January 17th, 2019

I went to a play last night!

Several months ago I mentioned that some ladies from my Pilates Class invited me to join them for a series of local plays here on the island.  Delighted to be invited, of course I agreed without even knowing the names of the plays or the dates of the performances.  

I enjoy live theatre tremendously and since we are fortunate to have not only two separate live performance venues here on the island, we are even luckier that they are both really good at what they do.

This one was called, "Always, Patsy Cline".  Now I knew some of Patsy Cline's music.  I went to high school in Texas so the two very new-to-me things I was introduced to were Football and Country music.  One of them "took" the other did not.  I leave it to you to guess which is which.

I didn't even look at the name of the play until the beginning of January when I opened my new calendar and kind of scanned it for events.  I saw all of the Pilates classes already on there, a few doctor appointments, my teaching and museum schedules and ......  the play.  Exciting!  Something to look forward to and is not an every day sort of thing.  Now where on earth did I put those tickets?  I know it was someplace safe...hmmmm

Fortunately, in this much smaller house, there are remarkably few places to put something for safe keeping and I found the tickets.  The one on top was the one I was looking for and I read the title of the play.  "Hmm Patsy Cline, eh?"  My memory banks riffled through the music file and the song, "Crazy" popped into my head.  I think I had that song stuck in my mind for about a week.  Then finally it went away and was immediately replaced by, "Stupid Cupid."   Yup, my brain played one song after another of Patsy Cline's until last night.

First we all met for dinner.  Ten women at one long table eating salad and pizza and talking and laughing, yeah I think we probably stood out in the crowd.  But we had a good time. It was a nice preface to the performance even though throughout the evening, my brain continued to earworm her music, one song after another.  You'd think the noise of the restaurant in general and our group in particular would have drowned it out, but nope.

Finally we walked over one street to the performance.  It was wonderful.  It was, basically, a two woman show.  The actress playing Patsy, who had an amazing singing voice, and the actress playing her fan slash friend, Louise.  The play is supposedly a true story and told through the eyes and speaking voice of the friend, Louise.  Apparently they met at one of Patsy's performances fairly early in her career and they became good friends. Maybe even best friends.  It was a great show and I enjoyed every second of it.  But I was surprised by the ending.

You see, while I knew some of Patsy's Clines music, I didn't know anything at all about her.  For instance, I didn't know that she was born in Virginia and that her real first name was also Virginia.  Nope didn't know that. I didn't know that her daddy was a Blacksmith!  Also was unaware that she was one of the first country artists to successfully cross over to "Pop" music.  Or that she was only 15 when she first performed on the radio and was immediately a success.

Probably the most surprising thing was that she was only 30 years old when she died in a plane crash.  How sad is that.  She ended her amazing and incredibly successful career by joining an elite and incredibly tragic club.  Famous Musicians who met their end in plane crashes.  So I suppose if you believe in heaven, there is one heck of a great band there.

Buddy Holly
Richie Valens
The Big Bopper (aka JP Richardson)
Otis Redding
Jim Croce
Lynard Skynyrd
John Denver
aaliyah
Jenni Rivera
Troy Gentry

To be fair, Mr. Gentry's fatal crash was a helicopter not a plane, but still it was airborne and I think it counts.

That is a rather substantial group of people!  I guess anyone who travels that much as a part of their livelihood exceeds the normal odds of experiencing a plane crash, but were I a famous musician, I might consider travel by other means.

Can you imagine how much more amazing music those preformers might have created if not for their early demises?  Kind of makes me a little teary.

Well that's kind of a sad note to end a blog post on.  I'm sorry.  I will leave you with this.  If you have the opportunity to see," Always Patsy Cline",  (which is how she ended all of the letters she wrote to her friend Louise) as a live performance, don't pass up the opportunity.  You don't have to be a fan to enjoy this show.  And if that list above only teaches you one thing it should be to never pass up an opportunity.  Even if I live to be a hundred years old, I will still not feel as if I had experienced enough of what the universe has to offer.  Even when life is long, it's still too  short.