If you never heard of Susan Boyle, haven’t heard her story yet, go here and enjoy yourself.
When you come back here, you will know what I mean when I say I am feeling like a 15-year-old sophomore in a Studebaker Lark, sitting at a red light waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette.
Somebody – at least two or three people, called “bookers” – knew Susan Boyle could sing like that even as she stood on the stage waiting to start. They must have heard her sing at the local audition, before they invited her to this bigger, televised round of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Of course they kept their mouths shut. On this show, 99 percent of the time, audience and judge reaction is an even bigger appeal to the television audience than the performances themselves. The whole Boyle appearance was geared to the two or three seconds after she started to sing, and the cameras cutting to the judges’ faces.
Not that the rest of us might not feel stunned, and uncomfortable, even if we went to YouTube knowing we were about to see something special. I have been trying to figure out how I feel about myself, grinning so broadly, and patronizingly, at a frumpy spinster putting the media culture in its place. In the end, I find that the world is simply full of these pleasant surprises. A version of the Susan Boyle experience happened to me, and a group of my closest friends, a little over three years ago. On that occasion, it was a beautiful woman taking the stage. She was my wife, at our wedding reception, and, out of the blue, she announced to our guests that she was going to sing to me.
And she did. She faced me, took my hands in hers, and started to sing. “Til There Was You.” Her voice was startlingly clear and beautiful, and a complete surprise. Her beauty and voice shocked me then and instruct me now. Robin Givhan, writing in The Washington Post today, said: “Boyle would not be mesmerizing if she were not an ugly duckling.” Givhan is wrong. My wife was mesmerizing, and she is a knockout. Susan Boyle did not have to be an ugly duckling to create the sensation she did. Most people would be no less shocked – maybe even more shocked – if Paris Hilton had taken the stage and opened her mouth, and we heard Susan Boyle’s voice come out.
The last couple of days, I have watched people coming and going. I have to suppress the urge to go up to each and say, “Can you sing?” I’ll bet some of them really can. I also bet that more than half of them, and more than half of the people I see today and tomorrow and the next day, have something they can really do well, even shockingly well, that I just can’t see. Likewise, as they look at me, they would never see a 15-year-old sophomore sitting in a Studebaker Lark at a stoplight, waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette. I am not making this up. I was thinking this when I was 15 years old. Not Simon Cowell, but some cool dude in a big Chevy hardtop would pull alongside at the light, goose his gas a couple of times at my ugly hamster-powered Lark, and get ready for the light to change.
Unbeknownst to him, under my tiny hood I had a dual carb 327, stroked and bored and waiting to blow this guy’s jaw off when the light turned green. That would have been such fun. In my thoughts, I think I’ll name the Lark the Boylemobile, in her honor.
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