A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- W. H. Davies, “Leisure“

How much would a street busker earn in one hour if he were as good as a professional musician? And how would passersby react to a really good busking?

In an incredibly moving piece of journalistic inquiry, the Washington Post set to find out for themselves. On January 12, renowned violinist Joshua Bell played at the L’Enfant Plaza in Washington DC, in the heart of the Federal district. Dressed in nondescript street clothes, Bell played on his Stradivarius to rush hour pedestrian traffic, like any other street musician. The Post set up a discreet camera recording of the whole thing, clips of which are available online. It’s a pretty clever use of multimedia.

So how much did Bell make in an hour? Leonard Slatkin guessed $150. I won’t give away the punchline; you’ll just have to read the article itself. It’s one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve ever read.

Reading Notes

  1. “Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.” I found this to be by far the most interesting, and perhaps the most telling, factoid.
  2. “The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of [the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world, said British author John Lane] — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.” More than a few people noticed that the guy was really good; they just didn’t bother to listen, or to pay him at all. The Post’s article begins with a question: “What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?” It seems, then, that the answer is that most people walk around with bubbles that filter out the external world and so the question never really comes up.
  3. “It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah… ignoring me.” For an accomplished virtuoso, the most difficult moments to relive were the moments in between pieces where nobody clapped, nobody coughed in response, nobody walked faster or slower in response to the end of a piece - in short, nobody cared.
  4. “[Mark Leithauser, a senior curator at the National Gallery]’s point is that we shouldn’t be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.” I’m not sure how I feel about this point. Does that mean that great art is great because there is a consensus amongst mutually-proclaimed experts that it is great art? That artistic greatness is a brand name like corporate logos? I’m kinda disturbed by this.

Reference

  1. Gene Weingarten, Washington Post, “Pearls Before Breakfast“.