I saw a short film today on the intriguingly named website Funny or Die in which the ’90s singer Jewel participates in a prank at a karaoke bar. She is disguised (by professional makeup artists) as a frumpy brunette office worker and eventually takes to the stage and sings a couple of tunes by… Jewel. She kills it hard, to the baffled amazement of the crowd. She had explained to us beforehand that the point was to see if anyone would “recognize” her through her wig, fatsuit, and prosthetic nose, based on how she sounds just like Jewel, because she is Jewel.

I don’t like the way they end the film, they should not have had her go back in sans disguise, that was kind of superfluous. They seem to have been trying to make some overdetermined point about beauty and talent in the age of Susan Boyle.

Andy Warhol’s future, at least in the way it is commonly misinterpreted, is here. (From what I have read, his actual intended meaning was: “In the future, everyone who is or becomes famous will only be famous for 15 minutes.” Restrictive clause in italics. He did not mean everyone — all 6+ billion of us — would become famous for a quarter-hour.)

At any rate, everyone is “famous” now if they wish to be. Because of teh Internet.

More to my Jewel karaoke analogy’s point, everyone seems to be a producer of culture now. Just as everyone is allowed to do karaoke. Even if that piece of culture is just to put together a Facebook profile or Twitter feed for a couple dozen friends and family members. Everyone can take creative action, forming something that they then display publicly and wait for people to Like or RT.

But I’ve been dwelling on this lately: Even with 500 million Facebook users and hundreds of millions (billions?) of blogs and websites in existence, you can still pick out who has true talent. You can fool Mother Internet, but you can’t fool Mother Nature. She’s the one who handed out “gifts” so capriciously to this or that person, she knows who they are and so do we. The “real deals” still stick out from the incalculable, massive crowd of dilettantes.

Something about that constancy causes a secret pleasure to ripple inside me.

True story: The 30-foot-high magnolia tree I passed the other day in my neighborhood had one single flower blooming on it. I stopped on the sidewalk and inspected the tree with my eyes for a moment to be sure. Yes. Among the repetitious waxy green leaves and the craggy branches spreading up and blocking the sky from where I stood, there was just that one white-petaled blossom, hanging low enough to pick it, if you wanted to.

I reflexively thought of taking a picture and posting it online, but then I shook my head no. The child-born-in-the-20th-century in me said: This moment was just for me and the solitary magnolia flower to share. Seeming proud of herself she smiled at me, and I smiled gratefully back.

Tags: Andy Warhol, Facebook, fame, Funny or Die, Jewel, Susan Boyle, Twitter