THE PLOT TO KILL SUSAN BOYLE!
I didn't see her Cinderella-like debut the night it happened, but learned about it during a peremptory class trip given to select members of the senior class at one of those large, historic high schools which was subsequently closed in Brooklyn, New York. About 30 members of that school's last graduating class had been volunteered the day before, to teach lessons they had never seen to kindergarten and first-grade children a few blocks away. In six inch heels and oxfords with sharp, pointy toes, our kids arrived somewhere between 8 and 8:30am for this unpaid teaching assignment, chatty, hungry and with no training for what they were about to do.
Among the many reasons given for the closing of the school was its poor four year graduation rate, attendance and high rate of lateness. I can't say that even those who met the appointed time limit always hit all the other benchmarks, but you could often find high levels of intellectual and emotional accomplishment on both sides of the finish line. The kids that day were working very hard to do whatever it was they were supposed to be doing at around the time they were supposed to be there – not that I knew what either was, and I had everything but a doctorate.
A colleague who had done this for years, was in a suit and tie. All I had been told was that I was going on a trip, so I wore the generic black pants, white shirt, and black sweater purchased from some store which could pass for Old Navy. In a crisp, mandarin jacket which hung beneath her waist, was the woman from “QuestCon”, carrying about 30 lean plastic folders. “Shandeliquia?” “Um...she's not here yet,” said my colleague, as he gave her petite figure so inordinately thorough a review it made me blush. To lighten the mood, he started a conversation with me. “What do you think of Susan Boyle?” I pulled my body from head to toe as if I were Gumby, to seem as tall, thin and geeky as possible. Sure, I am actually under five feet tall and dumpy. I aimed to camouflage my body shape and turn my impish face upward in an effort to make the teacher and the accompanying vixen feel old. If you broke me open and counted the rings, I had fifteen less than " have- aviator glasses- will -think- he's -ageless" and ten less than" Ms. Where-Are-My-Unpaid-Slaves-Don't-They-Want-To-Be-Republicans?" It seems that yesterday she had cornered my colleague and made him, literally, grab every nice kid he knew and make them agree to a specific grade they would teach today. On their way to Music or lunch or the bathroom. By some miracle they all arrived and they brought friends who could help. I'm sure they sensed that my colleague was in trouble and that maybe the wench in the bad suit had a gun.
“I don't know who Susan Boyle is.”
“She's this woman in her 40's who went on Britain's got talent and might win. She's all over YouTube. She's got great courage. I really like her.”
“Is she really beautiful?” “No, she looks like—she could be any woman off the street. She's even kind of heavy. But, she's got a lot of spunk. She's funny. I think she's great.” He talks her up to the kids. “Oh yeah, the fat British chick with the amazing voice. I'm rooting for her.” It's a pathetic gesture, but I buy in.
We take the bus and get off way too early. The school we've been assigned to was the site of the murder of a little girl last year by a fellow kindergarten student. The principal spoke to us in the hall and now I remember the recordings played on the news. “She's turning blue.”
One of my students practices his list of rules on me. They sound fair. If they don't work, his partner, who still barely speaks English, will make lots of funny faces. Also sounds good. They haven't read the lesson yet. We weren't on the bus more than three minutes. I promise to come in and watch, and I do, almost immediately. So does my colleague. It's a relief to see the faculty is pretty casual and their parental instincts come out for our big kids, as well, but it isn't necessary. Within two minutes, it's clear.
Our kids walk in, they are MOVIE STARS. Bona-fide real teenagers just like on TV and not related to me. And CUTE! Ten minutes in, and I see what used to be a class clown having the “perhaps when you are grown, you will understand speech” with a teary girl whose hand he is holding. The other girls look on. They are working very hard to suppress the “AHHH!” Our celebrities pull stories they see on the bookshelves which they recognize as good and start reading them. Or they make them up with the class. A lot of the kids talk about what happened last year while they do this.
Some of our teenagers have a real gift for this and emerge with their classes for lunch as...CHOO CHOO TRAINS.
