Britain’s Got Talent Star Susan Boyle’s Supersized Dream

Apr

By Ed Heil | Categories Ed's Blog

I’m inspired. In the last 36 hours I’ve watched the video of Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle about a dozen times. I’ve posted it on Facebook, shown my kids, my wife, my friends, clients and anyone else who will take the time to watch. I think this may have reached an “unhealthy” level of viewing, but there are things worse to be addicted to (disclosure: when the movie Jaws came out I saw it 12 times in the theater!).

What has moved me to write what is now my third post about this sensational video is the juxtaposition of the song “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables and the performer, who is also the dreamer. We’ve seen the early round model for American Idol. Grab the local fool and make a spectacle of him or her. They become the butt of all water cooler jokes the next day. It’s become such a farce that I think they’ve turned off a lot of would be viewers.

At any rate, the set up for this clip on Susan Boyle follows the pattern. She’s unemployed, nearly 48 years old (which is apparently WAY too old to have any talent), she lives alone with her cat, “Pebbles,” has never married and never been kissed. Add to that, the fact that she looks like a cleaned up bag lady and is from, uh, a uh, “collection of villages in Great Britain.” Here’s the real laugher, she wants to sing like Elaine Paige, the self proclaimed “first lady of British musical theater.” Ha, ha, ha, laugh, laugh, laugh, she’s a fool! Anyone who looks like “Susan Boyle” can’t sing, let alone reach the heights of Elaine Paige!!! The set up gets better and better. Then, she opens her mouth and out comes magic.

As the parent of young children, I see their dreams every day and reminded of my own and unfortunately dreams I have ditched. At some point in life you begin to dismiss your dreams figuring you don’t have the talent, the education or the connections. And there are supporters of your belief. People tell you that your dreams are not realistic, that you can’t make them come true. For some, it begins with their friends. “You want to be a what?” they ask in disbelief and then laugh. For others it’s parents and their seemingly unanswerable questions like, “How are you going to make money doing that?” The daring stare the obstacles and nay sayers in the face and figure out how they’re going to make it happen.

So, it’s personal. The beauty of dreams is when you work hard and take chances and try to make them happen. There is no shame in trying. No shame in putting everything “on the line,” including your pride, to make a dream come true. Before I wax poetic in the spirit of the great Kasey Kasem, the Susan Boyle “story” is moving because it is about dreaming a dream.

Who knows if we’ll ever hear another word of Susan Boyle. She may be gone from “Britain’s Got Talent” next week. But in just a few short days her voice has carried beyond the walls of the shows auditorium to an audience of 12 million people and counting. That’s success, I’ll bet, that was beyond Ms. Boyle’s wildest dreams.