Night the Third proceeding

Good progress on Scene xi, now at about the 3'50 mark, duration-wise, and at the point, narrative-wise, when we want to back off the busy-ness, and have something tentative, ambivalent, tender, for the Dreamer nearly revealing his love.  I find myself agreeably surprised (should I be surprised?) that the work is going readily.  But (I should not be surprised) once I discover what is wanted, the work proceeds fairly apace.  One of the keys here was, erm, reading the chapter afresh, and appreciating the fact that Nastenka is nervously energetic, as she is at once eager (not to say a bit anxious) to hear from the Lodger for whom she waited all this while, but she perceives (subconsciously?) that the Dreamer has fallen for her.  How much is she aware of it all?

What I had not realized all this while (my old ‘virtual friend’ Allan Santos joked good-naturedly about the drawn-out process of the Project, by dubbing it White Decade) is that I have a passage in the Overture, a kind of “pizzicato invention,” of which I have not yet made use in the ballet proper (and which, really, I had not previously imagined that I would “port over” into the ballet narrative) but which has nervous energy written all over it (or, into it).

Other material used in today’s work I ‘discovered’ in my walk around the pond this afternoon.  It relates to other material strewn through the Op.75, but is a new variant.

There is the odd chance that, having slept on it, I may complete the Scene tomorrow.