The entire First-Grade was lead out by one student who was the front engine. If you broke the train, you had to go back. Each class was linked by another student. We bought our budding “Little Engines that Could” Chinese food. School lunch would've been a very cruel response to their ingenuity. They ate vigorously while their charges continued to eat the plastic food look-a-likes at tables nearby.
“YOU DIDN'T USE THE LESSONS.”
“Well, no.” “They already know what a penny is, Miss. And they have better books here. Plus, they're still not over the shooting. DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT? God, I'm still crying.”
“This is a complete failure.”
Frank O'Hara once wrote that children know they want their backs broken. I think teenagers know they don't. The default position for less than literate men who feel defensive and teenagers who feel they are being told how to live before they know what life is, is “chair back, foot against another chair, etc.” We had thirty kids in that position instantly.
I looked at the colleague who was my senior and said, “Oh, Mr. Rogers?”
“Yes. Miss, the children our students have worked very hard with today are happier than they were when they came in. Look at them. They're not fighting. They're in their seats. They are smiling and laughing. They came to the cafeteria as a choo-choo train. They all read or created stories which are very good literacy activities. Ask their teachers if they felt this was a meaningful day.”
“I will do just that.” With a barely visible swing of her woolen suit, she moved forward. “What does her face look like?” “You know,” answered a student named Paul, “that's a good question.”
“If they hadn't been so happy, we wouldn't be deafened by the clicks of her cheap plastic shoes,” I couldn't help noting.
When we came back from lunch, I sat in the rectangular, windowless lounge, lulled by the flyswatter-sound of the soda machine. With her jacket slung over her shoulder, our corporate sponsor shifted quietly in. The words came out quickly and she faced the floor. “I'm sorry. The principal is very happy with what your kids are doing. I was totally and utterly misguided.” My hand lifted some cold water from around my can of soda, applying to my face, while pushing my second can toward her. “Please, I have two. You'll dehydrate.” “Thanks.” She looked genuinely surprised. “I heard you talking about Susan Boyle. Isn't she amazing?” “Actually, I'm going to have to go home and watch her on YouTube. I missed it. I dean and teach. When I get home, sometimes I hit the floor like lead, right after I feed the cats.” “Well, there you go,” she said, and she eyed me like a salesgirl who thought she had found just the right shade of blush without knowing that I don't ever wear it. “Oh?” “She loves cats!” “She has a cat she loves so much and she lives with her mom and works in a bakery. That's been her whole life till now. That and her singing lessons. She's 48 years old.” “Jesus, what drudgery.” “She cares about her mom – and you, yourself said you love cats.” “The cats are great. But the bakery and going home to your mother when you are in your 40's. People must make so much fun of her. She must have a thick skin.” “Or, I hope so.”
Two years later and the school has come and gone, three small schools sitting in place of one, occupying the same building, only now it is called a campus. I ask myself, what if someone had done a news report on the work of our students that day, would it have saved the school? Or would it have won temporary, relatively useless recognition for the students involved, perhaps small checks toward books in their first year of college. Of course, a good deed is supposed to be it's own reward, but so is academic study -- ideally, you aren't supposed to be weighted by how quickly you learn but by the fact that you keep trying. I think of those students as part of the same mystery of Susan Boyle's career in this same period.
I've now seen the Youtube video of that very first night and heard the Henry Mancini level productions that Simon Cowell put together of Susan Boyle. The first night is better than Frank Capra, especially because the technicians have clearly directed the show – they had to know she was going to win everyone over. You know they love her. The bells ringing like a boxing match is coming up. She's all adrenaline. The shift of the hips at Simon – “Take a ride on these hips, fella,” she seems to say. How could anyone have ever thought she was slow? Just very nervous and not from a major city. Or, so it seems. Admittedly, I don't watch these talent shows on a regular basis because they make me bilious. There seems something unfair to the millions of singers who braved piano bars a few towns over, found whatever kindred spirits were available, found their ways to a train, plane, bus, to audition after audition and then either luck or a family and some scrawny offspring named Baby June/Biff. Then again, we wouldn't have many talented artists without some of these shows, and talk shows are a kind of venue for new comic talent that aren't really available for other fields. I've “bought in” again to the story, though part of me wonder what of it, is a fix, the way people wonder about Babe Ruth's home runs.
