Stacy Horn

I wrote about the British conductor Gareth Malone and his reality series The Choir briefly in my book, and I’ve been talking about him and this show in almost every radio interview I’ve done ever since. The reason I keep talking about the show is this: in the most dramatic and moving way possible, it shows how wrong people are when they think they can’t sing.

It always begins the same, Malone finds the most unlikely people to be members of a choir, and then talks them into auditioning. Most of the people in the auditions can barely sing, some can’t seem to sing at all, and a few people sound great. In just a few weeks however, everything changes. Everyone gets better. In particular, the people who couldn’t sing at all sound just fine, and together everyone sounds amazing. It’s impossible to watch without sobbing. To see the looks on their faces when they hear the undeniable beauty of their aggregate sound, and to hear it yourself, after having watched them face down their fears and insecurity in order to do this in the first place, only to be rewarded in such a marvelous way, not with just sound but with this group they are now a part of, this community—again, you’ll be bawling like a baby when you see it.

Here’s a great quote which sums up what they are feeling and the gift this series has give them:

“The power of such experience is so great and its satisfactions so deep that those who have shared it are likely to be changed fundamentally in their relation to music. For such people music inevitably becomes a source of some of life’s deepest rewards. This is no small matter, given the universal need for such satisfaction and its rarity in human life.” —A Philosophy of Music Education, by Benett Reimer.

Malone is bringing his reality series to America! Here it will be called It Takes a Choir and it’s premiering on the USA Network in November. Woohoo!

I took this yesterday. I was drawn to all the shades of blue and red. The little dog was just a lucky break, and so is the guy in the red shorts, echoing the reds in the rest of the photograph, and the other guy in the blue shirt!

I’ve been so nervous about how the living composers I wrote about were going to feel about what I said about them. (So far I’ve heard from two out of three of them and I’m choosing to believe that the third one is busy and hasn’t gotten to it yet, and he is very busy!) Morten Lauridsen emailed me though, the most gracious and wonderful email.

Dear Stacy.

I am just now back in the San Juans following concerts and talks in Philadelphia, Albuquerque and Seattle to find your new book, “Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others,” waiting for me.

I just read the chapter on O Magnum Mysterium–it’s wonderful, Stacy! Beautifully written and deftly organized around thoughts by me and others about this piece, which has affected people throughout the world so deeply.

You are one terrific writer!! I look forward to perusing the rest of the book.

Thank you so much and congratulations!!

Morten Lauridsen

In my book I talk about the things I write in my music, and how I pencil in asterisks over my favorite parts. Sometime I write astericks at the beginning, next to the title, to indicate that the whole piece is my favorite part. This is my score for Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium.

“I was in something called the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and I was having the time of my life, finally. That place is heaven.”

That’s from the introduction for my first book, Cyberville. The Interactive Telecommunications Program, aka ITP, is where I went to grad school. I started ITP straight out of rehab. It was 1986 and I was lost in life, afraid, and struggling. I was also suffering from terrible anxiety attacks at the time and I remember it took all the strength I had not to run screaming from my classes and give up. I couldn’t learn much, I couldn’t raise my hand and ask questions. All I could do was keep my seat.

I’ve told this story many times: I was taking Red’s class, and we were given an assignment to write about “implementation.” That was actually my job at the time. I was a telecommunications analyst for Mobil Oil and my job was to design and implement data communications networks.

I tried and failed to write a paper about implementation, I just couldn’t do it. Instead, I wrote a play called Corpse in Space. It was about a company in the future. There was no longer any room to bury people and my fictitious start-up proposed an alternative—launch them into geosynchronous orbit with Earth. The characters in my play included a saint, a couch and a praying mantis. I was doing something I hadn’t done in a long, long time. I was playing. I was having fun. My story was, in fact, about implementation. I was showing how hard it can be to get a business off the ground, especially when you have a team as different as a saint and a couch.

I didn’t know Red well yet, and I was terrified to hand in my paper. She is often described as a force of nature and until you learned she was a force for good she could be very scary. I put my paper at the bottom of the pile and ran. The next time I was in the halls of ITP she saw me and yelled out “STACY! STACY!”

I froze. She looked so mad. That was just Red’s determined face. She rushed over to tell me how much she loved my play and what a pleasure it was to get something so completely off the wall.

That moment saved my life. I can’t emphasize this enough. I’m crying now as I type this. That Red force enveloped me and changed my world. It was okay to play! From that day on my anxiety attacks began to ease up and finally stop. I truly did have the time of my life in a place that was completely magical to me. I could write what I wanted, learn what I wanted, create what I wanted. Her acceptance changed my life. The place she created changed my life. I wouldn’t have launched Echo without Red, and I wouldn’t have gotten what I wanted to do most of all without Red: write books.

Thank you for heaven, Red. Thank you for my life.

A good article by Jason Huff about Red Burns and the history of ITP.

I hit 25 miles last night. Woohoo! In honor of my accomplishment I’m going to see World’s End.

This is a picture of people having lunch outside in the rain. It wasn’t raining very hard though, and they were underneath an awning. It was probably very nice.

I went to swim last night and the pool was closed. “Why,” I asked. Now I have to do my best to forget the answer when I swim tonight. Oh god. I get water in my mouth all the time. I learned about how they “shock the pool” when things like this happen, which means putting in so much chlorine the water starts screaming.

I love how sometimes when I come home Bleecker is sprawled out like this, waiting for me. The little guy loves his belly rubs.