? And those lullabies gave me a flash of happiness, having finished being written in just 1 or 2 hours, while CLARA was written in months! And it's good to write 2 lullabies at a space of 19 days, if I had written it on the same day they would both sound almost the same! .............................................................................................................................................. You know that popular website www.moviemistakes.com . Well, I am giving away our own bloopers here. There were two HUGE accidents during the second show of Clara. One, you might wonder what the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" were doing during the 2 minutes before Clara was raped, right? Well, Clara's and her dad's microphone didn't work during that song at the second show. She should have sung a counter-melody on top of Beach Boys' melody. So, "God Only Knows" just passed by for 2 minutes without anything happening.Yeah, it wasn't easy to write those polyphonic stuff on top of their gorgeous song, and thanks to the bloody sound technician, it turne to be an epic fail! Luckily someone videotaped a clip from the first show, you can sort of grab my idea here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQMtuiqMVYc .............................................................................................................................................. - Another accident was the old (wo)man who fell off the steps of the police station. It was an accident! It wasn't in the scenario! But Mislam, the actor who fell, improvised that fall brilliantly that it added a touch of humor in this otherwise dark and gloomy show of 1 hour 10 minutes. By the way, this old woman also symbolizes someone who is "different" in our society, just like the Chinese descendants. It was made unclear whether it was a he or she, but we want to accentuate his/her kind heart. Just like the Chinese, everyone who are born different may be born to be hated, although they have a heart just like the rest of us. Sometimes better, even. .............................................................................................................................................. Originally the production was for 1 night only, which is on the 14th of December. But 1 month before the premiere, tickets were selling very well, and so the organizers decided to open another show. Since the 15th happened to be a Monday, not a good day for shows in Jakarta as the city with the most congested traffic in the world, they decided for the 13th. I was against that idea, since I am very superstitious (read my entry http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-number-121.html ). But look, apparently the accidents happened on the 14th! .............................................................................................................................................. The role of Clara's Father was originally for Nikodemus Lukas, a 19-year-young (perhaps too young to be a daddy) tenor who has sung many of my music and even recorded them for the CD "An Essay on Love", but for personal problems he resigned just a bit less than 3 weeks before the premiere. In the middle of a panic situation, we got Ivan Subuhwanto, a more mature tenor. Fortunately he is also familiar with some of my music, so he knew what he was facing! The poor guy had to learn all my crazy tunes in that short time. He was of course in a panic attack, but he managed to do his job very well, and I am sure that if we perform CLARA again he would excel brilliantly. .............................................................................................................................................. Last but not least, is that the ending of CLARA was concieved 4 days before its premiere! Chendra realized that visually it wasn't stunning enough to have the duet between Clara and her father to end it. So he devised the "Blood Tears" scene that lasts for 2'30" . And of course he asked me without hesitation "Could you please write 2'30" of music tonight so we can rehearse it tomorrow". So after arriving at my appartment at midnight, I had to write music with motifs taken from the post-raping music as the ending, finished at 3.30 a.m just to wake up a few hours later at 8 a.m to rehearse with the singers. If you think this is extreme, then you don't know that Mozart wrote the Overture for his Don Giovanni THE MORNING of the world premiere!

An Essay on Love (and the lack of it)

