Did you ever stop and listen to a busker or a group of buskers? (That's not the philosophical question by the way!!)
Well because I have a poor struggling artist with loads of talent that never gets a break (he told me to write that) in the house, I always feel sorry for musicians playing in the street and do sometimes stop to listen to what they are playing. You know the way it is, on a summers day, walking down Grafton Street, or Henry Street, or through Temple Bar, your poor ears are bombarded with different sounds, some rockabilly, some pop, some rock, some classical, some I can't classify!! Some good, some bad, some pretty awful (they're easy to spot)!! But occasionally you get a really good one, or a group that are really entertaining. That's when I stop. Never for long, unless they are playing something I know and really like. I've never been lucky enough to be around tho' when some of the bigger artists give impromptu sessions on the street to the unsuspecting passers by. But I live in hope...
I wonder if I had been in Washington when the Washington Post decided to do a social experiment with a busker, which kind of person I would have been. Would I have been one that stopped and listened, or one that hurried by without a second glance...
The Washington Post put a man at a metro station in Washington DC on a busy cold January morning. They estimated that about 1000 people passed through the station on their way to work. They waited and watched. The man played six pieces by Bach, on a violin, he played for about 45 minutes. For the first few minutes he was ignored, then a man stopped to listen for a minute, but he checked his watch and hurried for his train. This was repeated over and over. Some people gave him money, but they then hurried on. It was mostly children that wanted to stop and listen but they too were hurried on by their parents rushing for the train. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a while. After 45 minutes he had made $32. He stopped playing, nobody noticed, nobody applauded, there was just silence.
So the philosophical question is, if he made $32 in 45 minutes, how much would he make in a year playing at a metro station, and what color was his hat...
OK, that's not the question either...
The 'man' was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million. A couple of nights before he had played to a sold out audience in Boston where the tickets were on average $100 each.
There were lots of questions about this experiment, i.e, do we notice beauty in a commonplace environment, do we appreciate it, and do we recognize talent? I'll leave those questions to the Washington Post to answer.
But, the real question is, If we took a minute and really stopped to look and listen, what would we really see and hear...?
Gosh, that's very philosophical for me!! But I bet it's made you think.
So, in future when I'm walking down Grafton Street on a Summers day, with a gauntlet of buskers to run, instead of putting my hands over my ears and rushing by with my head down, I will stop, and look, and listen...
