Why I Love Being A Human Being -- and Why We Humans Are Often Shits

This bit of loveliness drifted around the fringes of my consciousness when I was out in California -- maybe I read about it in the newspaper? Anyway, just now got around to tracking down the video. And it's everything it's been cracked up to be: Riveting. Stirring. Amazing.

As one of the judges (I guess she's a judge? It's a competition of some kind? Like American Idol?) said, it's easy to be cynical. And, I might add, unkind and cruel and judgmental. (*1)

But by god, Susan Boyle makes me happy to be alive. Really. Fucking. Happy. She is the personification of the human spirit. _______

*1: And I just this moment realized that I indirectly experienced a Susan Boyle moment in my own life. About 15 years ago, my husband and I went to a friend's wedding. Afterward, a bunch of us went out to a karaoke bar (probably not spelled right).

This was in an east coast industrial, blue-collar town, and on this Saturday night, the bar was crammed with hundreds of 20somethings all getting drunk and happy. Or whatever. Anyway, we were the oldest people in the place by far.

So some of the people in our group decided to do the kareoke thing and got up on stage, etc.

I look around. Can't find my husband, who, at that time was in his 50s (he's older than me) and looked like what he is: a tweedy philosophy professor.

And then I realize: he's up on stage. He's going to sing. He decides to sing "Night and Day," a song written decades before any of the others in that bar had been born. Probably before even their parents had been born.

So this huge crowd, or the part paying attention to the singers on stage. start hooting. Even before he gets started, they're hooting and booing. And then he starts singing. And the booing dies down. And the crowd gets quiet. And quieter. And they're listening, because he's up there singing his heart out.

And when the old, tweedy guy who looks like and is a total nerd finished, those hundreds of young, blue-collar, drunk kids burst into cheers and applause. Lovely.

(I of course was all weepy because it was obvious he was singing to me.) (Sob snurfle.) (Hubby wanders back to our group after he's finished and a guy who'd been sitting off by himself watching and drinking promptly hit on him. Apparently he equated singing "Night and Day" with being gay and so assumed hubby was gay.)