LOVE is the underlying theme for most of the works in my new CD, En Essay On Love. It is always my favorite theme, since it is the most powerful force in the entire universe. Without this preconceived idea of love, we would be acting like a blind person searching for the light with thousand of obstacles in front of us, although love, or to be precise the unrequited or the lack of it, is often the source of the most intense pain and sufferings in this world. But it is also the most mysterious existing word in our vocabulary. What is Love? I believe, all my music involving this theme is my own search of its meaning, since it could only be "explained" in music since it is too deep to be expressed in words. Like music, we don't understand it, and perhaps we don't need to. We just feel it. And like music, it is merely a product of a chemical reaction inside our brains. As simple as that, but the outcome could become the most complex thing that we humans could deal with. .............................................................................................................................................. The "main course" of this CD is my 3-movement Chamber Symphony no.1 "In Memoriam Ainun Habibie" which is a complex mixture between the brainy scientific issues and the intuitive passion of love. But there are other shorter works to complete this CD. .............................................................................................................................................. I wrote a series of works for wind instruments inspired by "Metamorphosis" by Ovid. Echo's Whisper for oboe & piano is the complementary piece for my work for flute & piano, Narcissus Dying. Ovid's masterpiece, together with Shakespeare's complete plays and Plato's Symposium (also a philosophical research about love) are the three books whose excerpts I always read, no matter how little, every night before I go to sleep. Echo and Narcissus is a tale about the nymph Echo and her human lover Narcissus. In short, the god Juno took away Echo's ability to engage in conversation as punishment for her misdeeds. Echo could only respond to questioning. One day Echo was at a pond which she frequented, when a human man came into view. This is Narcissus, and he instantly falls in love with Echo. But, since Echo can only respond to Narcissus, he begins to get aggravated. She cannot explain to her new lover why she must be so cryptic. Echo could only respond with the last words of whomever she was speaking or listening to. Narcissus then looked into the pond, and upon seeing himself, immediately fell in love. He was unable to control himself or his new "lover", for it was simply a reflection of himself. This was caused by the god Rhamnusia, for Narcissus had scorned the nymphs that had mocked him. Narcissus then began to weep into the pool, and his tears began to hide the reflection he so loved. He said "Goodbye!", and Echo responded to him "Goodbye!". Narcissus then lay down on the ground, and wept. When his friends went to retrieve his body, they found only a flower of white and purple. .............................................................................................................................................. Indonesia has great poets in abundance. In this CD there are 14 songs based on my favorite poems of my favorite poets: Hasan Aspahani, Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sitor Situmorang, Ready Susanto and Nanang Suryadi. Not only the poems inspired me, but also some singers each with their particular voices do too. Nikodemus Lukas Hariono "Nicky", Theodora Amabel Beatrice "Bea" and Widhawan Aryo Pradhita "Dito" are winners from various categories of the National Voice Competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" 2013, and they won not only for their brilliant technique and virtuosity, but also because they have something to offer in their interpretation of the works they sing, from opera arias to "art-songs", from the baroque or classical up to the music of today. And coincidentally, they were all born and live in the same city, Surabaya. In fact, that city is also present visually in this CD, since the marvellous cover and booklet design and its layout are done by the young and highly talented Ryan Tandya, born in that city too. And the competition mentioned above was initiated and organized by Amadeus Performing Arts of that city. .............................................................................................................................................. Some songs were written purely because the poems itself ignite the music coming from the spaces between the words, some were written inspired by the voice of a particular singer (such as Whitman's O You, Whom I Often and Silently Come, by Nicky's voice), and some triggered a memory or a situation, such as Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu which was about the great Aceh Tsunami, or Dalam Sakit which triggered my memories of one of my best friends who died of AIDS. Therefore, when the AIDS Foundation asked me for a song, I immediately remembered this poignant poem by Sapardi Djoko Damono. These songs examine all aspects of love, such as the suffering of the unrequited love, either a heterosexual one in Nanang Suryadi's Seorang Yang Menyimpan Kisahnya Sendiri or a homosexual one in Whitman's "O You", a farewell either in distance in Pria yang (Pergi) Jauh or in death like Dalam Sakit both on poems by Sapardi Djoko Damono, or a highly erotic one in Sitor Situmorang's Surat Kertas Hijau. Of course I also touch on the aspect of happiness that love brings, such as in Salju di Musim Semi (Chendra Panatan) or Jemari Menari (Nanang Suryadi). .............................................................................................................................................. The CD "An Essay on Love" will be launched during the premiere of my newest opera, CLARA, on December 14th, 2014 at Graha Bhakti Budaya, TIM, Jakarta

