Passing Life By

In my Schnitzelbahn post about Munich Figures, I realized that I walk by so many interesting things every day and often don't notice them.  So taking a minute to photograph and look up some of the small statues and building details here in Munich really was a satisfying experience.

Well, I never though I'd be linking to the web site of Jeff Bridges, but here it is.  In his recent post, he describes a "social experiment" organized by the Washington Post.  (Wikipedia describes it too.)  It took place on January 12 2007, at the L'Enfant Plaza Washington D.C. Metro station during the morning rush.

"A man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes".

What happened?  We know, because it was videotaped.

Over the duration of his performance, about 1100 people passed by.  (Bridges claims 2000, but I'm sticking with Wikipedia here.)  His first dollar came after 4 minutes from a woman as she walked right by.  Children repeatedly seemed to be interested in lingering to enjoy the music but were pulled away by hurried parents.  Eventually 20 people gave the man a little more than $32.  Only 7 really stopped and spent time listening.

The irony was this:  the musician was an incognito Joshua Bell on his 3.5 million-dollar Gibson Stradivarius violin.  A Grammy award winner who sells out the biggest and best concert halls with some tickets topping $100 per seat.  In other words, the pieces were composed by an all-time great and the performance was world-class.  (The acoustics were likely very good too, knowing the subway and where he would probably choose to play).

And it was free, for those that realized what was right in front of them.  Only one person the entire time recognized him.  (This person gave Joshua $20, pushing his total take to a whopping $52.)  Probably made their day -- much better than an iPod!

The experiment highlights, of course, how our flurry of activity and work orientation probably leads to us missing some experiences that could make life, well, nicer.  (Today, it's almost as if we need to have things marketed to us -- that we're told how great something is and then we'll get excited, pay attention, and "enjoy" it.)  Gene Weingarten won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his article on that experiment.

Interesting stuff.