Stacy Horn

Tonight is the first rehearsal for the season! Our holiday line up this year is a joyous sweep of old and new, including pieces I’ve never done before, ensuring more gray matter and more and stronger neural connection for me! So yay! It’s also primary day, so today an exciting feel to the day all around.

If you live in Brooklyn and you’re thinking of joining a choir AND you’re looking for something positive to do on the anniversary of 9/11, I just read that the Brooklyn Community Chorus welcomes new singers at their rehearsal tomorrow night.

I had lunch on the High Line again yesterday and took some shots. Of course. I loved this cacophonous view.

This was a weird view. On the southern end of the High Line you get to look into this bar, and people’s backsides are right in your face. Who thought that was a good idea?? It looked like there was a Fashion Week event going on inside, so I have to assume this weird pants fit was on purpose.

The Statue of Liberty. It was like every possible view was carefully choreographed. No matter where I pointed my camera there was something to shoot.

My favorite parts of the High Line were the pieces that gave a flavor of how it once looked. Here they left the original train tracks in tact. Sigh. I love Manhattan, but sometimes I want to live in the woods, in a spot that looks like that, but with a river or stream nearby.

The Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals sponsors an adoption event every year and I went and I just kept circling all the booths, looking at the animals, unable to tear myself away.

This was inside the cat tent. I guess that one woman didn’t like the smell. It was actually pretty slight, and considering how many cats were in one small space it was astounding how little it smelled. OH! I have a cat smell story. I’ll tell it tomorrow.

Pit bulls have that look of longing down. I gaze into a pit bull’s eyes and I’m, “Okay, whatever you want, it’s yours.” The sweetest faces in the world.

This dog just adored the woman holding him. True love. She was a volunteer so I don’t think she’d be taking him (or her) home. But I hope he/she got adopted. There was something especially endearing about this dog.

I was so focused on the dog I didn’t look at this guy, who is giving me quite the expression. I love his tshirt! Isn’t that a great tshirt? And what a beautiful little dog. I want him too.

In the spring of 2005 the Choral Society of Grace Church performed a piece written by our then associate conductor Dylan Chan. (At the time my book went to press he was a fifth-year resident in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Stanford University.) Toward the end of my book, I told the wonderful (and scary) story of premiering Dylan’s Memoranda.

A number of people have asked for a way to hear it, so I made a YouTube video with Memoranda as the soundtrack. I used pictures of the Choral Society so there was something to look at while listening. The pictures don’t really fit what we’re singing about and I basically had to use every picture I had, good or bad or redundant, to fill up all the time, but here it is!

Memoranda consists of three movements, all of which contain the words dead or death. But like most songs about death, each is really about resurrection in one form or another. Dylan hoped to get around death by showing us that music would never die. The text for the piece comes from poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Enjoy!

Foamola is the most charming band I have ever seen! I heard them play last night at a wonderful place in Bushwick call the Mellow Pages Library. Named after an herbal arthritis remedy, the members of the band are Lawrence Fishberg, (keyboard, vocals) Sparrow, (ocarina, items found in the trash, vocals), Violet Snow (flute, vocals) and Sylvia Mae Gorelick (vocals, xylophone).

I’m sorry my video didn’t come out better, but I think you can still get a sense of how wonderful they are. Don’t ever miss them. You can learn more about them on Violet Snow’s website.

I’ve written many times about the things I do every day:

– Exercise.
– Meditate.
– Write down three things I managed to accomplish, no matter how small.
– Write down three things that made me happy.
– Do one random act of kindness.

The last one is always the hardest. Not because it’s hard to do a kind thing, but it’s VERY hard to find a kind thing that doesn’t have an element of selfishness to it. Having a selfish reason isn’t necessarily evil. When I was training to be a volunteer at the GMHC, (Gay Men’s Health Crisis) and this was in the very early days of the AIDS crisis, they went around the room and had each of us name a selfish reason for being there. Because if we didn’t have one, they warned, we’d burn out quickly.

That said, I feel better doing things that will benefit me the least. Then the other day, someone tweeted this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

I’ve been resisting a natural result of kindness. I still think it’s good to examine your motives, but I’m going to try to feel okay about the fact that every time I do something nice for someone I do something nice for myself.

And yet another picture from the Parks & Recreation Law Swim Award Dinner. That’s Anna Jardine, and Gary Weeks on the far right, the swimmers who swam the most miles in all of New York City. I haven’t been out taking pictures the past few days. In fact, last night I dreamed about walking around the city at a leisurely pace, taking pictures. I guess it’s time.