Stacy Horn

I will not be receiving. Or taking calls. The picture below is the turtle and bird equivalent, except they have retired to the rock. I took it yesterday walking through Central Park. I’d planned to take a longer walk, but all of a sudden I felt impatient. I wanted to walk through parks and streets I’d never walked through before. So I went home and made a plan. First up: Highbridge Park.

You thought I was going to say bad, didn’t you! Yesterday I did a ton of errands and no-fun tasks, and I just finished working on my book proposal, so for the rest of the day I can goof off. I’m going to go out for a long walk.

Before I forget, my book Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing With Others is on sale at the Kindle Store. Only $2.99! While supplies last! Haha. Little joke there. Oh wait, now it says the price is $2.51. Even better.

I took this while sitting out in front of the laundromat, waiting for my laundry to dry. There are actually four dogs being walked here. You can see better in the next shot.

I like how she has ordered them by size, smallest to largest.

I just realized I haven’t spent the day just walking around taking pictures in like, forever. It’s my favorite thing. Except I should do the laundry. And work on my book proposal

I took the picture below on 11th Street, on my way to choir practice. The blossoms have begun to fall, something so pleasing to walk through I wrote about in my singing book.

“I’ve become intimately acquainted with the changing seasons on 11th Street. For instance, there’s a stretch where for a brief time during the spring the cherry blossoms are so abundant and so lush they make a big, fat, fluffy white and pink canopy that stretches from sidewalk to sidewalk. It’s a dazzling display. The best part however, is when the petals begin to fall. It makes me wish New York City were car-free. I want to be able to walk down the center of the street like I’m in the middle of my own botanical ticker-tape parade. I’d raise my arms to the skies and twirl around in this confetti-like explosion of renewal and possibility and pretend it’s all for me.”

This morning I was thinking about what kind of cat I will need to look for when the sad day comes and Finney, my fur-monster, dies. He’s 13, and not in the best of health. He’s also a little senile, and from time to time he gets instantly mad, out the blue, and then he bites or swats me.

The thing is, Bleeck is such a terror and loves to play hard. I need to find a cat who can keep up with him and also get along with him. I miss having two cats who love each other and curl up together when they are not killing each other.

You know who I remind myself of? The character Catherine Deneuve plays in the movie The Hunger. She has eternal youth and life, and as her boyfriends age she has to keep replacing them. (Except in the movie it’s a little more complicated and horrible. She’s able to give the men eternal life but not eternal youth so when they age and become completely decrepit she puts them away in boxes in the attic.)

I have to keep replacing the cats I outlive. Except, I will never ever forget how after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer my mother said it looked like she was probably going to need to replace her cat pretty soon. The cat was very old and she’d only just been diagnosed. It was reasonable for her to hope and plan on outliving her cat. She didn’t. She died five weeks later and her cat was adopted by my brother Douglas and his wife Robin. One of these days my cats will outlive me. It could be that guy in the back for all I know.

Well! That was a cheery post, wasn’t it?

I wanted to start a list of must-read pieces I’ve come across about choral singing. My list begins with only two, but I plan to add to it and I would love suggestions.

If Congress Were a Choir

I’ve started emailing this to people who respond to my email about my TEDx talk, and I’ve already posted about this essay here. But Margaret Evans makes so many points about all the valuable things singing adds to life. “Unless you’ve been given a solo – which is a privilege, not a right – your voice should never stand out. It’s all about the blend. There is a strange, inexpressible joy in blending. There’s a joy in lending your own small, imperfect voice to something much greater than the sum of its parts.”

How Can I Keep From Singing?

This was written by Dave Rowe, the choir director for the First Universalist Church Unitarian Universalist in Auburn, Maine. It’s a very moving treatise on the power of song. “The voice is the only instrument we all can play, the only instrument that is hidden inside of each one of us …” I see he also has a number of folk music bands! And he’s a voice teacher. Lucky people who live in Maine.

Why I can’t have nice flowers. Now I have to google to see if lilacs are poisonous. They probably are. Because they are one of my favorite flowers.