I like to go there in my sleep, aren't any floors for me to sweep

By now you've seen the youtube clip of Susan Boyle's star turn on Britain's Got Talent.  If you haven't, you may have also missed the considerable hype, particularly surrounding the little hip swivel she gives before her performance which according to one journalist had all of England clenching their collective buttocks in shame. Shit, she's even got her own Wikipedia entry, which is quite a feat for the ordinary person (who doesn't have a personality disorder causing them to create their own entry).  And the story is not just about Susan's obvious talent, it's about how the crowd reacted to her before she performed - the sneers, titters and behind-the-hand comments.  Sam de Brito suggests it's because she doesn't know her place in our strictly defined poor-rich, pretty-ugly society.  Possibly so.

I was far more intrigued by Mystic Medusa's take.  Click on the link and check out what Mystic has to say (I am obsessed with Mystic Medusa, and I cannot function without reading the weekly stars in The Weekend Australian magazine. Call me crazy, but she is always, always freakishly spot on).  

What is Susan's message do you suppose? Is it in the lyrics? Not surprisingly, she got a good dose of bullying as a child (she was born with a mild disability, which made her an easy target for bullies, plus, let's face it. That caterpillar masquerading as a unibrow isn't doing her many favours).  As she says: "words often hurt more than cuts and bruises and the scars are still there".  She also grieved for many, many years following the death of her mother - the woman who encouraged her talent, and I can only assume tried to patch up those emotional scars when her daughter came home disconsolate after another dose of local village taunts.  Her motivation for entering the show was to make her mother proud, and I wonder if she is yet over the loss of the one person to stand in her corner, to even encourage her and recognise what makes Susan special. If we can't rely on our mum to do that for us, then things can be tough (consider David Chase's own miserable relationship with his mother and the decades of therapy, which guided the development of Livia Soprano: the hideous creature also known as  Tony's mother in the hit drama The Sopranos).  In the run-up to the audition, Susan practised in the bedroom that she has slept in (alone - she's a self confessed virgin) since she was a child, holding her hairbrush in front of the mirror.  "Well, that's what everyone does".

I Dreamed A Dream is one of those haunting songs from Les Miserables that sends you right back to the miserable poverty and hopelessness that pervaded the lives of the poor in 18th Century France.  Fantine sings this at the height of her loneliness and destitution.

There was a time when men were kind

When their voices were soft

And their words inviting

There was a time when love was blind

And the world was a song

And the song was exciting

There was a time

Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

When hope was high

And life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid

And dreams were made and used and wasted

There was no ransom to be paid

No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night

With their voices soft as thunder

As they tear your hope apart

And they turn your dream to shame

He slept a summer by my side

He filled my days with endless wonder

He took my childhood in his stride

But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me

That we will live the years together

But there are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I'm living

So different now from what it seemed

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.