The spirit of the stairs
June 4, 2009
In my ongoing quest to find a new Tori – that’s a new Tori Amos, I came across Vienna Teng.
Tori Amos is Abnormally Attracted to Sin
It’s not that I’m breaking up with Tori; I’m just exploring her alternatives. Her new album “Abnormally Attracted to Sin” is a little different from its predecessors. It’s not bad. I’ve listened to it six or seven times now and it gets better with each interlude. But somewhere along the way, Tori started working on a thesis about the duality of womankind according to society. She began wearing costumes and wigs. She keeps trying to prove that women can have a personality spectrum rather than being strictly either mothers or whores. And now she’s trying to say that sin is relatively “sinful.” In other words, one woman’s sin is another woman’s glory.
That’s okay. I don’t believe in moralizing for others either. But she’s gotten really, REALLY skinny in the process of unshackling her inner diva. Either she’s ill, or she’s conforming to the skinny standard. (Damn!)
When I first fell in love with her, it was just her and Bo, her Bosendorfer piano. But now her music is all whistles and screeches as the band plays on. Where’s Bo now? And where’s the Tori who helped me find my inner peace after my Dad died when I was 15? Where’s the Tori who asked, “Why do we crucify ourselves?” without postulating that all people hate themselves to begin with? Where’s the Tori who spoke sweetly of fairies and “Ribbons Undone?” Where’s the girl who was “everybody else’s” and “Silent All These Years?”
That’s the Tori I fell in love with: the voice in my head.
And now I have new challenges to face, adult challenges: money, purpose, love, etc. I needed to find another peace and so I needed another artist with purity and truth. I went looking and I found her. With Vienna Teng, there are no costumes, screeches or highbrow theories about the way the world works. I discovered her music, put on my headphones, and danced the night away in my kitchen. (Check out samples on her site! “Harbor” and “Gravity” are two of my favorites.)
Vienna Teng is a Warm Stranger
Perhaps I found a new love here because Vienna has given me back the poetry that Tori used to write. Perhaps it’s because her songs are full of emotion, less so of ideas. Perhaps it’s because instead of working to understand the message, I find myself floating on a tune.
And I know that part of the allure comes down to the revival of the piano in its solitary glory! Like Tori, Vienna started playing when she was barely able to talk: at the tender age of 5. She claims that 12 years of informal piano lessons at home – rather than in a conservatory – changed her life. She learned to sing in the shower and at school in the choir. But hers is a sound that is untainted by the strict rules of proper form. She has the voice of a child: sweet and innocent.
Though she’s Stanford-educated, her music hasn’t yet become over thought. (”Sail your sea, meet your storm; all I want is to be your harbor. The light in me will guide you home…”) It doesn’t ask me to think; if forces me to feel.
So naturally, I found myself at a concert in New York City a couple months ago. Being without a girlfriend to drag to this “chamber folk” experience, I of course made my husband accompany me. I had a slight pang of guilt the whole time and recalled putting make-up on my little brothers when we were children – I didn’t have sisters, you see. My husband, like my accommodating brothers before him, obliged. He smiled at me and held my hand while tears rolled down my cheeks. I didn’t feel like I was in a concert hall at all. I felt like I was home in my kitchen, dancing in a nightie and headphones.
During the intermission, he went and bought me a t-shirt and the new album: “Inland Territory.” He bought me as many drinks as I wanted, and since I was drinking vodka, I didn’t realize how many I’d had until the bill came. But like the true gentleman he is, he didn’t blink an eye or break a sweat…he paid the tab and smiled at me with great affection. A pro crybaby escort he has become after countless Tori concerts. He says he loves to go to see me react, to see my soul swell. (He also once told me that he likes to wait in line with me; that it’s never boring. Isn’t that sweet?)
After the concert, Vienna waited in the wings to greet her admirers and sign copies of their newly purchased albums. My husband helped me get in line and guided me to its conclusion where he presented me to Vienna. At first, she took my album without observing that my head was bent over nervously so that I could avoid eye contact. But then she glanced in my direction as my husband coaxed me closer to her and encouraged me to speak. And when the opportunity presented itself, I opened my mouth and said, “You sound like the inside of my head.”
The remark must have been a hit for it elicited a warm response. Vienna embraced me, though my body language still presented me as an aloof and and insecure person. That should have sufficed. I should have stopped there.
But then I went on to say, “When I first heard my music…I mean your music…”
“Well, it’s your music now,” she said and laughed.
