Susan Boyle

The first image of Susan Boyle was a frowzy older women quietly sitting eating a sandwich in a room teeming with hopefuls waiting to perform on the British TV reality show, “Britain’s Got Talent.” She came forward for a quick backstage interview and cheerfully admitted that she was never married, and in fact had never been kissed and lived alone with her cat Pebbles.

Now picture a women with the physique of a stout pickle striding across the empty stage in sensible shoes, with a ribbon of sorts situated where one could imagine a waist once was. She was wearing a matronly scooped neck lace number the same color of her pasty skin, and a contestant’s number was slapped haphazardly across her ample bosom. When the judges asked her where she lived, she forgot the name of her village. Then the judge grimaced at her age of 47, and in response did a very embarrassing bump and grind, which left both the audience and judges squirming uncomfortably in their seats.

She indicated that she was ready to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from the Les Miserables. She faced three sharp tongued and cynical judges and an audience who presumably harbored a bizarre fascination in watching delusional singers totally humiliate themselves in front of a jeering crowd. The introductory notes started and there were several moments of tension as everyone braced for some sort of atonal croak. With a slight furrow of her uni-brow and clench of her double chin, Susan opened her mouth and sang.

Within one stanza of the song, the audience was on their feet cheering; her voice was brilliant. The judges sat in slack-jawed shock. But it was not so much her stunning soaring voice, but to me what was most remarkable was that it came out of this – let’s face it – total frump. We rarely experience anything with a single sense, and are accustomed to seeing the visual trump the auditory – a marginal singing talent can be compensated by tarty outfits and makeovers. Food that smells good tastes good. Food that smells bad, like steamed cauliflower, can’t overcome the bad first impression unless there is enough butter and parmesan cheese.

The other remarkable thing was that her clear, liquid singing voice bore no resemblance to her slightly shrill and squawky speaking voice. Athletes tend to look athletic so it is not too surprising to see LeBron dunk. And sports physiologists have drooled over Michael Phelps physique, and have poked and prodded it to show that his arms are the perfect length for the butterfly stroke and his narrow and deep chest is ideally proportioned to maximize his lung capacity. But with singers, how can you know? Someone should crawl inside this women’s larynx to document its exquisite mechanics, investigate how it interacts with her lungs, because Susan can really belt it out, how it interacts with her eardrums since she is pitch perfect and then figure out how the whole package is connected to her heart – this woman was singing with effective emotion, far beyond what her limited never-been-kissed life experience would suggest. A previous show had featured someone called Paul Potts who similarly walked onto the stage in an ill-fitting suit with the improbable dream to sing opera. He explained that he never had any confidence since he was relentlessly teased as a child, perhaps due to his unfortunate name that prompted potty humor derision, or a comparison to the genocidal Cambodian despot Pol Pot. Or maybe it was his weird snaggle tooth that made you wince when he smiled. But as soon as he opened his mouth, like Susan, his singing voice bore no relationship to his speaking voice and he just stunned the audience.

Susan approached the most challenging part of the song – a series of rising notes that would blow out an average person’s larynx. But she nailed them. Now the entire audience and the judges were in rhapsodic awe. She wrinkled up her pug nose and when she nodded in recognition you could see a bald spot around her jagged part. She finished with a flourish and when the judges gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up, she stamped her feet in excitement and did a fist pump, which set her kimono arms wagging. The cynical crowd rose to its feet in appreciation of this triumphant underdog.

You also knew that you were witness to the first rush of pure, undiluted joy and saw Susan guilelessly exulting in her performance and her dream goal of performing before a live audience. The news of her performance spread quickly around the world and the press descended on her Scottish village, she was interviewed on the morning news shows, and there is talk about her appearance on Oprah. Reporters immediately wanted to know if she was going to have a makeover, do something about her grey thinning frizzy hair or whether she had been fielding marriage proposals – all a patronizing and barely designed cruelty targeting her physical appearance. Who knows how this experience will change this unassuming and modest person, but I did notice that by the time of his last performance on Britain Has Talent, Paul Potts had gotten himself a snappy new tuxedo, his snaggle tooth was gone, most importantly the element of surprise was gone.

Before she sang, the judge had asked why her dream of becoming a singer had not worked out and she simply said, “Well nobody has given me a chance before.” At the conclusion of her song you are left with the powerful message that nothing deserves to be casually dismissed and that the hidden talents that surely surround us are routinely squandered. I am thinking of some sort of unassuming frog who is quietly harboring the perfect cure for cancer beneath his moist and delicate skin. But his swamp is being drained and his muddy pothole is shrinking. The next pothole is across the new highway that has divided his dwindling habitat. With a timid croak he tries to hop across the hot tarmac but splat…