Author Dewi Lestari comes into the light

By Bruce Emond

BANDUNG (JP): Dewi Lestari admits she has become an unwitting slave to the cult of Supernova.

In the seven months since the 25-year-old singer published her debut novel under the pen name Dee, the book's phenomenal success (it is now in its fourth printing, with 48,000 copies sold) has taken her away from her singing career with RSD, her friends and her writing. Her plans to write the sequel novel have been shelved while she fulfills her engagements of book signings and discussions at bookstores and campuses across Java.

The reception was more than Dewi expected for a book about a gay couple on a quest to produce a masterpiece. Supernova has been described as science fiction by some (basic concepts of modern physics are interspersed throughout the work) but it's really not. At its core is the very human element of people and their relationships.

"Honestly, I was a bit shocked," Dewi says at her small but comfortable home in a real estate complex in central Bandung, the town where she was born and grew up.

"It was only my dream to have one of my writings published -- that was my dream from the time I was a kid. I knew I was never going to win a writing contest. I don't know why, I don't like being limited. I want to write five pages, 10 pages. It's up to me."

The author of one of the most acclaimed and controversial works in modern Indonesian literature is framed in a scene of domestic normalcy -- the small front room is filled with the fragrant aroma of a vase of sedap malam flowers and a boisterous puppy is scratching on the front door -- in her otherwise hectic life.

She lets me into a "little secret"; after the last of three discussions in a row in Yogyakarta recently, she felt so tired that she sought refuge in a staff room at the building. And she cried.

There is no need to fear that Dewi Lestari is about to pull a Mariah Carey as all the pressure comes down on her. Her decision to publish Supernova and to go it alone again to release her own English-language album in October (her record company begged off because it did not believe it was the "right time") shows a resolute confidence in her own abilities.

Dewi credits her close-knit family with giving her the support to do what she wanted, including her writing. Although she was raised in Bandung, her family is Batak from North Sumatra and she grew up in an environment of books, music and the arts.

The fourth of five siblings, she said there was always sibling prodding to go one step further in the pursuit of perfection.

"From when I was small, I was so familiar with music, with art. It really stimulates me because we always encouraged each other if we had something. Like if I wrote a song, I always had them listen to it, or if I wrote something my family would be the first to read it, we would brainstorm. 'Oh, it lacks this or that.' Even now, if I'm going to have a TV appearance, they'll tell me to say something in particular."

Her love of writing, she believes, came from her late mother, who had been active in her church in her youth and wrote sermons.

Her writing skills were honed studying political science at Parahyangan University in Bandung. Not only is Dewi Lestari pretty, a talented musician, well-spoken (she switches facilely between English and Indonesian throughout our interview) and a brilliant writer, but it turns out she also, basically, winged her way to a college degree.

"I was lazy, and, because of my singing, I skipped a lot of classes ... But in international relations, almost all of the tests are essays. So I would know a little bit, and then I would manipulate that, I would push myself to write very good and clear (essays) so I would impress the lecturer and pass ... But for me all those six years of being a student, the most important was writing that thesis ...."

Supernova is the third of three novels she has written (the other two earlier, unpublished works are "pretty good", she says, but were written by a different Dewi at a different time in her life).

Her novel was born from the poems she wrote over the years and kept on her computer.

"I opened them one day and I thought, umm, these aren't too bad at all, and I tried to make a story from them, a single story, so the poems belonged to someone, someone actually said it. So I wrote Ksatria, Puteri dan Bintang Jatuh (The Knight, the Princess and the Falling Star), which is the title of the first episode. There was no Dhimas or Ruben, no Supernova at that time."

She said she fell in love with the process of what she was writing -- her "ritual" -- in shaping the lives of her characters.

"I really didn't know how it was going to end, until perhaps the last 24 pages. It was an adventure ... I created them, but then they became these independent entities. I created them but then they become something different in the minds of others ...."

