True Beauty

Because I do not know where my head will be tomorrow (if, indeed, it will be found) and because I am taking a small break from the sort of work overwhelm that leaves me gasping (sometimes crying), I want to post this thought right now, before I lose it, or lose me—whichever happens first.

When my agent, Amy Rennert, today sent me an email with the subject line "this will bring a smile," I thought, Oh dear, what might this be? I opened the email to find a YouTube URL. Nothing more than that.

Well, of course you already know which YouTube clip I'm referring to. The one I and nearly a million of others have already watched as of this writing. Yes, Susan Boyle. Yes, the British singer, 47 years old, in silver shoes and lolling hair, who had the nerve to declare her dream on Britain's Got Talent and then to sing—magnificently—a song so bittersweet that even Simon Cowell was moved to sincerity. She had been jeered at. Disbelieved. The young among the many had rolled their eyes and sneered. A laughing stock, that's what she was, until she began to sing. And then those who had despised her envied her, perhaps a little, for the thing that she had kept within. For the honesty that she brought to a song about being young once, having a dream.

It was her moment. Her standing O. Her redemption. It was her voice, uncaged. What do we write toward, what do we live toward? The chance at that, just once.