Our distracted lives

iBrian

iBrian

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This is an old story but just thought I'd revisit it.

It's an over-written and lengthy piece, but sadly somehow says something about our state of awareness:

Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com

By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by.

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.
Click to expand...
 
Didn't Sting do the same thing in England and get next to nothin?

Guarantee I could go to that same stop and make plenty...

Have done it before.

Those violinists with strads and rock guitarists are a dime a dozen, orhestras and bands are full of them...they stand on street corners all over...they often (until they are famous) work for next to nothin...

But juggle three macheties or eat some fire...pull a coin from someones ear, take the bill they wrote their name on out of a banana...you get a crowd....
 
hey he didnt complain about the 40 bucks an hour [now probably 50] but it seems to be the way of it, tooo busy to smell the flowers or listen to a tune....must rush, getting distracted!
 
I said:
This is an old story but just thought I'd revisit it.

It's an over-written and lengthy piece, but sadly somehow says something about our state of awareness
Click to expand...

How should people have behaved? If I were engaged in an internal debate about whether or not to give a violin-playing beggar money, it would not likely be decided by the quality of music.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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