Quote:
HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA
STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE
A TRASH BASKET.
By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white
man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington
Nationals baseball cap. From a small case,
he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet,
he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change
as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic,
and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the
morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist
performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by.
Almost all of them were on the way to work,
which meant, for almost all of them, a government job.
L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington,
and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats
with those indeterminate, oddly fungible
titles: policy analyst, project manager,
budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar
to commuters in any urban area where the occasional
street performer is part of the cityscape:
Do you stop and listen?
Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation,
aware of your cupidity but annoyed by
the unbidden demand on
your time and your wallet?
Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite?
Does your decision change if he's really bad?
What if he's really good?
Do you have time for beauty?
Shouldn't you?
What's the moral mathematics of the moment? ...
The piece he started with is Chaconne from
Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor.
It's considered one of
the most difficult violin pieces to master.
Exhausting long, 14 minutes - and consists
entirely of a single, succinct musical progression
repeated in dozens of variations to create
a dauntingly complex architecture of sound.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed
there was musician playing. He slowed is pace and
stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up
to meet his schedule.
A half-minute later, the violinist received
his first dollar tip:
a woman threw the money in the till and
without stopping continued to walk.
It was until six minutes then,
someone leaned against the wall to listen to him,
but the man looked at his watch and
started to walk again.
Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy.
His mother tagged him along, hurried
but the child stopped to look at the violinist.
Finally the mother pushed hard and
the child continued to walk turning his head all the time.
This action was repeated by several other children.
All the parents, without exception,
forced them to move on.
43 minutes - six classical pieces,
seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around
and take in the performance, at least for a minute.
Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run,
for a total of $32 and change.
That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by,
oblivious, many only three feet away,
few even turning to look....
None noticed the violinist was Joshua Bell,
one of the best musicians in the world,
who performed the most intricate pieces ever written
with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Three days before his playing at L'Enfant Plaza Station,
Joshua Bell sold out at the theatre in Boston
and the seats average at $100.
IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC
BUT NO ONE HEARS . . .
WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact ((Gottfried Leibniz),
or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each,
colored by the immediate state of mind of
the observer (Immanuel Kant)?
Joshua Bell, sitting there in a hotel restaurant,
picking at his breakfast, wryly trying to figure out
what the hell had just happened back there,
at the Metro...
"At the beginning," Bell says,
"I was just concentrating on playing the music.
I wasn't really watching
what was happening around me . . ."
THERE ARE SIX MOMENTS IN THE VIDEO THAT
BELL FINDS PARTICULARLY PAINFUL TO RELIVE:
"The awkward times," he calls them.
It's what happens right after each piece ends: nothing.
The music stops.
The same people who hadn't noticed him playing
don't notice that he has finished.
No applause, no acknowledgment.
So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord --
the embarrassed musician's equivalent of,
"Er, okay, moving right along . . ." --
and begins the next piece....
Watching the video weeks later,
Bell finds himself mystified by one thing only.
He understands why he's not drawing a crowd,
in the rush of a morning workday.
But: "I'm surprised at the number of people
who don't pay attention at all, as if I'm invisible.
Because, you know what? I'm makin' a lot of noise!"
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies
Let's say Kant is right. Let's accept that we can't look at
what happened on January 12 and make any judgment
whatever about people's sophistication
or their ability to appreciate beauty.
But what about their ability to appreciate life?
In nutshell, let's thank this extraordinary performance
arranged by the Washington Post and Joshua Bell.
This can be taken as a social experiment
about perception, taste and priorities of people.
The outlines go like this:
In a commonplace environment
at an inappropriate hour;
Do we perceive beauty?
Do we stop appreciating it?
Do we recognise the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible summary from
this uncommon experience would be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and
listen to one of the greatest musicians in the world
playing the best music ever written,
how many other things are we missing then?
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