Accusations appear and re-appear, especially when acts are put on television like man ubiquitously referred to in the tabloids as “the anti-Susan Boyle” - a man so deluded that he was disappointed to find out that the woman to whom he had dedicated his song about suicide was actually alive and well. He was, however, certain, he was set-up for as the butt of a joke and I'm sure he's right, that he knew that beforehand and that he couldn't have been happier – all the more reason to have had him sent to a hospital and not a green room. You can tell those two, adorable and fairly experienced sound technicians know Susan is going to do well that night and they'd have to be deaf and the world supremely unjust to be wrong. Does she know? And is she so overwhelmed at the end because she didn't believe the world would be just or because she didn't believe the world would have a moment when it wouldn't? What also struck me is all the times that the judges said that the audience was against Boyle from the beginning. THEY weren't against Boyle from the beginning. Amanda seemed charmed, Piers seems to know that this woman has something. Only Simon thinks she might be a nut job. The audience sits back when she talks. She's not talking B.S, she's not ragtag, and she's picked a good song. It feels as if she's already gotten good word of mouth from somewhere. This, “everyone was against you” bit seems phoney. Is it because the judges feel cognitive dissonance, or are they covering for a set-up that maybe even SHE doesn't know about?
Every time there's an interview, I buy it. I'm not looking for the deeper side of Susan Boyle. If anything, I'm quite content to accept that she might not be urbane, but I believe she's funny and been through enough to make her credible. Perhaps she may have been discouraged from thinking too much beyond what you need to do to get by because nothing in her life would have improved by doing otherwise. The “Susan Boyle Story” J find on Youtube is a whole seven minutes long. Why isn't there a film? She was was such a big story. Such a big discovery. Is she inflexible? Does no one in her village understand her? Has she opened up to no one. I can't imagine there was an individual in her life who would have understood if she had. One of the hard things about having an extraordinary dream is you often can't explain it to the people sitting next to you. You have to go far away to get recognition in order to be accepted at home.
Carole Cadwalladr, who wrote one of the few articles critical of the way Boyle's career has been handled, interviewed neighbors who testified that, "They used to taunt her and call her names and throw eggs at her door. And now they cheer her and ask for her autograph.” Noting that Boyle was Sony's best-selling artist in 2010, she concludes, “Susan Boyle has transformed her life and she's made a lot of money in the process, well in excess of the £4m in royalties she received with great fanfare from Simon Cowell last year on her birthday.” Those who taunt her and now seek out her valuable signature, also try to calculate her portfolio. Cadwalladr even found a priest in Boyle's hometown weighing in. “Father Ryszard Holuka, the local priest (Susan is a devout Catholic), does a quick bit of mental arithmetic when I tell him she's Sony's biggest-selling artist. "What do you think she gets? A penny a record?" He thinks for a moment. "That's a lot of pennies."
When I go back to that very first audition, I'm overwhelmed again. The face was actually, for all the awkwardness of the gangly haircut, vital and sensual. An audience of fashionably dressed people were lifted to their feet and their wasn't the least bit of rancor or pity in the ovation. When she walked immediately off the stage, I didn't think it was because Boyle was afraid. I thought it was because she had performed. Her audience had applauded and the natural thing to do was to walk off (come back for the “Brava!”) The three judges were now an intrusion. She'd never say it and she didn't think it, but she felt it. When Cadwalladr approached Boyle for her article, Boyle sounds as if she was much more frightened than she was on that stage. "I can't say anything without their [Syco's] permission. So sorry. Goodbye now. Goodbye.” A close friend, also afraid to be identified, confided that Boyle is afraid that Sony might drop her. That very thing happened to just a few weeks before SYCO signed Boyle to then 18 year old Leon Jackson over issues of things he said to reporters. Reflecting later, Jackson said he would always be, “grateful to The X Factor, but for an 18-year-old who'd never lived away from home it was a brutal introduction to the music industry. 'I had no control over anything,' he says. 'But especially not the music.' I can't believe that this is what Susan Boyle wanted, but Cadwalladr disagrees, adding the viewpoint of Boyle's sister
It is the dream, though. It's what the world wanted for Susan Boyle and what she wanted for herself. We wanted her to triumph against the world and she wanted to be a singer, more than anything. "And she's proved herself to everybody," says her sister, Mary. "She always said, 'Just you wait. I'll show you!' You can see it on her face in the film. I know that face so well. It's, 'Just you wait!'
