Stop. Look. Listen

Recently I’ve been thinking quite a bit about beauty, perception, and the maddening pace at which I and everyone I know seems to be moving these days. Since this has been on my mind so much lately, I’d like to share these thoughts with you as they relate to me as a string player and as someone who is trying to slow down and live more in the moment.

Recently I spent time in a small village in Honduras. In my mind, this was obviously a completely poverty-stricken place. Families were living in cramped little shacks. Starving, homeless dogs ran around everywhere, and children wore ragged clothes. The whole time I found myself thinking, “Oh, these poor people, I feel so sorry for them, what a hard life . . . ”

But no one looked unhappy. Everyone I met was very friendly and welcoming. No one asked me for money. So was my perception that they were suffering just that and nothing more? Did these people yearn for a better life, or was I missing something?

I related my thoughts to the woman who owned the house in which I was staying. She just smiled and said, “Oh that is quite a prosperous village. They just live simply. Family and community are the most important things to them. They’ve probably never experienced most of the things you and I have, so what’s there to miss?”

At this point you may be thinking, “OK, OK, that’s nice but what the heck does that have to with string playing?” I’m pondering the idea that life is not always as we see it, and that beauty and art may be just around the corner, so we’d better always be awake to it.

Here’s the part where music comes in. I recently received the same e-mail from two different people on the subject of beauty and perception, which got me thinking about my experience in Honduras. The e-mail that I received summarized the 2007 social experiment conceived of by the Washington Post. The experiment was designed to consider perception, context, and priorities. Basically, its aim was to explore whether or not people could appreciate genius and artistry if it was taken out of context—or out of the concert hall. The story written about the experiment, “Pearls Before Breakfast,” by Gene Weingarten, won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2008.

For those unfamiliar, the experiment involved violinist Joshua Bell, dressed as an ordinary street musician. He took his “Gibson ex-Huberman” 1713 Stradavari, worth more than $3 million, into a very busy Washington, DC, metro station on an early January morning in 2007, and played six pieces for about 45 minutes, including the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No. 2.

Now, who here is unfamiliar with the Chaconne? It is one of the most beautifully stirring and fiendishly difficult pieces in the solo repertoire for the violin. You might expect that a large crowd would have formed to listen to the performance. Well, during the time that Bell played in the station, over a thousand people passed him and only six stopped to listen. He received $32.17 worth of tips, not counting a woman who tossed in a $20 bill after she recognized him. Incredible. Or is it?

Now, I think to myself, “Well, I certainly would have stopped!” There’s no way hearing such beautiful music wouldn’t stop me dead in my tracks. But, if I were rushing to work at 7:30 in the morning with a million and one thoughts and priorities in my head, and without prior experience of Joshua Bell, or classical music, would this be the case? Who can say?

I’ve witnessed musicians busking and have even done some busking myself, but I know I’ve not always been awake to what was going on around me. So, what does this mean? Did I not stop to appreciate because I was too busy, or is it because I wasn’t prepared somehow for the experience, because I didn’t expect it? I’m also thinking about all of the things I could be missing by walking down the street listening to my iPod or all that is left out of an e-mail conversation. And I think about that village in Honduras. I assumed those villagers had nothing. It wasn’t true at all, just my perception.

I’m still not sure how all of these various ideas go together. Maybe you can help me figure it out. The idea of living in the moment is one I’m trying to employ on a deeper level in my string playing. To be receptive and to communicate with the musicians I play with, as well as to listen to what the music is telling me is what I’m striving for nowadays. I’m trying to focus my energy in two phases. The first phase involves all of the hard and tedious work of learning the music note by note. Getting the rhythms, fingerings and bowings down, learning the dynamics, etc. Then the second phase is where I just try to become the music, and let it take me where it needs to, and understanding it may lead me somewhere unexpected.

I certainly have a long way to go with these ideas and how they might fit together, and I would welcome hearing your thoughts on perception, beauty, and living in the moment.

By the way, as it turns out, the 2007 experiment was not the first of its kind! Click on this link to read both stories, and to see the video of Bell’s subway playing.