The title of this piece is a tongue-in-cheek reference to my own inability to make a long story short. Inevitably, stories that should be rendered as respectfully brief anecdotes are fleshed out by increasingly levels of detail and backstory that - while ultimately superfluous to the crux of the story - feel essential at the time.
The intentional irony of this piece is that despite its relatively short duration, the musical material is actually organized as a "short story long." This consists of a six-note pattern (which is itself a three-note pattern repeated at a lower pitch level) serving as a kind of cantus firmus for the different sections of the piece. Thus, each section is part of a larger expression of this patter, while also containing variations on that pattern.
Additionally, this piece was indirectly influence by a job I took working in print media, which got me thinking about stories. Humans have been telling stories for as long as we've existed, and although the means and styles of communication (oral tradition, carrier pigeons, books, newspapers, telegrams, telephones, emails, tweets, and even music) have changed dramatically, it seems to me that in some ways the stories themselves are fundamentally the same. Our natural impulse to keep telling them is what makes them essential.