Sunday, April 13: The A.D.D. Detective
1 CHANCE
by Leigh Lundin
Cardiff
I don’t care if you hate hip-hop; I don’t care if you hate opera. Hang in here with me and follow two great stories with overlapping themes, because you’ll enjoy this.
Several months ago, my friend Diane Mordas and my brother Glen both sent me a YouTube.com link of Simon Cowell‘s original platform, Britain’s Got Talent. The video featured a humble man named Paul Potts, a Welshman who worked in a cell phone warehouse in Cardiff.
Front tooth chipped, he looked short, amiable, and scared speechless. Once Simon learned he intended to sing opera, Simon looked resigned and motioned him to begin.
The piece was short, Nessun Dorma from Puccini‘s Turandot.
The chills traveled up my shoulders and down my back. Both the window and speakers are small, but the timbre of that voice brought the audience to its feet. Simon’s head snapped up. The other male judge looked like he was having a religious experience, and the female judge’s reaction was similar to my own.
Wow.
I was stunned. I learned that he would return the following week, and that week I stalked YouTube until the video showed up. Ironic, since I’ve never seen American Idol. It’s not that I have anything against American Idol, just that I’ve been too busy to watch.
And I tuned in the week after that. Paul Potts returned to Nessun Dorma, this time dressed in a rented tuxedo. Afterwards, he looked exhausted.
Here’s the fourth and final week. Unfortunately the television network pulled the original, but here’s a substitute. I’m sure you can guess the outcome.
Detroit
My brother likes all music genres, but the rap gene seems to have escaped me. My rap handicap doesn’t prevent me from appreciating that it takes work and drive.
Several weeks ago, a reader posted a question on Ellery Queen’s / Alfred Hitchcock’s web site asking about gratuitous language in their stories. Unexpectedly, the reader wanted more.
I responded that I thought Janet and Linda got it just right, allowing it when a point was to be made and otherwise keeping the stories lean and mean. However, it got me thinking about a rap song that had gotten under my skin.
Marshall Bruce Mathers III is better known from his initials, M&M, as Eminem. He grew up in a tough, very tough Detroit neighborhood. Raised by a single mom, his relationships seemed doomed, that of his mother, girlfriend, friends… every relationship but one perhaps, that with his daughter.
He starred in a semi-autobiographical film called 8 Mile (also starting Kim Basinger), a story encapsulated in his song, Lose Yourself.
The lyrics have a couple of words that might make cozy readers either blush or blanch, but the song is inspirational. Eminem shares a lot in common with Paul Potts’ dream.
I don’t watch American Idol, but I have watched Britain’s Got Talent a few times online. I happened to catch that series. Did you watch the show where it was between him and a little girl who was spectacular? As adorable, talented, wonderful as she was, Mr. Potts, as you said, was awe-full. (that was awful too!)
As for Eminem—I’d rather have the chocolate kind. I do respect that he made it in rap against all odds of doing so.
Which applies to his lyrics, which applies to Mr. Potts, which applies to writers and readers. Why even shallow women who define characters. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Enjoyed the article.
Huh???
Soap on a rope on a slippery slope into a moat with a boat that don’t float and no hope until Gertrude Stein bakes a cake. Thanks, but I’ll take the opera.
😉
Stephen, I thought Gertrude and Alice baked brownies?
JLW, the lass is referring to me wee joke from yesterday.
I wasn’t questioning alisa. I was questioning you.
He might be wonderful as a TV talent contestant, but Paul Potts is a long, long way from being an operatic tenor of any merit. I’ll give you that he’s not as awful a tenor as Sarah Brightman is a soprano, and he might give the ridiculous sugar pop idol Andrea Bocelli a run for the featherweight title, but not only isn’t he an Enrico Caruso, he’s not even a Mario Lanza.
And there is absolutely no way you’re going to entice me to listen to Eminem, ever. Are you high?
Curmudgeonly yours,
JLW
and he might give the ridiculous sugar pop idol Andrea Bocelli……..
I have to catch my breath here. I can’t believe you wrote that! Well, actually I can. But, O Solo Mio! I can’t think of anyone better in this world to sing to me in a language I do not understand than Bocelli!
I would more compare Sarah and Enrique myself. They are both screechy. (Your turn to gasp) Lanza I’m not familiar with. But, Andrea! I’ve pulled out all my CDs in protest!
Perhaps there is a theory to the blind leading the blind? Everyone has their own taste in music; as in authors; as in reading material and so on.
That’s one of the reasons I enjoy reading this blog.
Mario Lanza was a handsome Philadelphia truck driver with a wonderful natural voice who was discovered and exploited by Hollywood, the Andrea Bocelli of his day, but with a far more powerful and less saccharine voice. You can hear his rendition of “Nessun Dorma” here.
The article’s not about comparing dead tenors, it’s not even about high art, but about the ‘little engine that could’, the underdog who prevails, the unlikely little guy who succeeds against the odds.
Given the history of mysteries as a literary art form, we shouldn’t be too hasty to dismiss, especially as I was asking people to listen beyond the music to the stories, pretty good stories at that.
If the moral is “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could!” then your exemplars should demonstrate some merit, and that makes any comparisons fair comment. From where I stand, these two are the beneficiaries of good luck and bad taste.
Everybody loves an underdog, myself included. But I like the underdog to have some bite.
Leigh– I got it. Good point.
Frankly, I was expecting a lot more folks to leap to Leigh’s defense for this sincerely warm piece that amply demonstrates his great generosity of spirit and tremendous heart.
It is Leigh’s connection with his humanity that makes him such a good writer, and while he and I have radically different tastes in music (something we discovered very early in our relationship), he shows here why his readers care about the characters in his fiction. He’s just naturally sympatico.
I might not be too crazy about Paul Potts or Eminem, but I’m mad for Leigh Lundin.
I remember the Potts story from a while back! I say more power to him! And I have to laugh because several years ago a radio show host I heard called for a boycott of a concert by the rapper “Uh-Mean-Yem.” (That’s how he pronounced Eminem! Sounds like a Pharoh.) Great post Leigh and doesn’t “Nessun Dorma” (“No one Sleeps”)sound like a damn good story title???
Leigh, indeed.
By the by, Paul Potts is currently down my way on tour Review
I’ll try that again:
Review: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=264&objectid=10503963