Monday, April 20, 2009
Got Susan?
On Saturday April 11 on "Britain's Got Talent", a British talent show comparable American Idol, there debuted an overweight, unemployed, solitary, never-been-kissed 47 year old woman named Susan Boyle. With her caterpillar eyebrows, triple chin, and guileless learning-disabled personality, she shocked the audience and jaded celebrity judges by saucily claiming to be ready for unprecedented fame. They laughed at her, until she started singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables about how life had stolen her dreams, and then she changed their world forever.
This excessively plain spinster from Blackburn Scotland unleashed a voice of heaven that made the people stand cheering and crying, and over a week later the cheering and crying has not stopped. She is by far the biggest internet sensation ever, with her youtube video watched in a matter of days millions more times than the most famous clips of the most famous people have been watched in years. Her name simply is the top searches of Google, both locally and worldwide. No news media in their right mind can resist the fairy tale charm of this unlikely new hero, as fansites spring up across the web, and demand grows for her new career as singer of the human soul. Fortunately, all indications are that Susan is the real deal, and she's eager to begin her new life with every one of us. She promised her dying mother two years before that she would audition for the show, and she's been singing mostly to herself since the age of 12.
I got the youtube link in an email on Monday April 13, and I have been profoundly moved ever since. There is an energy here of the perfect divine storm, with everywhere people proud to admit that Susan made them feel a tear or even cry a gusher. It's not even just Susan that did the trick, but everything around her, including the way she was found, the song she sang, the shock and bliss of the hardest judges, and the state of our world today. Like a character from the epic social commentary of Les Miserables itself, Susan broke all the rules, and made people believe in something more pure, original, and ordinary than they thought was possible.
I love the characterization of Rev. James Martin that we're seeing Susan Boyle through the eyes of God, experiencing the soul and worth inside a plain old human being. That's good, but I think it goes further too, for this unique time in history. In record numbers people around the world are watching Susan sing over and over, and crying cathartically as never before, because Susan is the timely projection for the survival of humanity. The entire world is past a point of no return, and people know it too. Judged by the values of yesterday for superficial beauty and success and promise, our dreams are dead, just like in the song that Susan chose to sing, in which Fantine lies penniless, jobless, unloved and abandoned in the gutter. This is humanity's story now, because we will never live the lives we thought we would, of beautiful people and endless consumption.
The global environment and economy are in tatters, we are all in the gutter of Les Miserables, millions of precious lives are being lost. Our only hope is in the spiritual rebirth that Susan embodies, for the direct experience of innate beauty and talent which go so much deeper than the surfaces which never really mattered. We can hold our heads high and live triumphantly for just being ourselves. By letting go the past and treasuring what we truly are, this is how the planet will be saved. Susan Boyle is a gift from God to reignite the hope in every human being that what was always most valuable has not yet been lost, and is in fact the easiest thing to recognize and reclaim after all. Pure love of dream, talent, soul, a world in which we still belong. Humanity is rising to the song of Susan Boyle, millions more can feel it now.
PS- for the skeptics who say Susan is good but not that good, on pitch but just loud, well that's the showtune style. Here's an amateur recording she did for charity in 1999 that shows much more skill and nuance, singing "Cry me a River", a jazz standard written for Ella Fitzgerald in 1953. If you want to collect Susan's original CD, be prepared to ebay thousands of dollars now!
This excessively plain spinster from Blackburn Scotland unleashed a voice of heaven that made the people stand cheering and crying, and over a week later the cheering and crying has not stopped. She is by far the biggest internet sensation ever, with her youtube video watched in a matter of days millions more times than the most famous clips of the most famous people have been watched in years. Her name simply is the top searches of Google, both locally and worldwide. No news media in their right mind can resist the fairy tale charm of this unlikely new hero, as fansites spring up across the web, and demand grows for her new career as singer of the human soul. Fortunately, all indications are that Susan is the real deal, and she's eager to begin her new life with every one of us. She promised her dying mother two years before that she would audition for the show, and she's been singing mostly to herself since the age of 12.
I got the youtube link in an email on Monday April 13, and I have been profoundly moved ever since. There is an energy here of the perfect divine storm, with everywhere people proud to admit that Susan made them feel a tear or even cry a gusher. It's not even just Susan that did the trick, but everything around her, including the way she was found, the song she sang, the shock and bliss of the hardest judges, and the state of our world today. Like a character from the epic social commentary of Les Miserables itself, Susan broke all the rules, and made people believe in something more pure, original, and ordinary than they thought was possible.
I love the characterization of Rev. James Martin that we're seeing Susan Boyle through the eyes of God, experiencing the soul and worth inside a plain old human being. That's good, but I think it goes further too, for this unique time in history. In record numbers people around the world are watching Susan sing over and over, and crying cathartically as never before, because Susan is the timely projection for the survival of humanity. The entire world is past a point of no return, and people know it too. Judged by the values of yesterday for superficial beauty and success and promise, our dreams are dead, just like in the song that Susan chose to sing, in which Fantine lies penniless, jobless, unloved and abandoned in the gutter. This is humanity's story now, because we will never live the lives we thought we would, of beautiful people and endless consumption.
The global environment and economy are in tatters, we are all in the gutter of Les Miserables, millions of precious lives are being lost. Our only hope is in the spiritual rebirth that Susan embodies, for the direct experience of innate beauty and talent which go so much deeper than the surfaces which never really mattered. We can hold our heads high and live triumphantly for just being ourselves. By letting go the past and treasuring what we truly are, this is how the planet will be saved. Susan Boyle is a gift from God to reignite the hope in every human being that what was always most valuable has not yet been lost, and is in fact the easiest thing to recognize and reclaim after all. Pure love of dream, talent, soul, a world in which we still belong. Humanity is rising to the song of Susan Boyle, millions more can feel it now.
PS- for the skeptics who say Susan is good but not that good, on pitch but just loud, well that's the showtune style. Here's an amateur recording she did for charity in 1999 that shows much more skill and nuance, singing "Cry me a River", a jazz standard written for Ella Fitzgerald in 1953. If you want to collect Susan's original CD, be prepared to ebay thousands of dollars now!
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My singer-daughter can't quite comprehend the fuss about Susan Boyle. She says "she's really not all THAT good!" I say that SB had a great impact on the show because she is RELATIVELY better than other contestants, AND because she certainly showed the sneering Simon and the Prickly Piers not to judge a song-book by its cover. "But she's REALLY not that good!" she replies. And you know, the more I hear my young daughter sing, the more I believe her. But, you go, girl, even though you are 47. The British morning TV shows have SB all dolled up with makeup and straightened blonder hair now, so she's already been "repackaged". I thought her earthiness was part of the charm...
# posted by 
: 1:05 PM
: 1:05 PM
What did your daughter think of Cry Me a River? At any rate, Susan doesn't have to be the best to touch people. I like to think that something about her hard-luck late-bloomer background comes through her voice.
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