Stacy Horn

Regular readers of my blog know about my cleaning rituals, but for those who don’t:

Every May and November I clean my apartment from top to bottom. Although I’ve given these yearly rituals the rather ordinary names of “Spring Cleaning” and “Holiday Cleaning,” I look forward to them the way other people look forward to vacations. I’ve managed to infuse the thorough burnishing I give my home with all the clean-slate promise these generally hopeful seasons can bring. Twice a year I feel like I’m getting another chance, and I make it fun. While I’m scrubbing the place down or laundering every piece of clothing I own, every simple pleasure is granted and indulged. I light my favorite scented candles. I freely eat whatever I want. Dark chocolate, potato chips, bread, cheese, more bread, it doesn’t matter. I work so hard I always come out calorically ahead. The cats also get all the catnip and extra treats they desire.

These cleanings typically take three or four days, and all throughout there is music. The music of my childhood, (Snoopy’s Christmas) music I fell in love to (Baby, Now That I’ve Found You), my favorite music to belt (Oh Darling) my favorite music to dance around the apartment to (Rhythm of Love) and all my favorite choruses (everything from the Bach Mass in B Minor and many, many others). For at least three days straight I’m singing. Afterwards, when my apartment is sparkling clean, I’ll buy myself a very modestly priced new outfit; I’ll carefully scrutinize all the new nail polish colors and get a pedicure; have my hair done; find the most affordable flowers of the season and fill my apartment, and only then will I finally sit on my couch and bask and bask and bask.

This year, spring cleaning is going to be super-duper. I’ve made appointments to get the windows, rug, and couch cleaned. Woohoo!

People lining up to eat at Red Farm, where I will be sitting outside, doing a thousand loads of laundry. I am the 1%!

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.