This is a great article - what happens when a world famous violinist plays in L’Enfant Plaza in Washington DC during morning rush hour? The Washington Post asked Joshua Bell to bring his Stradivarius and play anonymously for the rush hour crowd.
It’s a fascinating and somewhat sad article about how people are too busy to stop and ’smell the roses’…
“It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Furukawa says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn’t do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?”
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3 Comments
Thanks for posting this. I recognize the venue. My very first CF job back in 1996 was for some DOE folk who lived in L’Enfant Plaza, and I used to have to come up there once a week from the suburbs of southern Maryland to do a dog and pony show. I distinctly remember a guy playing a fiddle up there one time, as I came off the escalator, but he was nowhere that good. I stopped and listened that time; I’d link to think I would have done it here.
thanks for posting this great article… i’m amazed at what took place during his performance… this line sums it up for me :
“Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.”
most of us need to slow down and be grateful for the little things in life… don’t be one of the ‘ghosts’
That’s a great article. I have no doubt that I would recognise a great musician and stop and listen, but it’s sad to admit that if you don’t have some time up your sleeve it’s just too easy to let great opportunities like this pass you by (rather, too easy to pass them by), when infact you should probably make time for it