God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You

Do you believe in coincidence or destiny? That question aroused when I was writing that section in my opera CLARA, exactly when Clara is driving her BMW before she was attacked by the rapists. It was designed to be 3'30" maximum to create the equilibrium with the sections coming before and after. What I knew was that the music should be calm, but tense. You know, like a thriller or horror movie, when things look all right, but something really bad's gonna happen. Since until then I had no slightest idea of what the music should be like (in terms of notes and harmonies), I left it until the last moment. And so, I have finished all the arias, recitatives, everything, and was left with this 3'30" section. And still it was .... blank. Could something be worse than this situation for a composer ... and time is running out? Apparently it could be. .............................................................................................................................................. It was 3 a.m. (Central European Time) and I had my chat with my new friend Ryan Tandya in Jakarta, an excellent photographer whose works I admire a lot. But we mostly talk about other stuff .... like music, as apparently we have some musical tastes in common. I just finished orchestrating the existing materials of the opera for the day but still stuck on that mentioned scene. And Ryan showed me that BBC Music has released a remake of Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", which I haven't heard for ... oh I dunno ... 30 years maybe or more. It used to be my favorite song, my mom had a vinyl of it, and I remember I loved it since it's so weird, and full of polyphony, which is unusual for a pop song (yeah yeah, I love polyphony since the day I remembered! And not only Bach, but also Brian Wilson - The Beach Boys). Apart from the polyphonic element, the song has a sophisticated harmonic complexity. It modulates in a unique way from A major, D major and E major and extensively uses inverted chords. The tonic chord (E major) usually only appears with the major 3rd or the 5th in the bass. The entire verse progression sounds restless and ambiguous, until the line "God only knows what I'd be without you" when the chord progression finally reaches a clear goal (A—E/G#—F#m7—E). It is as if the idea of 'key' has itself been challenged and subverted. Shortly speaking, a work of genius by Brian Wilson. .............................................................................................................................................. I slept afterwards with that song banging in my head like 50 times repeated during our chat (it was at least a 2-hour one), and naturally I woke up the next morn .. I mean noon with that song in my head. And the song was there to stay, for the rest of the day. If you are a fellow composer, then you know this problem too well : an existing piece of music sounding in your head blocks your own music from coming out. But hey, I gotta do something. If something's hanging in your head, you can't take it away by thinking that it should go away, in fact it would cling stronger if you do it that way. It just gotta go away naturally ... but how long? And .. if life gives you lemons ... make lemonade, right? So, since the song itself is full of polyphony, why not put more voices to the song? And then I also realized the fact that I (and perhaps even the writer of the story, Seno Gumira Ajidarma) have forgotten this: in a critical situation such a mass riot, when you are driving a car, what do you do? You listen to the radio to hear the news, right? And radios don't just put news, but also music. And what texts could be more appropriate after Clara's father anxiously called his daughter to stay away from the city? If you should ever leave me / Though life would still go on believe me / The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me .............................................................................................................................................. Isn't that what we call the conspiracy of the universe? So I decided to put the old recording of that song, and make the singers (Clara and her father) sing polyphonically. Which is in fact, composing new melodies with Brian Wilson's tune as the cantus firmus (that's the cool -- or nerdy -- term for a melody used as the basis for a polyphonic composition). And guess the duration of the song .... yup, it's 3 minutes. With some modification using loops and cut & pastings, it's the perfect duration. And it gives time for the orchestral musicians to rest while the singers are singing with the recording. Nothing could fit perfectly. Well, well, Ryan. I wanted to kill you that day for showing me that bloody videoclip. But now, it feels like .... God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You, Ryan. Thanks!

Composers' block, 2nd part (an introspection)