“Those drinks were strong,” I added shaking my head. “When I first heard your music, I danced in my kitchen.”
Then I hugged her, as if one hug weren’t enough. The nerve!
Following this embarrassing display, I should have taken her cues and exited up the stairs to my left, but I wasn’t finished. I said, knowing that she too is an admirer of the Great Tori, “Ya know, Tori Amos got me through high school and you’re just about on par.”
Then I slapped her twice on the arm and headed for the stairs. I heard her autopilot say, “Okay, I hope to see you again soon.”
So there I was, on the staircase leading to the exit and being haunted by its spirit, or as the French say: L’esprit de l’escalier. “Great,” I thought. “Now I can’t go to any of her other concerts for a while, at least not without a disguise. If she sees me, she’ll think I’m a crazy stalker. ‘Oh, there goes that crazy kitchen lady,’ she’ll say.”
It’s not that I would tell Vienna something witty or make a stinging retort to any of her words if I had it to do over. But I have wished since that evanescent encounter that I had said the right thing, whatever that is. I wish that I could have seemed sophisticated instead of tongue-tied and intoxicated. Perhaps I should have asked for a picture of the two of us and simply complimented her dress and hair. Maybe the best thing would have been to say nothing at all.
My husband – who likes to go to concerts and movies with me when I will inevitably cry on his shoulder and subsequently light up with joy in the aftermath of catharsis, and who likes to wait in line with me despite the act’s otherwise boring elements – told me that I came off as sweet and real. (He has to say that!)
My biggest concern is that Vienna may have been stung by my pretentious comparison of her own beautiful music with Tori’s. Who am I to say? I’m just a not-so-casual admirer of the pair.
But they aren’t a pair at all! That’s what I realized when wrestling with the spirit of the stairs. Tori is Tori. Vienna is Vienna. And I am me: just me. I need to learn to live with my silly whims, emotional frenzies and way-too-intense declarations. I need to be able to wait in line with me too; in fact, I need to be able to look forward to it with excitement instead of trepidation. This and other memories like it – “the scars that words have carved on me” – are haunting and crippling me. I have to forget them.
Begone, spirit of the stairs! Begone!
As I said before, the search for a new Tori is ongoing…maybe I’ll find another voice in my head to make a perfect first impression on!
Bea Arthur bows out
Bea Arthur...very tall, very funny
Maude Findlay was 47 years old and pregnant. What to do? Bring an unwanted baby into the home of two “over the hill” misfits in an unstable marriage? Disrupt her life – not to mention risk it - for almost a year and then give the baby away to mythically perfect adoptive parents? Abort the pregnancy?
This must have been a tough decision for Maude. But it was really a choice for Bea Arthur who, in playing Maude on Maude in 1972 – before the monumental Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, two months later - became the first actress to portray a lead character undergoing an abortion in television history.
However did Arthur reconcile her decision to play the liberal-minded, outspoken housewife who befriends homosexuals, supports the civil rights movement and advocates legal abortion? And Maude was the f-word too: f- f- f- feminist! Was that even allowed in 1972? Ms. Magazine was less than a year old and the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded a mere five years before that. And then came Maude: mouthing off to her husband, harnassing her own reproductive rights, and taking a part-time job despite her hubby’s antiquated protests.
Last week, I read that Arthur (5/13/1922 – 4/25/2009) had died. I cried. I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for all women who – however subtly – have chiseled away at the myths, the stereotypes and the expectations that make it difficult for other-than-standard beauties to thrive in this superficial world of ours. Standing 5 feet, 9 inches tall on bare feet and bellowing sarcasm with a distinctively low, husky voice, Arthur broke the mold. How? Perhaps, by simply not being afraid of it: “I can’t stay home waiting for something different,” she said once. “I think it’s a total waste of energy worrying about typecasting.”
After a semi-successful career in theatre, the actress broke into television with a memorable performance on All in the Family, from which Maude spun off. It was a picaresque show, really, because every good thing Maude wanted to do with the best of intentions always went wrong. But she was likable enough for most with her big heart and contrarily acerbic wit.
And later, in 1985, there came The Golden Girls: a show about four middle-aged to senior women living it up together in sunny Miami, Florida. As Dorothy Zbornak, Arthur wasn’t nearly as socially clumsy as Maude had been; but Zbornak was the butt of everybody’s jokes about being unattractive and sexless over the age of 50. The show won the Emmy for “Best Comedy Series” twice, in 1986 and 1987, and garnered each of the four women Emmy’s for their individual performances.
