Pearls Before Breakfast

What would happen if ...

At 7:15AM, at a busy hub for workers heading off to cubicle hell ...
"One of the finest classical musicians in the world" -- say ... Joshua Bell ... dressed incognito ...
Pulled out a handcrafted violin, made by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, and worth over $3M ...
And started "playing some of the most elegant music ever written" ...

Would anyone stop to listen? Joshua Bell's performance at the L'Enfant Plaza, just outside the Metro in Washington, was arranged by the Washington Post. It was "an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.

What happened?

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

The Washington Post asks:

"If a great musician plays great music but no one hears ... was he really any good?"

What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?

What did Bell have to say of the experience?

"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.
When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."

Humbling -- and a lesson for all us. How would you be perceived, if you were thrown in an environment where you weren't already validated? Would you shine? Would you be appreciated? Would anyone care? Would you be humbled? And if we're to learn something from Bell's humbling experience, it should be, that even when we're performing for those that already accept us, we should never forget to be humbled and appreciative of the audience -- for without them, we're like Bell, on Friday, January 12, in L'Enfant Plaza, being ignored.