Stacy Horn

I just handed in my book. I’m a little flummoxed. Whenever I hand in a book it’s almost like I disappear. Now what? What am I going to do with myself now that I don’t have a book to work on every day? Which of course isn’t true. I’ve got to fact-check, get to work on promoting the ebook edition of Waiting For My Cats to Die, and many other things. But still, at the moment, I feel out of sorts.

I’m supposed to be on my way to swimming, but I have a cat on me and you know how that goes. Can’t move. The tyranny of the sleeping cat. Speaking of which, did you see the piece in the Times about the new medical procedures (and the costs) for pets?

Sephora has outdoor makeover stations set up over in the Meatpacking district. Weird, but okay.

I saw Bruce Springsteen at the Meadowlands last night thanks to my friend Steven Levy. Excuse me, my BEST friend Steven Levy. What a show. I’ve never seen Springsteen in concert before, I’m struggling to explain my reactions. The music was amazing, but I was just so impressed by Springsteen’s poise on stage. In the face of this massive, massive crowd he managed to project calm, affection, endless graciousness.

This might be old hat to people who have seen him in concert before, and it’s not like I’ve never witnessed someone knew how to work a stage and a crowd, but Bruce Springsteen is pretty much at the top of the heap. The only only person I’ve ever seen to compare to him would be Mick Jagger, except Jagger is a whole other thing, of course. Also, when Jagger is on the stage it’s all about him, and even though it was all about Bruce last night too, he managed to make it feel like it was all about everyone else and he was just as glad to be there having fun with what was happening, too. There was a great moment when he brought two little girls on stage and gave them the mic. It was clearly planned, but it was still sweet.

Plus, he’s a great live singer. Amazing command. And I liked the anger and disappointment expressed in some of the songs, something I can’t help feeling at this stage in life. There’s some pretty screwed up things going on out there.

Anyway, thank you Steven!! I had a marvelous time!

I saw it in Vanity Fair first, but now every news agency has reported that the Perry Street building used for the exterior shots for Carrie’s apartment in Sex and the City was for sale and is now sold.

For the record, the building that was just sold is next door to the actual Sex and the City building. It’s a small thing, and it’s an understandable mistake, just pointing it out.

I think I’m bothering to post about it because I’m fact-checking my book right now, and finding small mistakes, incorrect dates, name spellings, and I’m sure I’ll find a bigger mistake or two before I’m done. The publisher used to have fact-checkers on staff to do this, but now the writer is expected to do their own fact-checking.

You might think, well, of course they should. They should be doing this all along. And we do. I am very careful as I go along, and yet I still make mistakes, and some of them incredibly dumb. But I do think fact-checking should be done by someone other than the author because you’re so close to the book sometimes you just can’t see it anymore.

Coming soon, the store that will be the ruin of me. I will be passing by this store every time I go to and from swimming. I know how my mind words. I will think: I’ve just been swimming. Surely a little bread won’t hurt.

I have so much to do this week I’m freaking out a little bit … lot. I want to post about the Virtual Choir 3 premiere, the fact that Waiting For My Cats to Die just came out in an ebook edition, and other things, but I have to do my taxes, call my friend Chris, and a million other things. So, I will be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I give you pigeons.

These wonderful people had the pigeons eating out of their hands, and …

… they showed this little boy how to do it, creating a bird lover for life probably!

There’s going to be a live stream of the event from Lincoln Center starting at 6:30. I’ll be there! I was lucky and got a pass because I’ll be sneaking in a few lines about it for the end of the book.

I took this last night at Carnegie Hall. The standout pieces for me were Lux Aurumque, Five Hebrew Love Songs, and Cloudburst, which was incredible. The piece was beautiful itself, but as it builds Whitacre had various members of the choir play handbells, and then, right before the cloudburst, they all raise their arms and then they snap their fingers, clap, slap their legs, all these various things that, helped with the acoustics of Carnegie Hall, really really really sounded like rain. I see he wrote this when he was 22. Further proof that composers are not: human.