Susan Boyle, The Dream Keeper

Everyone has had hopes and dreams at one point in their life, if not more. But a lot of the time, their hopes and dreams get lost in the cynical, judgmental world we live in. If your dream is ridiculous, you’re judged. If you cannot achieve your dream, you’re judged. If you’re trying to achieve your dream, but your appearance shows you cannot live up to your dream, you’re judged. It’s so common to be judgmental about dreams that we needed a wake up call.
Susan Boyle made this call. In Britain’s Got Talent, a woman at the age of 47 walks out confidently on stage with her curly, gray hair, yellow dress and heels. With a cheeky grin, she introduced herself. Susan Boyle. Her dream? To become a professional singer, as big as Elaine Paige. Like Simon Cowell, who we all know to be honest whether it’s a bad comment or not, Amanda, Piers and all members of the audience, I was very skeptical of her dream and how much talent she could really have. I very highly doubted if she could even sing. She saw the looks on everyone’s faces, from the judges to the audience sitting in the back row. And yet, she smiled and got ready to sing. On her face, I could see the yearning to prove people wrong, to wipe all the cynicism off their faces. Her confidence came from the inside.
Finally, Simon Cowell gestured her to sing. Susan Boyle looked at the backstage crew, nodded, and they started the music. She took a breath before belting out, and when sound came out from her mouth, my jaw dropped in shock. Like the audience and the judges, everyone in class was shocked too. Amanda, one of the judges, said that the audience had been too cynical, and we needed a wake up call from the harsh judgments we make of people from their appearance.
Paul Potts has a similar story. He does not look like someone who knows he has the talent of such an amazing opera singer and he isn’t that confident. But his dream is to become an opera singer, and thus he joins Britain’s Got Talent to pursue his dream. Again, cynicism, but upon opening his mouth to belt out, everyone is proved wrong. Both Paul Potts and Susan Boyle challenged themselves to overcome everyone’s judgments and contempt of them to pursue their lifelong dream.
These videos were such an inspiration to me, as well as a wake up call that being judgmental never gives the right impression of people. You can never really have the right first impression of people if all you do is look at their appearance and decide who they are to you. On Youtube, both videos have had millions of views and comments. I think this shows what an inspiration the two have been to others and pursuing dreams.
In all senses, this links to Langston Hughes’ poem The Dream Keeper. In his poem, he says, Bring me all of your dreams. He connects it with “heart melodies.” Not only is this literal to Boyle and Potts because their dreams are to sing, but also in a more literary sense. Dreams come from the heart, singing its melodies that tell you what to pursue. The people’s cynicism is what Langston Hughes describes to be the “too-rough fingers of the world.” It’s a good representation because dreams are delicate, and if rough fingers were to break them, they would be gone; away from your grasp, too far to reach and dream of again. And thus, as his poem says, dreams need to be wrapped in “blue cloud-cloth” to be protected. Obviously, Paul Potts and Susan Boyle’s dreams have been carefully wrapped in this cloth because it has been protected for a long time from the world’s contempt.

"The Dream Keeper"

Who Am I?

I'm Indefinably Defined

I am a chameleon

Adapting colors to match my mood,
One minute brown,
A camouflage,
Unseen.
Inconspicuous.
Then a flashing,
fluorescent purple,

Ostentatious.

Standing out.

Calling attention to myself.
A box of Crayola,
A vivifying intensity.

"Portrait of Jacqueline"

I’m a wave of colors,
A glittering rainbow ocean.
Creating my own ripples
turning into heavier waves,
Surging with the flow
Letting the current drag me
Back

And

forth.

I am an abstract artwork,
One of Picasso’s.
You tilt your head,
Squint your eyes,
Trying to figure me out.
As soon as you think
you understand
me,
You stand
back,
Tilt
your head
And squint
your eyes
again.
And then you see
There’s more
than meets the eye.

I am not definable
with just one adjective or noun.
Nor a verb or an adverb.
I’m not a bolded word
with its definitions
printed clear
in the dictionary.
I am the dictionary,
All the words that describe me
Filling the thick,
white pages.

The best word to describe me
Is not a best word at all.
A short word
with a long description.

Indefinably defined.

Simply complex,
Contradictory,

an oxymoron,
a paradox.
Just…
Me.

"Tête de Femme"/"Portrait of Jacqueline Face II"

I picked the paintings by Pablo Picasso because it showed multi-personalities in one person. The paintings show its abstractness in a sense that every time you look at it again, you notice something new about it. I also find that it is hard to describe with just one word, and the only word to really describe it is "abstract," which doesn't really say much in the first place.