For as long as I can remember, I have felt that first contact was just around the corner. I was certain it was inevitable, that it had to happen—and sooner rather than later. I allowed for the possibility that it might already have taken place, in the recent or more distant past, though I seriously doubted it. I also believed that this encounter would change everything. Put things right. Straighten them out and restore the proper perspective. I believed that through it, meaning would finally reveal itself, and peace and order would prevail—if not for ever, then at least for a long time. I waited for that encounter. I watched for signs of its approach. I looked forward to it and felt a powerful urge to share my excitement. After several rather unsuccessful attempts, met with a lack of understanding, I stopped proclaiming the news and simply waited. I am still waiting. Somehow, I cannot bring myself to believe the increasingly frequent recent reports of encounters that have supposedly already taken place.

The scene of Peter’s first encounter with the Oasians took me longer and demanded more effort than I had expected—perhaps more than any scene I had written before. It was like a smooth vertical wall, glazed with ice here and there. I clung to it for long hours, searching for a route and unable to move. The weather kept changing, too: from scorching heat to hailstorms. I did not know what the Oasians should sound like; unusually for me, I needed to imagine what they would look like; nor did I know how to write into their exchange the awkward silence and the unfathomable intentions and emotions, mutually opaque to Peter, his new colleague Grainger, and the Oasian representative. But, as always, step by step—exceptionally small steps this time—I made it past this wall as well. I felt relieved, though the summit is still some distance away, and who knows what other walls lie ahead.

By the way, I believe that opera, alongside literature and film, is making its way deeper into nuance. That is the kind of opera that interests me, anyway.