1.27.2009
Experiment in free beauty
I had never seen this story before, but it's apparently famous and the writer won a Pulitzer for it. What would happen if you took one of the world's greatest violinists, dressed him like a street musician, and had him play a D.C. Metro station at rush hour, on a $3.5 million Stradivarius, for 45 minutes? Probably not what you think.
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5 comments:
Clearly, context matters- a lot.
I'm not sure this setup is fair to the commuters it implicitly critiques. It seems like a kind of entrapment to me.
Context and I'm-late-for-work. But still... only 7 out of 1,000 even stopped to listen? Don't you think we do walk around with blinders on, and are most of the time not really living life at all?
I would agree that the act of commuting is alienating, unpleasant and generally conducive to mental retreat. But that fact puts my mind in a place to think about the forty hour work week and mass transit funding more than anything this experiment was aiming for.
I like the experiment, but using the morning rush hour was a bit of a set-up. It would be interesting to know whether people would have stopped during the evening rush hour, when no one would be worried about being late to work.
That's a good point, CJ. Or lunchtime.
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