If you have so much pain in your heart and soul and you want to heal it, you normally go to a psychologist, psychiatrist or even hypnotherapist. Well now I can tell you another way to vomit it out. Write an opera about the traumatic effect of being raped, AND do it very near the deadline. In that case, you don't have a reason to postpone it until tomorrow or the next day. You just gotta deal with it and vomit it on paper (or in our case nowadays, on those bloody Sibelius staves on the computer). This is what I have done for the last 3 weeks. 22 days, writing my ca. 40-minute CLARA, complete with its orchestration. If you do your maths, that means 2 minutes of music every day, and they are not 2 minutes of simple flute solo music of just 1 line. It's a whole orchestration, PLUS the vocal line, PLUS thinking to match the words to the music PLUS doing the polyphony for the dialogues. Until September I only did 2 arias for Clara's father, and they were not even complete, and neither were they orchestrated. They were even written "under pressure", since there was a concert for a "teaser" for CLARA organized by the Four Seasons Hotel and the National Commission for Violence to Women at the end of September. The whole opera is about 2 things: 1. extreme sufferings and pain, both physical and mental ones, and 2. about evil on earth, the decadence of humanity, how extreme we can inflict pain and sufferings to our own brothers and sisters. .............................................................................................................................................. How could I manage to compose so much in so little time? I dunno. I worked like I've never did before, that's for sure. I slept a maximum of 5 hours a day for the last 3 weeks. And of course I don't write this just to finish it in time, otherwise it makes no point of writing this. "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.", said Leonard Bernstein, the great composer, pianist, conductor and my idol. This is the strangest period of my life, I think. Just before this opera, I wrote my Chamber Symphony, "In memoriam Ainun Habibie" and I was in such a happy and loving mood. Love is always my favorite theme, and the look on Mr. Habibie's (Indonesia's 3rd president and the commissioner of the piece) eyes every time he talked about his late wife was enough to inspire anyone. It was also rapidly composed (Í spent the whole June doing it), but it was much easier. Then, a period of about 2 months of almost nothing put down on paper. I was conscious that CLARA should be finished during that uninspired period of crisis, but somehow I couldn't put any note on paper. I knew and always know HOW to compose, but I just couldn't do it. You might think I am a loser, a whiner, a wimp, well perhaps I am. But there is something in composing which is inexplicable. If I CAN do it, why don't I? I dunno the answer, except that what I gotta write is too painful and too true. A composer's block is not about that we cannot compose, but about something else. Feeling stuck sucks, especially for us creative types. Which logically explains why when we are stuck we resist it. We often start to get "tight". Closed off. Frustrated. We suffer. .............................................................................................................................................. Why is that? .............................................................................................................................................. We suffer because we cannot accept this period of non-performance. Our idea of what our lives should look like takes over what our life does look like. We are not looking at reality clearly and not aligned with the whole truth. It makes the entire "not doing" situation even worse because not only are you now uninspired but you are resentful at life for being uninspired. That's a heck of a lot of suckiness! And yes, I did go to a friend who now specializes in hypnosis, and those sessions really helped. It's like finding a key to a locked door. But perhaps, the thing that helped the most is to be brave enough to touch the pain inside me, and let it go out. Hypnotherapy doesn't do that, but what it does is to make you strong and bold enough to do it. So, perhaps being stuck is not that bad. I now even believe that being stuck is a blessing. It forces us to slow down. To try new things. To question our direction. Being uninspired requires us to stop pushing life and start receiving, if we allow it. Just because life is not unfolding the way you want it to unfold does not mean it's not unfolding the way it's supposed to. .............................................................................................................................................. And what lesson can we learn from CLARA ? That the world, that means WE, don't need money and more money for security. What we need is LOVE. Clara (a fictional character, but based on many real individuals) is depicted as a rich girl whose daddy is a successful businessman. In fact, BECAUSE she is rich (and of Chinese descendant), those wild men who are systematically organized by the stronger power suppose that she deserves to be raped and tortured. Those men, the rapists, are even deeply religious people, and that's where the problem is. They are religious, but they forgot that there is God, and God only means love. .............................................................................................................................................. I can't thank enough my dearest friends for all the late night hang outs, the internet chats. No, they are not the sponsors, but I just wanna say that even with billions of funding from sponsors, without these good friends who helped me in times of darkness, CLARA wouldn't have existed. In this case, friendship means much more than money. So thanks to Erza S.T. the ultimate Grand Duchess of the opera (and drama!), to Risti Brophy and T. Marlene Danusutedjo for all the late night talks accompanying the alcohol, to my close friends with golden voices but also shared their time and support Evelyn Merrelita, Nikodemus Lukas, Mariska Setiawan, to my friend and hypnotherapist Willy Haryadi, and my best friend doubling manager doubling choreographer doubling director of the opera Chendra Panatan. One thing I should warn the public here is that CLARA is not a nice and beautiful opera, but it is a brutally honest one. It's even darker and more painful than all those Puccini death-ending operas, coz this is not about death, but about the exact opposite: the highly questionable purpose of life. I never raped anyone, and I have never been raped either. But I have pain in me, and I put it all in this work. I just hope that there is no more pain inside me left after this, so my next musical works would be all sweet, nice and exquisite (wouldn't it be nice?). .............................................................................................................................................. This blog entry was written late at night (in fact it's almost sunrise) after a visit of my friend, the prominent Global & Greatness Coach Michael Thallium (www.michaelthallium.com ), to my house earlier. Through the years he's made lots of documentaries about me, and in one section of the documentary he shot yesterday I talked about composers' block spontaneously (in all documentaries I didn't use any scripts). After he went home, I started to re-think about it, and so I put here all the thoughts I didn't talk about in the video he made. The link to the video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYXX6Oo_P-U

Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional

There have been quite a few pros and contras about the "teaser" or "preview" on my next opera, CLARA when we performed parts of it last month at the Four Seasons Hotel, Jakarta. Whatever the reaction, it didn't leave people indifferent. The role of Clara's father was sung by the same tenor who will sing it in the premiere next December, Nikodemus Lukas, but the role of CLARA was sung not by Isyana Sarasvati, but by Evelyn Merrelita, who is a bit older than Isyana. Her role at this "teaser" concert wasn't big anyway, and it was done without much acting, and no real costumes and decors, so it was allright. Allright? No, she sang brilliantly, as usual, and so did Niko. We performed 2 arias of Clara's Father : Jangan Pulang (Don't Come Home) and Pesan Papa Terakhir (Dad's last message). The text (by Seno Gumira Ajidarma) is direct, stabbing, and clear. Poetic, but honest and true. In fact, CLARA will be premiered as the closing of the International 16 days against Gender violence, also coinciding with the International Human Rights Day which will also include the Indonesian premiere of that controversial documentary by the Oscar-nominated (for his previous documentary on exactly the theme of violence during the Suharto era) director, Joshua Oppenheimer : The Look of Silence. This film has already been premiered during the Venice Film Festival a few weeks ago. Anyway, about the "contra"s for my opera : some people (especially who went through what happened during the period of the fall of Suharto in May 1998) expressed that my opera will be too painful to them. Not only politically, but also psychologically. Those scars are about to heal, why should we open them up again? .............................................................................................................................................. Do we move on in this life by forgetting the pain of the past? My best friend, the one I always turn to in times of sorrow, always tells me this phrase : Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. That simple? If it's that simple, why is it so hard? .............................................................................................................................................. I am working hard, very hard in finishing this opera. It's been a difficult period, last August and September. I practically composed next to zero during that period. Now time is running out, apart from the fact that my biggest inspirer is always that thing called "deadline", I suddenly have all the things that could inspire and motivate me to compose : the performance of Evelyn Merrelita and Nikodemus Lukas really boosted something inside me (although Evelyn will not sing in my opera in December. I will, certainly, write another opera involving her, after my comic opera "Laki-laki Sejati" where she took the main role 2 years ago), and also the book "Disangkal" ("Denied") which the National Commission On Violence Against Women gave me as a gift. It is a manifestation of "Homo Homini Lupus", a proof of how low humans could act and inflict sufferings to each other. It is a powerful book, and I now know that I am indeed destined to write these operas to understand more about what happened in the past in my beloved country. You see, in May 98 I was still in my appartment in Den Haag. I didn't have internet back then and since it's never a habit for me to watch the news on TV, I realized what happened only a few days later. I then called my mom in Jakarta, who said that I shouldn't worry since that huge mass riot was systematically and massively organized against people of Chinese descendant. Not only we are Javanese, but also my dad was in the military so my family was just very, very safe. And only a year later when I went to Indonesia I found out that things indeed were much worse than I thought. Hundreds of Chinese weren't just killed; they were tortured, and the women were raped in ways unimaginable. There is a history of anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia, but even taking that into consideration, the violence of May 98 was unusually extreme and virulent, attributed to the encouragement of the army and the Suharto regime. .............................................................................................................................................. Friends, we are afraid of ourselves, of our own reality; our feelings most of all. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain. This is not opening old scars, friends. This is about resisting to forget. To heal, we must forgive, but we cannot forget. This entry I wrote is not about being strong, it's about overcoming our weakness. Whether you were held or beaten, cared for or neglected, happy or sad, or TORTURED AND RAPED, take a moment to remind yourself that we are not defined by what has been done or done to us, but by what we choose to do with the time we have left. Fear should be faced head-on and if we're going to fight it, we should do it in a forum that allows the opportunity to help anyone who can relate to it find the courage to move past the past or reach out to get help to escape a painful present. It is painful, yes it is, but we should turn pain into wisdom, and make sure we do not inflict that pain to others in the future. I believe painful emotions have a self-healing and self-correcting component. When we take advantage of it, we flourish. When we don't, we suffer. So, we choose. That simple? If it's that simple, why is it so hard?

Composers' block ?

