Stacy Horn

I was telling people last night that he was 25, but he’s really 31. (Where did I get the idea that he was 25??) His first full-scale opera, Two Boys, which premiered in London in this spring, will be performed at the Metropolitan Opera next year. I can’t imagine having that kind of success so young. First, I can’t imagine writing an opera. Writing music is a mystery to me. I’ve tried it and honestly, I couldn’t summon anything, I have no clue where music comes from. Words, they’re in me. Original music, not a single freaking note. (Thank you very much, Universe.) Then, I can’t really imagine sitting in one of the front rows, or offstage, to see something that was inside me emerge in such splendid display in that venue? Yeah, I’d explode.

We’re doing a piece called Senex Puerum Portabat, and I’m singing what’s called the drone part. It’s surprisingly difficult and I’m not sure why, because on paper it looks like the least challenging part. But I can see why he’s a star. The piece is so completely original, although he talks about his influences here, and yes, we all have them, but if you focus on that, how can you listen, read, taste, look at anything? I hear and feel a new musical mind, and if I was going to get distracted at all it would have been by that, because this piece is really really smart. But I don’t.

There’s one part where we sing at whatever tempo/rhythm we like, as long as it’s different from the people around us.  It should sound like a mess, but it does this pulsating, expanding and contracting … thing.  It’s like a singing choir traveling through a bunch of different universes, and the sound warps and changes depending on the physics of the universe they are in at the time. It’s an incredible result for such a simple thing.  But why he does this is even better.  He wants us to represent a crowd of different ages, sizes, genders, backgrounds, all proclaiming Gloria in excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest) each in our own unique way. Pretty cool, huh? So even though there’s obviously a constantly thinking mind in the piece, (to have even conceived to try such a thing) in the moment it effectively moves from spookiness, mystery, tenderness, love, to exaltation.

Here are a couple of pictures of Nico Muhly with our choir director John Maclay.

I’ve started listening to my Christmas playlist, and I see that I really need to add to it. I’ve been listening to the same 70 songs for years now. Please tell me your favorite Christmas pieces, popular, classical, I love all genres (okay, there’s a lot of jazz that doesn’t speak to me, what can I say). I need new music!

This is a picture of the editorial team of Interactions, the ITP newspaper started by Eric Kibble, who, sadly, has since passed away. (ITP=Interactive Telecommunications Program, a grad school program at NYU.) I think it’s from 1987 or 1988. I feel terrible that I can’t name everyone in this picture although I recognize them all. Therefore I’m not naming anyone so the people I can’t name don’t get mad at me.

I’m easy to spot. The one with the bangs in the back. Why wasn’t I smiling?? Extreme Stacy Close-Up below.

Depending on the year, I’m 30 or 31 in this picture, and one or two years away from starting Echo, the business that changed my life and also led to my writing career, something I’ve wanted since I was 9 years old.

I didn’t have a clue then. I’d only gotten out of rehab one or two years before (the year I started grad school) and while my first year was rough—the process of getting back to life and learning how to think again wasn’t easy—by this time I was starting to feel hopeful and happy again. I had no idea how great things would get then, I was just so relieved to not be destroying my life on a daily basis anymore.

Instead I was learning about nested loops, how to animate, writing, meeting all these amazing people. Life was good again. Thank you NYU, Red Burns, and all my fellow students. (And rest in peace Eric Kibble. You were taken so unfairly soon.)

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was sitting in the lobby of the Lenox Hotel, waiting for my friend who was driving back from Boston and giving me a lift, and I was thinking how much I loved sitting there. It was a lovely hotel, in a beautiful city. Why didn’t I pull out my camera?? I took a couple shots of my cousin which didn’t come out well. Once again: loSAH.

There was something about sitting in that lobby though. It was perfect. Their Christmas decorations were tastefully done, only the best Frank Sinatra Christmas music was playing in the background, although my friend thought it was too early for Christmas music. I disagreed. I need to come up with a book idea that would result in me spending a lot of time in Boston.

PS: My temps did fall out again during dinner.

My cousin, William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD, being honored by the VHL Family Alliance.

I’m in Brookline, MA, in my hotel room, chilling out for a bit, before the dinner to honor my cousin. This will be an interesting dinner because my temporary teeth fell out on the way up. I stopped in a drugstore and bought that cement stuff that never really works, and right now my teeth are back in but crooked, and I can’t quite close my mouth all the way, and you just know what is going to happen in the middle of dinner.

Should we take bets? I say it happens if and when I’m introduced to the most senior person at Dana Faber, or when I meet the only single man there my age. They will fall into a glass of water with a nice splash and a plunk noise, just like in the movies, for all to see. Actually, if life were like the movies, I’d end up marrying the cute guy who witnessed my supreme embarrassment.

A ballet school we passed by while I looked for a place to buy a metrocard. I have to get up at the crack of dawn to take the subway to my bus and I’m terrified of missing it.

– I never come upon stray or abandoned cats. The last time was when I was 14 and I went into a public bathroom and there was a lady trying to flush a kitten down a toilet. I started screaming at her and she ran in terror, thank god. (I rescued the kitten, all was okay.) If I had found this little guy, that would have been that. The incredibly sweet story of the recovery of Cheeto, told in pictures mostly.

– A friend of mine has started an effort to bring back the WPA (Works Project Administration). He suggests they begin by photographing and documenting the damage of Hurricane Sandy. That reminds me, I had to drop my camera off to repair the damage from Hurricane Sandy, so I have to borrow a camera for my trip to Boston tomorrow. (There’s a dinner to honor the Von Hippel–Lindau (VHL) disease research conducted by my cousin William Kaelin and Joyce W. Graff.)

– Alright, this one about a failed ceasefire negotiation between the governments of Israel and Hamas is depressing, but maybe when you’re done go back to the story of Cheeto (great cat name, by the way).

Update: This one will cheer you up. The Occupy folks turn a wonderful corner.

This is taken from my bedroom, looking into the window in my kitchen, right before Hurricane Sandy hit. I was restless and ready for something to happen.