opinion

Conflate, if you will, the extraordinary attention lavished on the unlikely 47-year-old Scottish songstress Susan Boyle, whose rise and fall played out recently on the television program "Britain's Got Talent," and the reaction accorded to one Mathew Buchinger some time earlier in the Council Chambers in Edinburgh.

Buchinger demonstrated his skill on more than a half-dozen musical instruments (some of his own invention), danced a hornpipe and performed conjuring tricks with cups and balls, cards and dice. In front of the lord provost he fashioned a pen and with it produced a fine calligraphic document of the coat of arms of the city. The year was 1726. Buchinger was 52 years old, 29 inches tall -- and he had neither legs nor arms.

Quasthoff has spoken of the diligent training necessary to transcend a single surprising performance with a sustained career, and Buchinger was grateful to parents who did not exhibit him as a child but rather left him with the time to develop his considerable skills.

It is not only physical appearance that colors our expectations, but also class, education and location. Thomas Britton, a low-born 17th-century seller of charcoal, was an autodidact who became an antiquarian book and music collector and an expert on chemistry. Every Thursday evening for nearly 40 years he hosted, on the second story above his coal shop, the most important salon concerts of the day. At this unlikely venue Handel and other notables played for music lovers of all strata of society.

And two years ago the renowned classical violinist Joshua Bell performed as a busker in the Washington subway, and was almost completely ignored as he played for free. Joni Mitchell's classic song "For Free" told of a street clarinetist: "Nobody stopped to hear him / Though he played so sweet and high / They knew he had never / Been on their TV / So they passed his music by."

Ah yes, television. In the 1950s, when it first truly captured our attention, the conjurer Cardini was a headline attraction and the most imitated magician of his day. His life's work had been honed into a stage performance some 10 minutes long, and he was wary of the new medium. Cardini, who relied on a packed theater for his livelihood, knew that television could undermine his presentation. Perhaps he anticipated the case of Steve Martin. Some years ago Martin created an act called "The Great Flydini," in which a magician (played by Martin) lowers his fly and from that unlikely location produces a surprising slew of oddments (in the interests of disclosure I must confess I helped fashion the act with him). He performed it on TV and it now appears on YouTube, where even if it has not achieved the staggering numbers afforded Boyle, it has still elicited more than a million hits. (One viewer, a "comedian" from Holland, has egregiously performed Martin's original act. Move by move, prop for prop, beat by beat.)

Should we have expected anything else? Our first look at Boyle generated not only expectation but surprise. But as she became overexposed, our surprise diminished. The extraordinary became commonplace. This was something that Buchinger never faced and Cardini always feared.

A performing cycle that once could have taken years is herein reduced to days. She's unknown, we're surprised. She's embraced, we're disenchanted. She's the runner-up -- next?

Ricky Jay is a sleight of hand artist, actor and author. He wrote this for the New York Times.