Now that I have an audience again, I’m going to stand up on my soapbox and make you read the following article: Pearls Before Breakfast, in which Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten stages a marvelous stunt to determine what would happen if one of the world’s best violinists were to spend a rush hour playing a Stradivarius for spare change in the DC Metro. An audience of thousands, to be sure, would hear him. But would they listen?
Even if you have a hunch as to the results of this grand experiment, it is very much worth reading the entire piece. Much of interest can be gleaned from the short interviews gathered after-the-fact with those who stopped to listen and those who passed by. Whether you’re confident that you would have paused, pleased, to drop a few dollars into his case, or quite certain the music would have skipped across the surface of your mind, unable to breach the tension of schedules and task-lists and other minutia, you’ll find the article at once poignant and inspiring. I’ve talked to some who find it depressing, but how can you not come away from it newly determined to focus on the present moment, to catch every instance of fleeting beauty?
My favorite observation was the irony of customers in the nearby lottery ticket line failing to recognize a priceless performance going on in the same room. The article includes a short video clip. (I’m disappointed that it’s not available in its entirety, but that’d be a bit much to expect.) For those of you who’ve already come across this, be sure to check out the additional details and reactions on today’s moderated chat log.
[Incidentally, the title of this post sounds exactly like it ought to be the name of an emo song, but it's actually from a movie. Bonus points to the guesser. It's a fairly emo movie, come to think of it, but wrong era entirely.]
Dead Poets Society