I met a friend at the MET Friday night where we strolled the exhibits and were surprised by not one but two different musical events going on. A choir was singing in the large glassed enclosure of the Temple of Dendur. The acoustics were great. Another area featured what sounded like 20s-30s era music, but with a bit of a Beat rhythm going on…but what I know about music resides almost entirely in turning the amp up to 11.

As it’s only a few blocks away from where I live I get there a lot and just wander, sort of my own night at the museum…except there are a lot of other people there doing the same thing. I must be in a very museum frame of mind as I just finished reading Dry Storeroom No. 1 about the British Museum of Natural History. It’s a mix of memoir, history, social study, and science overview that, while not always riveting, was filled with enough brilliant nuggets that I kept reading to the end. A few of the real live scientists profiled in the book mirrored all too eerily some of the mannerisms and drive of my Prince Tykkin character (who in addition to being heir to the throne is a noted compendiast). I had researched that aspect of the Prince’s character for Darkness, but it was fascinating to learn – in detail – just how driven some of these scientists are in their quest for knowledge, or the sometimes less than noble reasons for that quest.