Beverly Sills, music, and aging

This is where I spend most of my time at work. You will notice the wave keyboard and orthopedic mouse. Also the theater monitor screen, which is more for opening several docs at once for reference and comparison.

Just the floaters that swim around in my eyes (I know they really don't!) can make me swear there's a comma rather than a period at the end of a sentence. Needless to say, unless I'm 8" from the laptop screen, I always bump the magnification to 150-200%. Don't get me started on dotted note values in music...

This issue of reading music is looming on my horizon. It may come down to a race between which goes first, the eyes or the voice. The limiting feature of musical scores is that the larger the notes/words, the larger and heavier the printed edition, and the more pages to turn. The only solution I can see at the moment is magnifying glasses. This would mean scaring myself or the conductor to death with alien bug-eyes, or relying on peripheral vision to watch the conductor.

I refuse to give up my musical endeavors. I just hope that I have the perspicacity and class to bow out before I 1) make a pitiful fool of myself, or 2) compromise the musicianship of a group. One of my sheroes, Beverly Sills, the gifted opera soprano, retired at the peak of her career. I admire her more for dealing with the personal loss she must have felt than for reasons 1) and 2) above.

Ms. Sills filled her life with activities just as meaningful as performing at the Metropolitan Opera. After retiring from singing, she became the director of the New York City Opera, elevating the organization to the top of the field. She didn't stop there--she eventually directed the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center.

Even as she guided the fortunes of these stellar organizations, she managed to raise more than $70 million over ten years as national chair of the March of Dimes Mothers' March on Birth Defects.

My musical career is miniscule in comparison. I hope that when the time comes, if it does, I have the integrity to make as graceful an exit as she did.

Brava, Bubbles. You made the world a better place in many ways. We miss you.