Stacy Horn

Yesterday I fact-checked for close to seven hours straight on one chapter. It’s a very science-heavy chapter that I spent months on, doing my best to synthesize all the singing research I’d found and to make it accessible. I was going back to make sure I hadn’t made any mistakes.

I had. Not too many! Also, my understanding of the science has grown, so I also reworded some sections that I didn’t think accurately described the findings I was writing about. But it’s done, done, done! I’d been agonizing about fact-checking that chapter and now it is OV-VAH.

If you buy my book, when you come to the chapter about the composer named Victoria, please think of me sitting at my computer one day, going over that chapter fact by fact, sentence by sentence, hour after hour. I didn’t stop to eat. Sometimes Finney was curled up on me, sometimes Buddy. And, since I had piles and piles of studies all around me, sometimes Buddy napped on top of the the papers and I had to gently ease whichever one I needed out from underneath him, and sometimes it was Finney.

Yeah, definitely reward time. This is the Empire State Building. I’m happy about the little glowing man in the walk sign in the corner of the picture.

I was fact-checking my book yesterday and discovered that I had a fact wrong about the Titanic, which led to an hours-long side trip researching Titanic trivia. By sheer coincidence, early on in my book is a small mention of a woman who died on the Titanic, when she gave her seat up to another woman, and later I have a small mention of a man who survived. I wondered if by chance the woman who took the seat and the man I wrote about were on the same lifeboat. They weren’t.

But this led to a whole thing of researching who was in each lifeboat, the order the lifeboats were put out; I read testimonies of the crew and survivors about those final hours. That was pretty horrible, I don’t recommend it, particularly the stories of the last two collapsible lifeboats that went out, A and B. They’d been swept away and were used as rafts. The people who were on them were forced to turn away anyone who swam up afterwards, there simply wasn’t enough room. Imagine being in that position.

The man I wrote about who survived, was the great-nephew of someone else I wrote about in a later chapter. I found so many of these “cross-overs” I call them. I don’t put them in the book, because they’re not really relevant, but I’ve been keeping track of them.

I took this shot from the bus window on the way to the Springsteen concert.

Sometimes I stay in all day to work. Like today. It’s a beautiful day, there’s a wonderful spring scent, I can hear the birds, but I’m going to stay in and fact-check. I was contemplating swimming for a while, but I made the decision to get straight to work instead.

I just now changed out of my pajama bottoms and into my exercise pants. There was no reason to really, but never getting out of pajama bottoms all day feels loser-ish to my so I changed. Pajama bottoms=loser, exercise pants=not-loser.

I took this on my way to the Virtual Choir 3 premiere at Lincoln Center. I was taking a picture of the Virtual Choir 3 name scrolling by in lights on one of the lower steps.

– The recent Masterpiece Theatre production of Great Expectations. It was absolutely amazing. Gillian Anderson’s Miss Haversham was the most haunting Miss Haversham to date. I have to also credit the set and costume design people, and the camera people. The increasing mold on the walls, brilliant, and that last scene of her coming down the stairs! Download it, find it, watch it, everyone was great in it.

– The composer Nico Muhly. Anyone familiar with him? Where should I start? I listened to one piece, now I forget the name, but I’ve never heard anything like it, it was brilliant. The singers didn’t sound human (in a very good way).

– The guitarist Brady Cohen. Are you watching American Idol? That amazing lead guitarist who frequently plays on stage? His name is Brady Cohen.

– Speaking of American Idol, I’m sorry, and I know she was raised that way, but I can’t abide Skylar because of all the animal-killing lust. She can’t wait to get home to kill a deer. Some day we will have evolved enough and we won’t do this anymore. Maybe for entirely selfish reasons, as people slowly accept that they can live longer and better with different diets. Until then, I can’t warm up to someone who not only thinks it’s necessary to kill, but enjoys it.

A pigeon spa.

Which means: automatic good mood! We had our first rehearsal with the full orchestra and all the soloists. It’s a huge orchestra, with incredible pounding drums. So dramatic. Man, Verdi can write! From our conductor’s email to us last night:

“Verdi KNEW how to compose, for the voice, for the chorus, for the orchestra and all the players in it. All we need to do is tune in to the instructions he left for us, and the performance will reveal itself. He is the most profoundly human of performers, and to understand him merely requires you to channel your humanity – well that, plus a bit of virtuosity.”

I wrote my friends and family who are coming tonight to be on the lookout for a particular moment (actually three). But the Verdi Requiem is wonderful from beginning to end.