I just received the following chain letter from my aunt. I always run these sorts of things through snopes for verification, and this is the first one that came back 100% true from that check.
Here's the story...
A Violinist in the Metro
From The Effective Club
From The Effective Club
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. 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 a 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 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.
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 and the seats averaged $100.
This is a real 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 priorities of people. The outlines were: 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?
Of course, the cynic in me is wondering if the test model was appropriate. What if it were a rock performance from an equally accomplished but incognito band? I'd put dollars to donuts that people would have stopped and at least a segment of the audience would have finished listening to the full set.
What is beauty? In today's day and age, perhaps as it has always been, I'd suggest to you that it's what is most easily digested and aggressive. We WANT "sugar". We LIKE "sugar". We NEED "sugar".
Sugar spikes our emotion and that feels good.
This entry was posted
on Jan 6, 2009
at Tuesday, January 06, 2009
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