Hey Freak!

We've probably all seen street musicians, out and about, playing for tips. Some of us have stopped to listen, occasionally. Sometimes, we leave tips. But I think that most people are just annoyed by street musicians, and probably think that the world would be a better place if these one-step-up-from-a-beggar people were cleaned off the streets.

So. What happens when one of the world's greatest violinists shows up at a subway station with a violin worth $3.5 million and starts playing for tips? Would people notice the musical genius? Would crowds gather 'round for a free concert of classics (granted, nobody knew that he was a musician who normally plays for people paying more than $100 a ticket to hear him)? Would he even make twenty bucks?

He emerged from the Metro at the L'Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. 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.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

...

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. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

It's a very interesting article about human nature. It sure made me stop and think... "What would I do in that situation?" Would I be just another passer-by, simply ignoring the performance? Could I be moved by the performance of a street musician? I would like to think that I'd at least stop and listen (and tip), in appreciation of the talent, even if I wasn't moved. So, I guess, the big question that I asked myself was "What kind of person do I want myself to be?"

Go ahead. Read the full story. Would you have stopped and listened? What would you have done?