I posted this for the first time back in February of 2017. Given today’s news, I needed to re-post it.

I’m fortunate that my life overlapped with hers, and that she left so much behind for us to enjoy, including this performance, which I’ll never tire of watching.

Addendum: Today, the day after she passed, the New York Times ran this article: “When Aretha Franklin Brought Down The House At The Kennedy Center.”

Every year, in early December, Kennedy Center Honors are awarded to five performing artists, or groups, in acknowledgment of their lifetime contributions to American culture.  It’s a weekend-long affair that includes a State Department dinner, a reception at the White House, and a gala performance at the Kennedy Center.  That performance is recorded and broadcast on TV during the fallow period between Christmas and New Years.  As a fan of the performing arts, I watch it every year; as is the case with so much in life, some shows are memorable and some aren’t.

In 2015, the honorees were Rita Moreno, George Lucas, Cecily Tyson, Seiji Ozawa, and Carole King.  King, one of the great singer-songwriters, was the draw for me.  Her tribute was the last one of the evening, and included performances by Janelle Monae, James Taylor, Sara Bareilles, and a couple of cast members from the Broadway musical about King, Beautiful.  And then something really marvelous happened.  Aretha Franklin–73 years old at the time–emerged from the shadows wearing a floor-length fur and holding a sparkly clutch, sat down at the piano, and proceeded to blow the roof off the joint with a performance of one of her signature hits, which was written by King and her late ex-husband, Gerry Goffin: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

There are so many emotions at play here.  There’s the simple love of the song itself (which, like so many people, I discovered on King’s classic album, Tapestry), and all of the memories that have accrued to it over the years.  There’s the realization that Franklin, forty-eight years after first recording the song, remains a force to be reckoned with.  There’s tremendous gratitude for what she and King have given us over the course of their careers.  And there’s the ecstatic reaction of the audience, above all of King herself, who looks, as David Remnick wrote in The New Yorker, like she “is about to fall over the rail.”  Even President Obama was not immune.  King later said, “The cool cat wept!  I loved that.”  And Franklin called it “one of the three or four greatest nights of my life.”

Maybe you’ve already seen this, either the night it aired on CBS, or when it did that proverbial viral thing afterward.  If not, here it is.  Maybe you’ll agree with Remnick’s assessment: “In under five minutes, your life will improve by a minimum of forty-seven per cent.”

That’s certainly true for me.  It’s one of the antidotes I keep close at hand in this era of DJT.