if this post isn’t trying to be pretentious, my beard is made of green spinach. sorry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Virtuoso plays for rush hour in experiment, complete with video illustrating the incredulous text around it. There are rambling thoughts on philosophers and beauty and modernity and lotto tickets and you can see the writer blinking in confusion, scrambling to explain what happened in the presence of this man whose name would be accompanied by strings of exclamation marks if he were conversing on AIM and not composing an article for a newspaper.

There is also a link to listen, after peering quizzically at a man ensconced in orange jello, to the entire forty-three-minute concert, glorious, heartbreaking, backed up by footsteps and mumblings and doors opening and closing and buoyant greetings.

Would you have stopped to listen?

I tried to stop once for someone playing guitar in a subway with a beautiful voice and drew in breath to sing a harmony and got forcibly pulled away with a hand over my mouth. I don’t forgive, I only forget, most of the time. Too bad for me. I also realize that “if and only if” is a more correct beginning to the subject line in terms of the idea I’m trying to get across but it’s clumsier.

2 comments

  1. yeah, the writer of the article was pretty lame, but the idea was really interesting, though the results were not surprising at all to me.

    When I visited Austria there were voilinists on the streeet that people stopped to listen to. But it was Salzburg, so I guess people are more prone to stop and listen to classical music. I’m curious to see the difference if they put Bell in Europe in the same kind of setting, since they kept commenting about it.

  2. I had forgotten how much I loved that wapo article. I have always loved extravagant, unapologetic writing. I mean, look at this: Bell’s a heartthrob. Tall and handsome, he’s got a Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes, and, onstage, cute elides into hott. Elides! Hott, with two Ts! And I totally know what they mean about watching someone on stage, or watching someone do anything at the top of their craft.

    I must have made a conscious decision not to comment on that part of the article. I think I was more attracted to the sadness of nobody stopping to listen, and how much everybody in the know wrung their hands about it.

    Also, leaving comments on myself-from-SIX-years-ago is hilarious!

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