Arthur became famous for her deadpan sarcasm with lines like: You’ll have to excuse my mother. She suffered a slight stroke a few years ago which rendered her totally annoying…and…Well, I guess after a hard night of pillaging and raping, a Viking would want a little something to go with his cocoa.
I loved The Golden Girls. It gave me something to look forward to – namely fun and friendship…and cheesecake - in those years after my youth has faded and – as Hollywood has always envisioned it for me - my life is over. Here were four women who looked after themselves and each other. Men were accessories, often present for the sake of “war between the sexes” comic spectacle. Men were always disposable; until, as television luck would have it, Dorothy married Blanche’s (Rue McClanahan) uncle Lucas, played by Leslie Nielsen. The show fell apart when Dorothy left and was canceled the following season.
Dorothy was difficult to love for some, as Maude had been before her. I found her sarcasm funny, but when I wrote to my mother about Arthur’s death she couldn’t commiserate: “I found it difficult to watch her,” my mother wrote. ”Not because of the issues but because she was so loud (coarse, rude) about them. It is possible that loud is necessary to get attention for these issues about which I was already on board. Too close for comfort, maybe.”
What’s of particular interest to me is that, perhaps like many, I had always assumed that the coarseness of Arthur’s characters – the stuff of my mother’s discomfort – went part and parcel with her “real” self. But apparently, the real Bea Arthur wasn’t loud or rude in private life. And remarkably – though they reportedly consumed more than 100 of them during the taping of The Golden Girls over seven seasons – Arthur hated cheesecake! So she opened her mouth AND she stuffed her face for show business – and feminism!
In an Entertainment Weekly tribute, McClanahan remembered Arthur’s softer side:
As a friend she was giving and loving to me. She was a very close, quiet, rather timid person, very gentle. I saw someone say something once that they didn’t mean to be a cutting remark, but it hit her wrong, and she immediately burst into tears. That was not seen very often, but those emotions were right under the surface…That height…and that deep voice, and that manner she was able to summon up, made people think she would be difficult. But she wasn’t.
Another costar Betty White called Arthur “a big part of my life,” while writer-producer Mitchell Hurwitz added, “I really loved her…Her warmth wasn’t superficial – it was genuine and bespoke true compassion. And it was this same inner sweetness that made her comedy so real and touching, and made her such an inspiration,” in another EW article.
Just as she was sweeter than her television incarnations, Arthur was the unlikely “women’s libber” too. She was married to stage director Gene Saks for 28 years (1950-1978) and the couple adopted two sons. Arthur maintained during her Maude era that “I’ve never felt that being a wife and mother isn’t enough,” according to this source.
Later on after their divorce, Arthur began to question the meaning of female identity as juxtaposed with marriage: “I don’t think I ever truly believed in marriage anyway,” she told an interviewer in 1985. “I guess marriage means that you’re a woman and not a…person.”
Recalled McClanahan:
I think, in both of those shows, we really did change the perception of a woman’s role. I don’t think anybody thought that it was okay to be a feminist back when she was doing Maude. And I’m sure that [show] released a lot of inhibitions. I know The Golden Girls certainly did because I’ve got fan mail saying “Thank you for allowing me to act and dress like I feel.” Because in those days, when you were over 50, you were supposed to be wearing certain types of clothes and behaving a certain way. And women were writing saying “Thank you, thank you, thank you for the freedom, for the release, for the permission.” And I’m sure Bea got that same kind of fan mail, too.
What is okay behavior for a married woman vs. a single gal? How much money am I supposed to make? Who am I really? These are ongoing discussions I hold with myself – not to mention in this forum. What I appreciate most about Bea Arthur is that she brought these issues to life as a fearless performer of women on the fringe of social acceptance: the sassy yet earnest housewife of an archaic thinker and the sarcastic yet intelligent over-50 divorcee who’s continually disappointed in life. She made these women likable to me – thus, I’m not afraid to turn out unloved by others. I can love me.
Bea Arthur on Broadway - Just Between Friends
The real Bea Arthur always wanted to sing on the stage, despite the mediocrity of her singing voice. Hers was a variety show with music and comedy, the kind only she could deliver. “I wanted to see if I had the guts to just come and be myself,” she told the audience at one performance of her one woman Broadway show Just Between Friends in December, 2001.
She was 79 years old and had finally reached the pinnacle of her career. I’m 29 and nowhere near that spot. Arthur would probably tell me that there’s no rush.
