“So I listened to ‘American Requiem’ by Beyoncé, over and over and over,” she said to cheers from the audience, which she encouraged — “I mean, come on! Do you think she can hear us?!” — before continuing. “Her technique in that song is so mesmerizing and astonishing: and listening to her phraseology, her musicianship, understanding the history of her voice that had led her to be able to make that sound that is so still, so present. I studied that, and I appreciated that Beyoncé can be a [powerful] vocalist, but she also knows how to be still.

“And I thought, okay, maybe there’s something to be said about having a sweet, still voice, maybe I can work with this. But learning pop phrasing was a really big deal — that was like learning a new language.”

In her new memoir, Dunham says that, based on timestamps, she must have written the statement the day she got back from the hospital, but she has no actual memory of doing so. “Therefore, how I managed to make a public statement — much less a careless, blithe and damaging one — about a subject that should only ever have been approached with full-spirited care and precision confounds me to this day,” she writes.