If there is only one YouTube video you watch in your lifetime, it has to be this, really!
I was so inspired I actually cried, and I have since watched it another 11 times (and counting...)
Like what Dr. Robert Canfield, a fellow blogger, wrote:
Every once in a while [a] great cultural moment happens. Iconic displays of the human imagination seem always to be unpredictable. But when they happen they reveal something about ourselves to ourselves...
Such a moment has just happened again, only this time it is a little different. A few days ago a 47 year old mentally disabled woman appeared on a talent show in Britain. Someone described her as fumpy. She wore her best dress, something worn earlier to a nephew’s wedding. She had fixed her hair herself. And she came on stage to sing. The hosts and the audience were kind enough, but pervading the whole scenario was a palpable doubt, even condescension, about this woman. She was a pathetic figure, vulnerable. This was an aggressive audience, expressive; they were ready to drive a performer off the stage. The hosts, the talent judges, were clearly dubious. One of the judges asked this woman her name and where she was from. She was Susan Boyle from a small town -- well, a collection of villages, she said. Then he asked what her ambition was. She wanted to be singer. Who would she like to be like?, he asked. Like Elaine Paige. It was easy to regard this woman as tragically unaware of her own limitations, with aspirations that surpassed her ability. And she was now on stage, on TV. Before a huge audience. Here was a disaster in the making. This would be difficult to watch. [all emphasis mine]
The YouTube video was uploaded on 11 April and by the time I watched it (two hours ago), it has been viewed more than 12 million times. Astonishingly, it is watched again and again by the same people - just like I did.
Dr Canfield surmised it most succinctly (yes, only 312 words!) when he wrote:
As I mentioned yesterday, attempts to formulate why and how Susan Boyle's performance captures the imagination will continue. The question reaches fundamental issues of our understanding of ourselves, our experience as human beings. What makes anthropology fun and deeply rewarding is the sense that we are in some sense probing the essential qualities of humanity -- whatever that is, whatever we mean by it. So the struggle of so many to explain why they cry, why they keep coming back to the same event, to watch the same performance, over and over again, displays the sense of mystery deeply embedded within us. These special bursts of public discussion about such a person, such an event, an icon created in a single episode, reveal what resides within us: a continuous rumination over who we are; we are ever seeking to grasp ourselves. What is this peculiar creature, the human being? Creative, inventive, generous, and also cruel, intolerant, self-serving, bitter. All this I can only surmise -- for knowing no one else I have to extrapolate from my own private world. I presume that everyone else like me carries on this internal struggle to understand, manipulating the tools of imagining that are available, the kinds of things we always use to think with: words, gestures, objects. The anthropological task, I take it, is to monitor whatever extrinsic evidences of that internal calque we can find in others. These overt forms are the devices through which the anthropologist gains access to personal mysteries, private experiences -- elements of the human condition that are usually inaccessible. But when, as in the reactions to Susan Boyle, intense personal feelings burst forth in tears that astonish, we discover dimensions of the human moral sensibility that most of us are unprepared to find in ourselves. That makes Susan Boyle a special event as well as a special human being.
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My take on this? I was reminded of this passage by Salman Rushdie which I scribbled in my Moleskin back in September 2002:
Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in a song. These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden: an eff of the ineffable. Glory burts upon us in such hours: the dark glory of earthquake, the slippery wonder of new life, the radiance of Vina's singing."
- Salman Rushdie, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Watching Susan Boyle sing I Dreamed a Dream has unlocked three out of the five mysteries - the act of love, the contemplation of great art, and of course, hearing the human voice lifted in a song.
Now, I haven't witnessed the birth of a baby - yet - but that desire is partially quenched by the donation of my eggs. It is but a very simple act of giving, selflessly, without prejudice, no judgements, no buts. And I wonder, if such an act of giving has enabled me to have a glimpse of the essential qualities of humanity, how much more mind-blowing it must be for me to witness the birth of an infant? How much more will I be moved, even after watching the unassuming Susan Boyle sing Fantine's song?
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