Too Busy For Even a Moment of Exquisite Brilliance
I was pouring through my RSS feeds during a short escape this afternoon and came across a recent article at The Washington Post describing an awe-inspiring event that happened recently at the L’Enfant Metro™ stop. The event was monumental and yet the circumstances that pervaded the course of this brilliance was nothing short of shocking.
One day in January, world-class violinist Joshua Bell took the “stage” at the top of the escalators that dump commuters from the rail onto the street-level at L-Enfant Plaza. In forty-five minutes of musical perfection, most of the 1,000-odd passersby did just that—passed by, without even acknowledging the internationally-acclaimed virtuoso who stood and played some of the finest music of all time. That is absolutely incredible—and frightening.
The article is long, but worth reading every word. I hope I am never blinded so deeply by life that I miss an opportunity to experience sheer grandeur.
Pearls Before Breakfast at The Washington Post
Tagged: life, washington, dc, metro, busy, music, classical, violin, joshua bell, washington post
Joshua Nemecek
2007-04-12 1945hrs
I saw the same article today. It made me think of the verse where Jesus talks about “whatever you do to the least of these.” So few people took notice of one who is among the “greatest” at what he does, how easy is it to overlook the “least?”
Dustin
2007-04-12 2009hrs
I saw the article this past Sunday and was amazed. Sarah and I have seen him twice (actually, she played with him the first time) and he is unbelievable, sheer “genius”. The article makes me wish I would have been in the metro that day and watched for free. I wonder if I would have been grabbing people as they walked by, pleading with them to stop and listen.
.joe
2007-04-13 1212hrs
i loaded up some josh bell and read that article and was welling up with a lot of emotion. i never want to miss those sweet moments in life… the unexpected… the powerful. this is part of the reason i don’t have an ipod. especially in this city, there’s so much originality that you never know what you’ll see or hear. i want to keep myself open to the possibility of seeing or hearing something great.
on a related note… i drove josh bell back and forth from his hotel when he played at xm and i picked up his violin to hand it to him and he quickly intervened and handled it himself. i didn’t understand until the interview that it was a stradavari and that the instrument was almost 300 years old.
Sean S
2007-04-28 2333hrs
This is why I love photography so much. It forces you to experience the world around you—to stop and find the beauty, even in the mundane.