I was glad to read that today’s funny women of television know how much they’ve benefitted from Arthur playing Maude with integrity. Tina Fey told Entertainment Weekly in an interview, “You could argue that every strong female comedy character, from Murphy Brown to Roseanne to Amy Poehler rapping at nine months pregnant on (Saturday Night Live), is in some way indebted to Maude and to Bea Arthur. Ms. Arthur sandwiched both sides of Three’s Company - Maude was before, and Golden Girls was after - and made TV a little safer for women.”
But, Tina, with topics like abortion to play out, she made the world safer for real women too!
Marriage, shmarriage… (Carrie Prejean vs. Perez Hilton)
April 23, 2009
Legal same-sex marriage has come to fruition in some of our United States. Not because everybody believes that all people should be allowed to enter into a marriage contract with their person of choice and receive equal rights and privileges under the law alongside heterosexuals, but because some people do. And gay rights activists should be proud of their achievement, which seems to be growing and spreading into the most unexpected places. To recap: same-sex marriage is currently legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and will soon be legal in Iowa (April 27, 2009) and Vermont (September 1, 2009).
Connecticut? The stingy, puritanical state with the highest average rate of per capita income (as of 2007, according to the United States Commerce Department) and the low average rate of pre-tax income charitable giving (1.3 percent as of 2005 according to Forbes.com)? Iowa? The seemingly conservative state nestled snugly in the Bible Belt?
Of course, I’m generalizing, which is unfair. While some people who live in these states may be opposed to same-sex marriage, others are not…though neither belief can be said to define the whole state in question. What this legality means for American homosexuals is that they will soon be able to live in legal matrimony in four states where heterosexuals must – by law – tolerate them. This is progress and it is good.
Unfortunately - even though he might have good intentions - the celebrity gossip blabbermouth known as Perez Hilton has set this progress back a bit by refusing to exercise tolerance for those with a different perspective. Apparently it’s all or nothing with him. As a judge at the 2009 Miss USA Pageant on April 19, Hilton posed a question regarding same-sex marriage to contestant Carrie Prejean, Miss California. Here’s her response:
Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and in, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think that it should be between a man and a woman.
Needless to say, out-and-proud Hilton was not pleased with her response and responded by calling her a “dumb bitch” on his blog the following day. He later “apologized” for his attack saying that he was “just soooo angry, hurt, (and) frustrated by her answer.” He took down his initial post but has left this reminder of its sting:
Carrie Prejean, according to Perez Hilton
See, to me, that illustration is much more offensive than her remarks at the pageant. (I think that image implies that she may have gotten to the top of the pageant circuit by “alternative means.”) Let me explain how her remarks don’t justify the shock and disdain they were greeted by. For starters, it seems to me that Prejean championed the equal rights of homosexuals saying, “I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other,” referring to the choice of marrying a person of either one’s own or opposite sex. Furthermore, her personal belief that the word “marriage” is applicable to heterosexual unions ONLY is the majority viewpoint in this country, though it doesn’t mean that most Americans (Prejean included) advocate hatred. According to one recent poll, while 60 percent of the country is in favor of some kind of legal union between homosexuals, only one third of Americans support same-sex marriage. Even our liberal political pantheon (the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, etc.) don’t advocate same-sex “marriage.” But Miss California: she’s the real villain? From where she stands, she has no ability to impact laws and amendments to the Constitution, crown or no crown.
This issue is truly semantic. As a non-Christian, should I transition the label of my union from “marriage” to “civil union” because I’m not religious, even though I am married to someone of the opposite sex? Marriage, shmarriage… It doesn’t matter to me what you call it; I want everybody to have the right to do it. I feel the same way about polygamy. As long as my tax dollars aren’t supporting the wives and children that a polygamous husband chooses to ignore financially – and as long as there’s no abuse involved, sexual or otherwise – why can’t polygamists have the “marriage” they want?
It seems that Hilton – who is himself the beneficiary of the free speech amendment as a blogger who often has less than eloquent things to say about people in the public eye – is not in favor of free speech for people who don’t share his opinions.
Or perhaps this whole thing is just a publicity stunt?
If that’s the case, and nobody’s feelings are really hurt, then this incident is upsetting me on several levels. In the first place, it’s taking attention from “real” news that’s more important: the state of the economy, women’s rights in the Middle East – and everywhere, new advances in the fields of science and technology, etc. The fact that CNN has devoted so much of its air time to this fiasco – booking Hilton on Larry King Live, for one thing – demonstrates once again the way this news network has devolved to tabloid journalism. (Good thing I don’t work for CNN, or it might have fired me for that declaration just like it did Chez Pazienza! Check out his blog. It’s definitely a better click than the one you might make to Hilton’s blog.) Hopefully this story will get lost in the haze of what CNN considers to be newsworthy: “Octomom” and her antics, tracking the outcome of reality television competitions, and the comings and goings of Sarah Palin and her daughter’s ex-fiance, to name a few of its hot topics.
