Duet

Remember when you were a little girl and you used to read the TV Guide that came with The Washington Post to find out what shows to watch that week? Remember when you used to commandeer the giant boxy television in the family room whenever there was figure skating showing? Remember recording each program on VHS tapes to watch your favorites over and over again? Remember when you first fell in love with ice dancing? Remember watching Torvill and Dean’s revolutionary “Bolero” and being mesmerized?

Remember when you were a young woman right out of college and you went to Tower Records to peruse the massive CD collection, flipping through titles and when one looked intriguing, taking the CD to the scanner and putting on the giant black headphones to listen? Remember when you first discovered Rachael Yamagata’s EP in the Y section and picked it up purely based on the similarities between your names? Remember when you fell in love with her sultry voice?

Now, you will always remember scrolling through Instagram on your iPhone to see Rachael Yamagata post about her songs being used by the French ice dancing couple, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron. You will always remember looking for the performance on YouTube and upon finding it, immediately placing your right hand on your chest, mouth open, and eyes fixated on the beauty for the entire length of the performance. You will always remember Gabriella’s petal pink costume and Rachael Yamagata singing “Duet” with Ray Lamontagne, and “Sunday Afternoon” as sheer perfection won the 2019 World Figure Skating Championships. A competition that you didn’t even know about because you no longer get The Washington Post and scour the TV Guide and a performance that you would have missed if you hadn’t taken a moment to scroll through Instagram on an ordinary Monday night.

Remember this.

(Watch to the end; you won’t regret it.)

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