The Day the Music Died

Okay, so I might be a little melodramatic but I am honestly a little emotional about this...

Chang's firm gave us awesome terrace box tickets to the Hollywood Bowl last night. I am used to taking 20 escalator rides up to the nosebleed bleachers. But we were actually in the second section so I could see the performers' expressions without binoculars. We had little tables in our box so we could eat dinner and then the bowl staff took our trash away and took coffee orders for intermission. So spoiled...I loved it!

Anyhow, Julie Andrews was the host of the evening which highlighted Rodgers and Hammerstein music. As some of you may know, she had surgery on her throat 12 years ago and the doctors damaged her vocal chords and she is no longer able to sing as high or hold a note as long. She hasn't performed live in such a long time so I didn't expect her to sing. But she did...and it wasn't so much of a disappointment as it was a disheartening realization. Her amazingly pure, perfect voice is truly gone. She half sung/half talked her way through any songs that she sang, and at one point, she had a solo which was about anything being possible, and I just started to cry a little.

I know I am being overly emotional but it is like a memory of an amazing meal you eat at a restaurant. Years pass and you can still taste the delicious savory morsels in your mind. And then one day, you finally get the opportunity to go back and eat at that place again, and the meal is nothing like you remembered it. I hate it when that happens, but I don't cry over my plate. This, however, really felt like it is the end of an era. All we have left of that incredible voice is our Sound of Music and Mary Poppins DVDs.