But what REALLY bugs me about this is the fact that it forces me – a feminist blogger – to defend a beauty queen: a woman participating in a competition that reduces her to the status of an inanimate object. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not that kind of feminist. If Prejean is happy doing what she is, then I believe she should enjoy herself and I’m sorry that expressing her personal opinion may have cost her first place in the Miss USA Pageant. I’m the kind of feminist who thinks women should do whatever makes them happy without harming others: from raising kids to performing in porn movies to running businesses to running for President… But Prejean is not the person we should be listening to when we want to have a serious discussion about issues like same-sex marriage. She’s not qualified to make decisions about that for the mindless idiots who might hear her answer and agree with it because she’s very pretty! That spot should be reserved for somebody who has considered both sides of the argument and can render a “fair” decision, or at least for somebody who is prepared to answer the question with clarity. In a beauty pageant, the questions are a surprise.
Come to think of it, I don’t think Hilton should be the one to represent the gay community either. He’s definitely not qualified. And he’s made it his mission to “out” suspected homosexuals claiming that it’s their duty to be out and proud the way he is. There’s such a thing as personal privacy, Hilton. You’re not calling these alleged “closeted homosexuals” on their hypocrisy; you’re robbing them of their privacy. If I were a member of this community, I would resent the fact that Hilton has positioned himself as a gay crusader of sorts and despotically seized the spotlight as a representative of my cause. For me, this would be like waking up one otherwise average day to find out that I am being represented – as a feminist – by Ann Coulter. I don’t agree with anything she stands for – just the fact that she stands tall in her beliefs, so I would feel horrible if hers was the standard feminism by which mine was judged.
I aspire to live in a time and place where everybody can be who they are without criticism for it, and they don’t require the attention of others to validate their sameness or contrarily their uniqueness: where – as Gore Vidal envisioned – we will not be labeled as “homosexual” or “heterosexual” people for the homosexual or heterosexual acts we do.
Somebody whose take on same-sex marriage I would have liked to have heard perished on April 12 at the age of 58. Queer Theory “founder” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – who died from breast cancer (a disease that I’m convinced would cease to be the rampant epidemic that it is if it affected more men) - was apparently a straight girl like me, but one who posed interesting ideas about Jane Austen and masturbation, as well as insightful observations about the male characters in the works of Henry James, and more. Sedgwick thought that it is dismissive to read only heterosexual intent in the established literary canon, and reductive to assign the label “homosexual” to that same body of work. Instead, consider sexuality as if it were something elastic and something that has nothing to do with the words society uses to define it. The same thing can be said for gender: it doesn’t exist except for what we – as a collective society – say it means (masculine means strong/aggressive, feminine means weak/passive etc.). Sedgwick – having considered all of the relative social issues – is somebody I’d have liked to hear discussing gay rights issues, rather than the bland and beautiful Prejean or the offensive and rigid Hilton.
Perhaps Boy George said it best: There’s this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That’s completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.
…even Prejean with her unattractive perspective. …even Hilton with his vulgar scribbles.
Did Susan Boyle have something to prove?
April 16, 2009
I’ve never seen American Idol or most of its counterparts. Let’s just say that reality television isn’t really my thing. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself to watch other people make fools of themselves before a large studio audience and the masses watching from home. I’m not “above” it; I just don’t like it. I take the contestants’ public humiliation personally.
I stumbled across the “singing sensation” Susan Boyle and her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on CNN.com while perusing the news. People have posted her Britain’s Got Talent performance on YouTube and the video has garnered more than 12 million views (as of 12 p.m. EST 4/16/09) in less than a week. Now, there’s talk of her winning the top prize in the competition and the possibility of her performing in person for Queen Elizabeth II as a reward. She’ll also cut a record, perhaps before she officially wins.
Why is this clip popular?
It’s a matter of opinion, but some say her voice is “extraordinary.” By that reasoning, millions of viewers have tuned in to listen, not to mock.
