Are You Awake?
A friend emailed me this today… It inspired me.
A man stood in a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning.
During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was going to be late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid 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.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace.
He collected $32.
When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
Joshua Bell
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best 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 his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston at an average seat of $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people.
The outline was: In a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: if we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
Tagged with: Joshua Bell
The trouble with the stressed human condition is that although we are all travelling on the same train, which is ultimately travelling in the same direction, most of us seem to forget, that we can choose which window we look out of and therefore, choose the perspective from which we see the things of life.
I’m by no stretch of the imagination a psychologist. However, perhaps very few people know beauty unless they’re told it to be so through media, general public acceptance or publicity. I’m fairly sure that we can each find something that we’ve seen, heard or tasted that we have come to think of as beautiful, purely though media and or peer pressure.. Perhaps not “beautiful” but certainly we seek an element popular, consensus when making those illusory choices of taste and beauty, hence dulling the capacity to discern through our own, consequently underdeveloped, imagination.
I hope that made sense?
Sorry David, I find your use of language just too complex and although, I am sure your message had profound meaning it unfortunately for me, got somewhat lost in the words. As far as my perception is concerned, all things are neutral. Neither good nor bad, ugly nor beautiful except for the label we prescribe them when viewed through perception. There is an old saying of which I am reminded and it goes, One man’s meat is another man’s gravy. So maybe, we would do ourselves and everything else on this tiny spinning ball an immense favour if we just stopped being so judgemental and simply learned to accept that which is, IS.
I fully agree with what you saying.Our lives would be so much simpler and we’d be able to see the “beauty” all around us.