IX Giggleswick, Yorkshire 2011

 

Most of the second act is created in an empty school straight out of Hogwarts. 

            It consists of theatres and rehearsal rooms, on the hilltop governs a big church. All abandoned for summer holidays. I am have a big concert piano here, its wide sound tries to force its way into the opera’s last hour. When the windows are open, sheep baa on the hills.

 

            The scenes have become like living organisms. They move contrarily, uttering their own will, they constantly change their plans. Every morning I plan the work of the day, and every evening I am somewhere else than where I am supposed to be. Writing the last scene of Aliide, each day I think this will be my final day. In the evening I discover that the finish line has been moved a couple of miles forward. One day turns to five, ten, twenty. I wish I were a marathon runner, who’s suffering is put to an end in a couple of hours.

            Members from the school staff visit. I am introduced to a group of parents who are seeing the school. Through a glass door I hear the words “composer,” “Berlin,” and “opera.”

 

I decide to leave the end unpolished, from the last orchestral bit I write down only its chord progressions. The rows appear to work themselves out, everything falls into place without me influencing it at all. I draw the final two lines.

            I am driven home. There my memories end.