Understanding

On a trip to America last year, she scoured bookstores for works on science and physics. For her, the writing of Supernova helped her come closer to a better understanding of how the scientific and the spiritual, which are so often put on opposing planes, interact.

"I had such an interest in understanding life, humanity, especially spiritually, beginning in about 1999, and from that moment on I had this hunger to read lots and lots of things. I really don't know why I hooked up with science ... Reading the science books, I was so fascinated because I started to see the relationship (with the humanities), especially because in this country religion is always put on such a high plane, and there is always a conflict between religious and scientific explanations, and that shouldn't have to happen."

She acknowledges that others have tried to get the same message across, but that perhaps their approach was not well received. Her "mask", she says, was in novel form.

Supernova also tackles some other taboos. Her choice of the gay couple of Dhimas and Ruben as the work's protagonists and references to drug use were not an effort to shock, she says, but an acknowledgement of realities.

"I woke up one day and (thought) 'OK, they've gotta be gay'. That's all I thought. But now I think my purpose was to show people that real love, that if we talk about mighty love conquering everything, then if it's really that powerful then it's not going to stop at sexual preference. That's so shallow ... You can't block love .... "

Criticism

It is her solid family background and self-confidence that has probably helped her deal so magnanimously with some of the criticism of Supernova, with some deriding the book as a plot juxtaposed with a lot of esoteric cutting and pasting of excerpts lifted from all those physics textbooks.

"All the criticism and all the praise, eventually, is bound to be the same amount, it's just a matter of me knowing it. You know, after the third printing, I used a proof reader (because) I know I lack perfect grammatical Indonesian. A lot of criticism is worthwhile, but then a lot of it is subjective, just as praise is subjective."

Dewi also realizes that while some may have initially regarded her book quizzically because of her celebrity status with RSD (the letters stand for Rida, Sita and Dewi, the names of the three singers), her famous name also helped get the publicity machine rolling into overdrive.

"There are two sides to being a celebrity, and I can use some of that to my benefit. I know that if Seno Gumira released a novel, he won't get coverage on Cek & Ricek or KISS or those infotainment shows, but I have that, and I use it as my promotion media .... "

She became part of RSD in 1995 when she was still a student at Parahyangan. Producers teamed Dewi and Sita, who were backing singers together, with Rida.

"We were all adults when we came together as a group," Dewi says in explaining how the women remain together while pursuing their own interests. "We had our own characters, our own special qualities ... I had my own style, and now we are more developed .... "

Of course, it could also be argued that going their separate ways while staying part of a group is part of the reason the women, with all their talent, have not made it to the very top of stardom. The group, at one time dubbed "Indonesia's Wilson Phillips" because Sita is a large woman, has had a couple of pop hits but never really reached the total pop stardom of other Indonesian groups, such as AB Three or Trio Libels.

Dewi has her writing, Rida is the mother of a two-year-old son and Sita is pursuing acting ambitions, most recently playing in the star-studded theater production of Madame Dasima in Jakarta.

Dewi says the women are "moving into another phase, another stage" of their careers, but one she hopes will not bring their professional relationship to an end.

Coming up next for Dewi is the album Out of Shell, which she wrote in English over the last four years (she confirms the story that she learned a lot of her English watching The Muppets on video during two years spent in Medan).

"People think I must have studied abroad, but I didn't, I've only been to America once ... I feel intimate with English, I don't know why. Maybe in another life I was white!"

She knows it is a challenge for an Indonesian artist to produce an English-language album in Indonesia. She also knows some will call her brave, and probably just as many will be ready to scoff at her new aspirations.

"I have hopes for it, (but) Supernova was like that at first. (People said) 'It's too heavy, blah blah blah'. But it became a success. And I think I have to be optimistic about my own stuff, otherwise I wouldn't have the energy to promote it ... The most important thing is to get it out. It's like having a baby -- I have to give birth sooner or later."

It is one more step in Dewi Lestari's charmed journey. She may not know where it will lead, but one feels she has every confidence that she is on the right path.