Recently I was forwarded an email which I excerpt below:
Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later: the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
I found the story fascinating, and checked it at several online sites to verify its truth (eg, Snopes). Not only is the story true, but the WashPost reporter who covered it received a Pulitzer for the article.
What a sobering thing - that we might not perceive beauty in an ordinary, daily context!
My own past experience has taught me to be careful about the company one’s artwork keeps; when a piece I know to be good is hung with average county-fair art in a whitewashed cinder-block building, that piece dims…as though one good work of art cannot entirely overcome the mediocrity around it. Or think of your own perceptions walking into a gallery: if you see only quality work at every turn, you think the more highly of all of it. But as soon as you see something sub-par, suddenly the rest of the work feels more ordinary.
As a cynic I once knew used to say, art is worth only what someone will pay at a garage sale for it. Think of those legendary garage-sale finds we sometimes read about - the Picasso or whatever - sold for a few dollars, now worth millions.
What do you think?
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