No time to stand and stare.
Thursday, April 12th, 2007
My brother sent me a link to a fascinating article in the Washington Post on a little experiment the newspaper carried out: they took one of the best violinists in the world (Joshua Bell), put him in a Washington DC metro station and had him play his Stradivarius anonymously to the rush-hour crowd to see whether art and beauty could trump the distraction and stress of the morning commuter.
They couldn’t.
All but a handful of people completely ignored the virtuoso violinist performing in their midst. This surprised me somewhat less than it seemed to surprise the reporters writing the article. As someone who has spent a lot of time watching friends busk (and who has, on occasion, busked herself), I’m well aware that the average person about town—be it commuter, shopper or whoever—doesn’t generally take much notice of incidental art in the form of street musicians, now matter how well the musicians play.
This is particularly true in the age of the iPod and cell phone. The vast majority of people walking down the street in Brighton just aren’t really there; they’re physically there, but they all have the glazed look of the mentally absent as they lose themselves in their private music or their (not-so-private) telephone conversations or their text messages. It freaks me out a bit, to be honest—but maybe that’s just because I’m one of the very few people who finds it difficult, if not downright uncomfortable, to try to hold a telephone conversation, send a text message or keep earbuds in my ears while loping down the street.
I know how soul-destroying it can be to play your heart out and have no one pay any attention to you—and that goes for playing gigs as well as for busking. You start to think the worst of the crowd (or lack thereof): that they’re all cold-hearted Philistines with no ear for music and no time for beauty. But the article has an interesting take on busking in particular as being “art without a frame.” In other words, context is everything. A painting worth millions of dollars hanging in a museum will attract a lot more attention than the same painting hanging on the wall of some café (and, by the same token, a urinal in a restroom will attract a lot less attention than a urinal on a pedestal in a museum). So a brilliant musician playing to a random crowd of commuters in a subway station is bound to attract less attention than that same musician playing in the context of an organized performance to a deliberately assembled audience.
The article points out that children were the only ones invariably drawn to the live music. I’ve seen this scenario countless times myself: Mother and child walk past busker on the sidewalk. Child slows down, stops, stares at musician. Mother stops, listens politely for a minute. Child continues to stare at musician. Mother gives child coin to put in musician’s case. Child absently accepts coin without taking eyes off musician. Child continues to stand, coin in hand, staring at musician, until mother physically nudges child towards the case and encourages child to put the money in before dragging child off again (or until child simply pockets the money himself—it’s happened). It’s a pity we lose that wonder with the world around us as we grow up. We have no time to stand and stare.
I honestly don’t know if would have stood and stared at Joshua Bell in the DC metro. I think I might have if I had caught him while he was playing Bach’s “Chaconne”—if only because, for weeks, a tiny scrap of paper has been floating around my desk with the words “Chaconne - D minor - Bach” on it, hastily scribbled after I heard the glorious piece of music on some TV show and it figuratively stopped me in my tracks. Whether it would have literally stopped me in my tracks is a matter of speculation. But I like to think I would have made time for beauty.
Comments
1
I read the same article and it made me laugh - unfortunately I’m one of the cold-hearted Philistines with no ear for music you’re referring to. I just find buskers annoying and usually in my way. Maybe because more often than not they’re playing really irritatingly catchy tunes that get stuck in my head for days afterwards. Even writing this just got the theme song from "Inspector Gadget" in my head as the busker near my work only has 2 songs, and that’s one of them. (The other song he knows is the theme song to the Brady Bunch).
It doesn’t surprise me to hear that everyone walked past him. I definitely would have walked past in a hurry, maybe thought "he’s orright" and then gone on with my day. I guess music just doesn’t move me like it does some people. I’m quite envious of people who have a real emotional connection with music, especially if it can stop you in your tracks. The closest I’ve ever come is hearing a song on the radio and thinking that it was alright and I should listen for the name of the artist.
2
Hearing is not listening; observing is not seeing; touching is not feeling …
Take time to stop and smell the roses?
While I’ve not read the article in question, I have to believe that was the implicit theme behind the reporter’s piece.
When my wife and I travel, I often get wrapped up in getting from point A to point B and it is by her grace that I am pulled out of that mode to wonder at something as unique as a painting of a zipper being pulled down painted on a building in Berlin, the Eiffel Tower shrouded in the morning mist, or any one of a dozen street performers in cities across the US or Europe.
It’s relatively simple to be transfixed by the Pieta but the true joy of life lies in being brought out of our cocoon of self-importance to enjoy a momentary burst of beauty whether a impious but glorious carpet of blue bonnets next to a Texas highway, the child smiling at you in the chaos of the grocery store, or a single person spreading their talent on a busy subway station platform.
These are the moments which make a cynic have a little faith.
3
Is it a lack of interest in music? Is it people in a hurry to get from one spot to another? Is it that some people are in some way, for whatever reason, almost embarrassed by people playing music in a public place that isn’t "meant" to have an actual human being with an instrument…playing music? Is it that "if I stop and listen, I’ll have to put something into their case and no matter what I put, it probably won’t be enough." Is it a thought process that says that no matter how good you are with your music, you wouldn’t be playing in a subway station if you had a "real" job as a muscian?
Perhaps a study or scholarly paper should be written on the subject…if it hasn’t already been done.
We should take a poll!
4
Please … no more studies on silly subjects! Local news reported a recent study this morning that people using nail guns have a high risk for hand and feet injuries … duh!!!
Seriously, I don’t think the embarassment theory holds a lot of water unless we move back in time to the Eisenhower years or live in the middle of Iowa (no offense to that great state … I love corn) you are probably accustomed to seeing street performers. Growing up in the San Francisco area I remember seeing everyone from Shields and Yarnell to Robin Williams on the streets. No embarassment just entertainment.
So, I vote for too much hurry. :-)
5
I think the embarassment theory does hold water if you consider the monetary aspect of busking. People don’t play music on the street for the sheer joy of being ignored by passers-by, they play in the hopes that you’re going to give them some money. If you don’t intend to give them money, you might well feel the same discomfort that I reckon most people feel when they pass a beggar without giving them money. So you hurry on past without making eye contact for fear of feeling even more guilty. Or at least I do.
6
I only now was able to watch the video…I would have stopped. Period.
7
My brother kindly sent me the link to an interesting follow-up discussion where the author of the article (Gene Weingarten) fields various questions and comments from readers: http://tinyurl.com/yod662
I was really taken aback by some people’s defensive reaction to the article. I didn’t find the premise behind the article or the article itself condescending, preachy or pretentious, but some readers certainly did—which I think says more about the readers than the piece itself (as does David Marchese’s response to the article in Salon - http://tinyurl.com/364bl7 - which is really so off the mark as to be ludicrous).
8
I didn’t see this, or know about it, so maybe this already happened, but I think it would have been interesting for the guys doing the experiment to have some confederates who did stop to listen in order to see if that would have set off a "stopping and listening" process which others joined in with. Perhaps people were rushing past just because everybody else was.
9
That’s a really good point, Nigel; when a few people are standing around watching something, there’s a definite tendency for other people to coalesce around them. I suspect the results of the experiment would have been different if there were "plants" among the commuters.
Sorry. Comments are closed.