By now, I hope you’ve all read this Washington Post article. It’s excellent.
It’s about how none of us really notices what’s going on around us because, as Americans, we’re horribly self-involved. (There’s nothing wrong with a little Ayn Rand egoism, but you still have to be aware of your surroundings.) What the Post did was elegant in its simplicity: The paper had a world-renowned violinist busk at a Metro station during morning rush hour. What would happen?
“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?”
No, of course not. Joshua Bell played for nearly 45 minutes during morning rush hour. His fiddle of choice was a Stradavarius worth millions. He performed some of the greatest (and most difficult) violin pieces. And only a handful of people stopped. Ninety-nine and a half percent of the passersby were lost in their own worlds, hustling to work, drowning in iPods, unaware just how rare that morning was.
The Post has videos, so you can see and hear for yourself. Bell’s playing is achingly gorgeous, and yet everyone walks on by. You want to strangle them all, or maybe just cry a little — how bad must we be to be oblivious to something so beautiful.
Bell made $32.17, not counting a $20 from someone who recognized him.
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Mike Doughty recently did something similar in New York. Sixteen years earlier, he’d made his first attempt at busking on a subway platform because a friend had had some success covering U2 down there.
“I made it all of ten minutes before I split, completely demoralized by the people rushing past without paying attention. Now that I make a cushy living as a singer/songwriter, I make it a point to give two bucks to every busker I encounter in the subway. They’re the hardest working people in show business.”
Doughty went back to record, to have some fun. It was not a social experiment. It was a music experiment. He’s clearly enamored with the bustle of the city, and he wanted to preserve some of that sound — “somebody humming along tunelessly with their iPod just as I ended a song, drunk voices shouting between tunes.”
He made $3.10.
Music: Old 97's - Timebomb
