Lesley Hughes Canada

It was the most compelling television moment since Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, except that this time, nobody died. Quite the opposite, in fact: a star was born.

When frumpy Susan Boyle told the judges at Britain’s Got Talent reality show that she wanted to be a singer, the audience behaved exactly as they have been programmed to behave. They were not merely surprised and amused; they were disgusted; they rolled their eyes and steeled themselves, waiting for her moment in the spotlight to be over. They might have stoned Edith Piaf.

This woman so clearly had nothing to offer. She lacked Madonna’s bullet breasts, Diana Krall’s legs, Britanny Spear’s grinding ass and Avril Lavigne’s heroin eyes. Yet the old fool was asking for their approval.

Who did she think she was?

Ironically, her audience would not recognize themselves in the song Boyle chose to sing, words describing brutish predators and originally written for the scorned Fantine in Les Miserables.

…but the tigers come at night /with their voices soft as thunder/ and they tear your hope apart/ and they turn your dream to shame…

The lyrics described them, of course, but never mind. After Boyle’s song, they rose to their feet in adoration. Judges and audience members alike could hardly speak, shell shocked “that someone who looked like that could sing like that.”

It was more than an Ugly Duckling Becomes a Swan, or even a Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover moment. It was a moment in which disaster culture, a partner of disaster capitalism was laid bare for all to see.

Since then, more than one hundred million people have watched the middle-aged Scot sing on YouTube. In just two weeks, she blew away every video record in web history, pulling in more than five times the viewers of Barak Obama’s Inauguration Speech.

There are endless commentaries on the web, but the easiest way to under-stand this phenomenon is by watching yet another video in which not a word is spoken. In this one, found at Susan-Boyle.com, a nameless woman watches the now iconic performance. It has been viewed half a million times.

The woman has an impassive, working class face. She appears to be watching in a darkened kitchen. As Boyle begins to sing, the watcher’s face shifts slightly, eyes widening just a little. Soon after, they fill with tears, though the tears do not fall. The song continues and she puts one hand to her face, then two. The woman nods, and tilts her head in curiosity and compassion; by the time Boyle gets to I had a dream my life would be/so different from this hell I’m living, the watcher is transformed. She has alternately wept, grinned, laughed, wiped her nose and surrendered completely to the singer and her song. It is the world’s unfiltered response.

Boyle’s one woman audience wept in her kitchen because she saw an un-packaged woman, confident in her best discount dress radiate strength and beauty. She laughed because she saw mindless ridicule and contempt run for cover. She rejoiced because she saw a woman who had no potential as a sexual product define herself with her talent, and, by Goddess, there was no denying her.

Just as our disaster capitalism waits for a chance to rob communities of their money, our disaster culture robs ordinary women, especially artists, of their allegedly exclusive capitalist reward: self fulfillment.

The world of capitalist entertainment will not now open its closets and let the plain girls out. But for a moment, we saw our popular culture for the gender-bent, soul destroying wreck it is.

Humphrey Bogart promised Ingrid Bergman they would always have Paris.

The rest of us will have Susan Boyle.

It was Wednesday afternoon when I switched on CBC Radio One and heard Neil Besner, head of the University of Winnipeg’s English Department, elo-quently discussing the work of writer Carol Shields. A shiver of fear swept across my mind. Had MY friend died of the breast cancer which shadowed her every move for the last five years? I listened intently, but there was no mention of death. And summer shows in which book lovers swap reading ideas are common. Feeling the relief of reprieve, I proceeded along a normal day.

Later in the day, the reprieve vanished. Carol Shields, great in her art and in her soul, she who embraced Canada and was totally embraced in return, had indeed died. The list of people to call and comfort was so overwhelming that I couldn’t decide where to begin, and retreated instead into a sorrowful sleep.

Her death has been observed as it should, with sympathy from the Prime Minister. And the Governor General. The flag in front of the National Arts Centre was lowered. Heartfelt tributes are pouring in to her home in Victoria, all of them deserved, most of them inadequate.

The day after her death, I was driving through the Exchange District where a million Fringe Festival posters advertise plays with clever titles. One of them spoke to me. It said: Miss Me Already?

With that, I smiled, thinking how much Carol would enjoy the irony of it. Carol could have made a poem out of that, a short story, possibly a novel. She loved the mysteries that life presents, coincidences, even cliches, from which she could create the opposite of the expected.

People who enjoyed Carol’s work and friendship speak of her in superlatives. She had the finest eye, the sharpest ear, the wisest spirit. A slight, silver blond who much of the time radiated an air of mild bewilderment, she led the most charmed life I have ever seen. She was lovely, talented, happily married and the mother of five children, all of them devoted to her. Fame and wealth came late in life when she could appreciate them. She was a brilliant teacher and mentor to numerous young writers. Nobody, either in her life or in her fiction was insignificant to her.

Just a few weeks ago, at McNally Robinson Booksellers, Prairie Fire Press launched a new book about her life and work, The Arts of a Writing Life, edited by Neil Besner. After the launch, people were invited to record messages to Carol on videotape. I was the unseen interviewer, helping them to focus on exactly what they wanted to say. It was easy: they all said the same thing; thank you, we love you.

Although she is loved around the world (her work has been translated into 17 different languages) Winnipeggers owe her a special debt. As another celebrated Canadian writer has said, for people who only know our city through her work, it has become a city of love. Not only did she make it the scene of ever-changing love stories, but she actually loved it in real life.

When I interviewed her for a profile in Chatelaine Magazine, she told me the things she loved about Winnipeg. “It’s a mannerly city,” she wrote, “a stone city rising up out of our soft prairie loam.” She loved also “the cheerful resistance to winter, the purity of the light, the leafiness, the abundance of lilacs. And the arts community, so isolated, but so faithful to their talents.”

You could map the city by her stories.

The stately architecture of Crescentwood was the stage for The Republic of Love. A tiny yard in the city’s west end gave rise to the maze which symbolizes male confusion (and good intentions) in Larry’s Party. Then there ís the unforgettable Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass in River Heights, an unsung piece from the short story collection, Various Miracles. With her all seeing-eye, Carol reveals the frumpy Mrs. Turner’s life as deeply lived, and lived beyond anyone’s right to judge it. “And O how like an ornament she shines.” the story concludes.

But never, never as brightly as Carol Shields herself.

She told me once about shopping lazily in an antique store, and coming across a wonderful old wooden cabinet. She was undecided whether to take it home. When she decided to buy it, she returned only to find that someone had pinned a note on its front. “Sorry cabinet not for sale” it said.

The all important comma was missing, but a sorry cabinet struck her as a wonderful idea. You could sneak downstairs at night and leave your apolo-gies inside and other people would always know where to find them.

If I had a sorry cabinet, I would leave this note for Carol:

Sorry, so very sorry you are gone. Thankful, so very thankful that you were here.