But I believe the real reason this video is popular is the same reason I shared it with my husband and watched it three times myself: joy! Oh, it is joyful! It’s a perfect, little narrative of an underdog rubbing smug spectator cynicism in their smug spectator faces. Boyle is set up to fail. She confidently marches out on stage and takes her place at its center. All eyes are on her - the self-proclaimed never-been-kissed, 47-year-old unemployed charity worker from Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland, who lives alone with her cat. People in the audience roll their eyes and snicker thinking, “This old hag hasn’t got what it takes; just look at her!”
Just look at her.
Susan Boyle, Singing Sensation
It would seem that Boyle had something to prove: she had to prove that she could sing…well. Not just because she’d stepped up to the plate and promised that she could. Not just because all eyes were on her, by her own choice. The main reason she had something to prove to us – the viewers and consequently her judges – is because she is (arguably) ugly. “Just look at her,” we tell ourselves when watching the YouTube clip, feeling superior in our state of moderate attractiveness. “She’s too ugly to be a really good singer. Nobody has ever kissed her. Nobody ever will. And now, sadly, the whole world will know about this pathetic loser because she’s deluded enough to believe that she can sing. Hah! She should have stayed home.”
And then she did sing…and everybody – including the prejudging judges such as hateful Simon Cowell – melted into her song and forgave her for looking the way that she does.
When I shared the video with my husband, I cried. Oh, the joy of seeing and hearing Boyle’s prejudgers respectively drop their jaws and eat their words! “I like her,” my husband said. “I like her confidence.”
I realized that sometimes I forget that my husband, in his quietness, has the most noble thoughts of anybody I know. He never looked at Boyle and thought to himself, “She’s too ugly to sing.”
He never thought that the standards of beauty that keep Angelina Jolie in film roles and Jessica Simpson in a perpetual state of body weight scrutiny would limit this jolly woman’s vocal abilities. He never questioned her: if she claims she can sing, then she can.
I didn’t consciously prejudge her either, but I did find myself falling into the mob’s mentality, and all of the laughing and hissing and eye rolling convinced me that what was about to happen was going to be terrible – even painful – to hear. And then afterward, the mob would huddle together and say, “I knew she couldn’t sing. Just look at her!”
Just look at her.
We have become so conditioned to value a person’s worth by his or her appearance that we forget that vocal ability has nothing to do with hip measurements, skin clarity or fashion sense. Vocal ability has nothing to do with what’s on the outside and everything to do with what’s on the inside: the size and shape of one’s vocal chords and lungs, the size and shape of one’s heart… But American Idol voters often consider looks and not just talent when they vote. I can’t say for sure because I don’t watch, but from what I hear around the water cooler I have discerned that people watch the show to mock appearances more than to celebrate ability, raw and trained alike. And beauty standards are higher for women than they are for men.
My first reaction to Susan Boyle’s performance was smiles and tears. I was ecstatically happy for her: she proved the naysayers wrong.
But when the first judge told her that she had handed him the biggest surprise of the competition, I felt sick to my stomach, and that queasy feeling continues today. Basically, that judge was telling her two things: “You look like you can’t sing and if you didn’t surprise us with your good voice, we would laugh at you and consider you worthless.”
And if Boyle hadn’t wowed them all with her talent, and they had laughed at her instead of cheered, what would have happened to her? Would she have lost that self-respect, which my husband praised her for and which carried her to the competition and onto the stage in the first place? Would she have cried as the audience continued to laugh and jeer? Would she have traveled home to her cat Pebbles and gassed herself with her oven in a fit of self-loathing?
Somewhere, in that audience or watching on television or YouTube, there is a person (or two) who is less than conventionally beautiful and who additionally can’t sing well. What can that person do to prove his or her worth? Nothing?
The things I value in my loved ones can’t be performed on stage or seen on television. My husband’s ability to discern Boyle’s “best” quality is what makes him dear to me. And where I love, I find beauty…and he is beautiful to me because I love him.
Perhaps because she can sing beautifully, someone will kiss Susan Boyle sometime soon. But if she had failed on that stage and suffered our scorn and righteous indignation…then it’s doubtful that anybody would kiss her, isn’t it? That’s tragic. The real reason she should be loved by others is for her self: her confidence, her humor and her love for humanity.
I hope she knows that she had nothing to prove to us beyond the boundaries of her vocal ability; she only had something greater – something about her character – to prove to herself. And she proved she is brave just by getting up on that stage and singing, however skillfully (or unskillfully, if that’s your opinion). If people are tuning in to listen to her song in droves in order to experience vicariously the joy of her achievement rather than gawk at her “unlikeliness” to achieve it, then that’s a very good thing indeed.
