Sunday, January 04, 2004
Energico
Morning! 2a.m. and I am still up. I discover this English translation of “Lady White Snake” and pick it up to read. I am planning a series of tone poems on Chinese legends and classics. I actually started on the tone poem about the legend of Pan Gu the Creator but sort of abandoned it for now because of the lack of study materials, or rather, too many differing sources about the events. I finished the book in about an hour; thereafter I went to write down how I would divide the sections. I thought of using leitmotifs for this composition, so I sketched out themes for the four main characters: Xu Xian, Lady White, Little Green and Fa Hai. Later in the day, when I took out my sketchbook to play the themes I had written at the piano, I was completely appalled with what I had done.
I hadn’t watched the television serial of this classic starring Christopher Lee and Fann Wong. Thank god for that; they didn’t come into the picture while I read the book. Rather I visualised a Chinese opera about the story taking place! For those who don’t know about the story, it’s about this pair of star-crossed lovers… I won’t go further because I’m not doing a book review here. But the appalling thing is that those people (Xu Xian, Lady White herself and Xu Xian’s sister) were so overtly virtuous that they kept begging – going down on their knees and kowtowing and using their mouth – Fa Hai not to harm Lady White near the end of the story. Obviously the bastard didn’t give a shit about them. The recommended course of action in today’s context would be: “Get your fucking hands off her, you stupid son of a bitch!” followed by a punch across the face. This proves that actions are stronger than words.
I started work on the first movement of my String Quartet when I woke up. I’ve written a string quartet before: the Toccata, but this will be a real piece in the genre, with three different movements. It’s a unique work. I won’t dawdle about this here; rather it’s on my programme note which I’ve specially reserved to go into great detail about my new work.
Finally the comfortable feeling while writing music has returned. I find that I write better when I draft on paper first, rather than writing the music straight into the computer. I started out writing the melody line, and where possible and necessary, the dialogue parts. Then I wrote out the entire first movement (i.e. the full score) on paper before keying it into the computer. Another achievement here: the orchestration which I planned out in my head without the help of audio aids worked! Ha, ha, I’m so happy! Of course, there are the usual careless mistakes of missing accidentals, bad handwriting… anyway it’s good to be writing serious works, because I’m completely free to decide what I want to write and what I don’t want to. Too bad if the audience thinks that my idea here stinks and that they cry that my music is inaccessible or what: that’s their problem. That’s different from writing music for the masses. Here you have to pander to their tastes. Even if they like the sound of stinking shit you’ve got to write the stinking shit for them, otherwise you loose out. It’s a very tough job, although people tell me that writing pop songs is easy compared to serious works like mine. The thing about pop songs is that you’ve got to write a great, memorable tune that everybody will hum and whose ringtone will be found in many a handphone.
An article in appeared in the Sunday Times, regarding the Shankar case, where men said that they would be more wary of the women when they go for parties lest they get accused with another court case (and make the lawyers rich again). I wonder, is this feminism thing going too far, such that now men can be victimised and prevented from saving themselves due to the women’s cause? Now we should have malinism – protection of men rights in an increasingly unfair world, especially between sexes. So what? A man on the MRT train bumps into a lady and before he knows it, he’s right in court? A lady on the MRT bumps into a man and there’s nothing wrong? So a lady can assault a man and get away scot-free? Why not let NASA discover Mars a suitable place for humans to live and then one of the sexes move out and shift to the planet? Then the women can touch other women all they want and men can do the same thing with nobody getting into trouble anywhere either (too bad if it’s theft; people can be so fickle when it comes to cash). Me, I don’t go for parties, so I’m safe I think. ¶ 1/04/2004 11:09:00 pm
Morning! 2a.m. and I am still up. I discover this English translation of “Lady White Snake” and pick it up to read. I am planning a series of tone poems on Chinese legends and classics. I actually started on the tone poem about the legend of Pan Gu the Creator but sort of abandoned it for now because of the lack of study materials, or rather, too many differing sources about the events. I finished the book in about an hour; thereafter I went to write down how I would divide the sections. I thought of using leitmotifs for this composition, so I sketched out themes for the four main characters: Xu Xian, Lady White, Little Green and Fa Hai. Later in the day, when I took out my sketchbook to play the themes I had written at the piano, I was completely appalled with what I had done.
I hadn’t watched the television serial of this classic starring Christopher Lee and Fann Wong. Thank god for that; they didn’t come into the picture while I read the book. Rather I visualised a Chinese opera about the story taking place! For those who don’t know about the story, it’s about this pair of star-crossed lovers… I won’t go further because I’m not doing a book review here. But the appalling thing is that those people (Xu Xian, Lady White herself and Xu Xian’s sister) were so overtly virtuous that they kept begging – going down on their knees and kowtowing and using their mouth – Fa Hai not to harm Lady White near the end of the story. Obviously the bastard didn’t give a shit about them. The recommended course of action in today’s context would be: “Get your fucking hands off her, you stupid son of a bitch!” followed by a punch across the face. This proves that actions are stronger than words.
I started work on the first movement of my String Quartet when I woke up. I’ve written a string quartet before: the Toccata, but this will be a real piece in the genre, with three different movements. It’s a unique work. I won’t dawdle about this here; rather it’s on my programme note which I’ve specially reserved to go into great detail about my new work.
Finally the comfortable feeling while writing music has returned. I find that I write better when I draft on paper first, rather than writing the music straight into the computer. I started out writing the melody line, and where possible and necessary, the dialogue parts. Then I wrote out the entire first movement (i.e. the full score) on paper before keying it into the computer. Another achievement here: the orchestration which I planned out in my head without the help of audio aids worked! Ha, ha, I’m so happy! Of course, there are the usual careless mistakes of missing accidentals, bad handwriting… anyway it’s good to be writing serious works, because I’m completely free to decide what I want to write and what I don’t want to. Too bad if the audience thinks that my idea here stinks and that they cry that my music is inaccessible or what: that’s their problem. That’s different from writing music for the masses. Here you have to pander to their tastes. Even if they like the sound of stinking shit you’ve got to write the stinking shit for them, otherwise you loose out. It’s a very tough job, although people tell me that writing pop songs is easy compared to serious works like mine. The thing about pop songs is that you’ve got to write a great, memorable tune that everybody will hum and whose ringtone will be found in many a handphone.
An article in appeared in the Sunday Times, regarding the Shankar case, where men said that they would be more wary of the women when they go for parties lest they get accused with another court case (and make the lawyers rich again). I wonder, is this feminism thing going too far, such that now men can be victimised and prevented from saving themselves due to the women’s cause? Now we should have malinism – protection of men rights in an increasingly unfair world, especially between sexes. So what? A man on the MRT train bumps into a lady and before he knows it, he’s right in court? A lady on the MRT bumps into a man and there’s nothing wrong? So a lady can assault a man and get away scot-free? Why not let NASA discover Mars a suitable place for humans to live and then one of the sexes move out and shift to the planet? Then the women can touch other women all they want and men can do the same thing with nobody getting into trouble anywhere either (too bad if it’s theft; people can be so fickle when it comes to cash). Me, I don’t go for parties, so I’m safe I think. ¶ 1/04/2004 11:09:00 pm