There's no question that Boyle showed the world what she could do. What she didn't get to do was show them more than once. Nor did she get to be herself more than once. Like my students, who left that afternoon, tired, and won no recognition for what they did, nor did they help to erase the perception which people have of young people who can't be exactly on time every day or who might not graduate in the time frame you hope them they do. I don't know what I would do with a child who had watched a friend bleed to death, but my students did. I have a slight feeling Susan Boyle might. Most likely, my colleagues and I would do best to buy everybody lunch and to help the world to better understand why they are reaching the world stage a tad overage.
What disappoints me most though, are the Oprah interviews. Of all the people in the world, I expected Oprah to accept someone who might have limitations in one way and a wide birth of understanding in another. Or who might just be able to tell about a hard life, and sing of it. Simple poetry. She comes on like a child who has been coached not to say certain things. Oprah doesn't talk to her for more than five minutes. She sings for maybe ten and it's over. She could have gone with her to her village Gone to the Bakery. Met her mother. Sat with her and the cat. Made a whole show about it. Encouraged someone to make a short film. How many women sit alone in small towns, with beautiful voices, learning difficult music about history, but living the most simple, hardened lives. What does her mother really say to her at home? If there's rancor, what is it? If she's depressed, what's behind it? Why not let her sing something sad --- Introduce her to music she doesn't know? Maybe the truth is, she decided she doesn't want to make albums and that's what they're afraid she'll say. They're afraid she'll say, the real business of music didn't seem like music, that the technicians who appreciated her were the last people she felt comfortable talking with. Or worse, that she couldn't believe that is was SO HARD for people to imagine on that day that it was so unlikely that her voice would be so beautiful. That like kids who show up late and come from a closing school can understand how to calm down children from a few blocks away who have lost a friend, a woman who has a dream can sing beautifully about it at any age. When my students left the school building that day, they were worn through. They had given everything, and like Boyle the only immediately appropriate response to their astonishing debut was the applause of their audience (received). Just like Boyle, however, my students were UNPAID for producing a spectacular moment for an organization which was paid handsomely, this time by the Dept. of Education. My students, I think, were already jaded enough not to expect recognition, and as they continue their studies at Cornell, Oswego, Hunter and some struggle to stay in school, they probably wonder if those little kids are all right. Not enough people wonder about them, I think -- had there been, at least, one news story, perhaps, there might have been a "Where are they now?" segment somewhere, if nothing else, to check up on that promising trackstar, Pre-Law student at Cornell (in China as we speak at an economic conference). The air was full of gasoline and the tartness of flat paint glaring in your eyes and they walked into it with the memory of that day, and they have only that. What about Susan Boyle? So, now she has viewed things from the mountain-top and the robber-barons have used her for their own quests and cons they should help her to discover herown real dreams that aren't lacquered up like the four walls of a coffin to make those who were uncomfortable with her appearance on stage feel better about themselves. I was moved by her voice and her ability to connect immediately with an audience. Everything afterward is just promotion of charity work. It's like hype for a funeral. This time, nobody is turning blue, but somebody is definitely disappearing.
Works Cited
1. , Sunday, May 30, 2010Cadwalladr, Carole, “What Happened to the Dream,” The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/30/susan-boyle-the-dream