I usually write music like an idiot. I just don't think, I just write. As if one is in love: the brain stops working, and one just follow one's instinct or whatever you call it (although I must admit, with this bloody thing called love my instinct has been wrong some times). That's what I do in some inspired days, but those were just days. And then "the well turns dry" as we say, for a short period of time. But the last few weeks have been different. I'm having such a hard time writing this new opera of mine, CLARA (see my previous entries about this opera), and I've been spending time thinking of its reason why instead of the real musical notes. .............................................................................................................................................. For many of us, the hardest part of all is getting started. Sitting down in front of a computer screen or a blank sheet of music paper, rolling up our sleeves, and ...- -and -- .... nothing. But in my case, I have started. I have finished 2 arias, out of 7. But things have come soooooo slowly. In fact, I am not even sure of its formal structure, which I changed from the original story by Seno Gumira Ajidarma. I am doing the flashback technique, which makes it easier to stage, concerning the decoration and make up for the artist. But I still feel something is not right .... I want to compose. We may be facing a deadline that should compel us to write. But instead of feeling motivated or inspired, we grow anxious and frustrated. And those negative feelings can make it even harder to work. That's what we call "writers' block." In my case, it is because the character and expression is too strange, too deep for me. Imagine the feelings of two people that are really alien to me : a corrupt and insensitive policeman, and the feeling of a girl just being raped with nobody to help her. With the Stanislavsky method, it would be very easy : I would just rape a girl, and then I would ask a very strong, bulky and ugly badboy hunk to rape me. I would then know exactly how it feels to be both. But things are not that easy, as you see, eh? So how can I write music that expresses those things which I can't even express, coz I can't, and am afraid to dig deep and feel it? .............................................................................................................................................. If it's any consolation, I know I'm not alone. Many professional writers--of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose-- and composers have also had frustrating encounters with the empty page. .............................................................................................................................................. When asked about the most frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingway said, "A blank sheet of paper." And none other than the Master of Terror himself, Stephen King, said that the "scariest moment is always just before you start [writing]. After that, things can only get better." So, that's no consolation for me, coz I have started, in a difficult way but hey, I have started, but things don't get better. And yeah, I started from the "easy" part : writing the arias of Clara's Father. As a father of a young girl myself, I know, feel and have preoccupations of the safety of my daughter. And so, the arias which are featured at the concert of my opera highlights at the Four Seasons Jakarta Hotel next week (25th of September) are all Clara's Father's Arias, sung by Nikodemus Lukas, who will also sing in the opera's premiere. Apart from it, he will sing an aria (the funky one!) from my previous opera, Mendadak Kaya, and soprano Evelyn Merrelita will sing some arias from The Mother, whose Son Was Kidnapped. And perhaps, this entry in my blog wouldn't have existed if I weren't stuck. This is in fact an excuse for me, instead of just gazing at the white music paper, I thought I should share this feeling of being stuck. So, I am pasting some of the quotes about this problem. Hope you enjoy them, and for fellow writers and composers, hope they can console, and even inspire you! At least I'm sort of useful (at least that's my feeling) now. .............................................................................................................................................. "I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats." (Sue Grafton) .............................................................................................................................................. "You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence." (Octavia Butler) .............................................................................................................................................. "We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?" (Nick Hornby) .............................................................................................................................................. "If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word." (Margaret Atwood)

A mathematical mistake in Romeo & Juliet?

Well well, only after the 100th time reading Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet I start to do my mathematics. Here we go : .............................................................................................................................................. The tragic story of Romeo and Juliet took place from Sunday to Thursday. Romeo and Juliet met each other at the party on Sunday night. They married Monday morning. Around noon time Romeo kills Tybalt. Tuesday, Juliet goes to the friar to ask for help. Tuesday evening, Juliet drinks the potion. Wednesday is the day of the discovery of Juliet's fake death, and in the evening, Romeo commits suicide when he believes his wife to be gone. Thursday, Romeo and Juliet dies. .............................................................................................................................................. But think about this: if Juliet takes the potion on Tuesday night, and the potion lasts 42 hours, she will not wake up until Thursday afternoon (in the play that's when Romeo and Juliet's funeral takes place). Therefore, in Act 5, when Friar Laurence says that Juliet will wake up in 3 hours, it is still Wednesday night. You see? It doesn't add up!! .............................................................................................................................................. Can someone, a fellow nerd or a fellow love-sick patient clear this up for me?