Wednesday morning.

[azurelunatic]

http://friendlyhostility.com/d/20070411.html -- Breeeeeeze!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22098-2004Mar24 -- transplant.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?hpid=topnews -- music.

http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/5989568.html -- "That'll give you, er, bees."

Comments

[celtic_maenad]

Gah! Josh Bell! Free Concert! Stradavari! *sigh* I'm rarely in DC except for pleasure anymore, so I'd have stayed, and if I had cash (which I usually don't) I'd have dropped it in the case. But the reason I had to comment is that the article itself reads like Charles DeLint:
it was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.

Even at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler's movements remain fluid and graceful; he seems so apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard, otherworldly -- that you find yourself thinking that he's not really there. A ghost.

Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.

[azurelunatic]

That article is journalistic excellence.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

But, see, the point is that if you WERE there, you probably wouldn't have reacted the way you say/think/believe you would. Most likely, you would've been thinking about schedules, being on time for whatever you were using Metro to get to, the bozo blocking your way by walking way too slow while talking on his cellphone, and generally been absorbed in that self-contained independent and isolated mini-universe that we all tend to pull about ourselves in high-density public urban spaces.

I have no doubt that I'd've been one of the people whizzing past--unless I was on vacation and not Rushing Off To Fulfil Some Important Responsibility, in which case I might well have stuck around for a few minutes and maybe even dropped a buck or so in his case. Especially if I happened by during the Ave Maria.

(And I think their observation about children implies more than it ought. I really don't think the kiddies had any idea that they were in the presence of musical greatness--it was merely an entertaining diversion. I suspect they'd've been craning their necks in *exactly* the same way if the street performance had been "stuffing weasels down his pants" rather than "the greatest violin performance you are ever likely to witness". Or if it hadn't been a performance at all, but rather a new stand of gumball/candy dispensers.)

[azurelunatic]

A performance involving live weasels might be more diverting than excellent violin music.

...I have a feeling I might have been able to ignore it more easily than many. I grew up with a violin-playing sister, so violin music blends into any background noise for me. I told my former roommate that she could practice the violin while I was home without fear of self-consciousness, because it takes active effort for me to *listen* to violin music, because of my sister.

[celtic_maenad]

being that I'm a music student (or at least I was), I AM attuned to music. I'd have heard & responded to it, at least viscerally... enough to pause and look for the musician even if I was on the way to work. I've actually dragged people with me out of our way to find where the live music was coming from. Wandering in both DC and NYC, I've done this.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Ah. This I did not know about you. I hereby withdraw my baseless accusation. *bows*

[celtic_maenad]

:D no reason you should have known! And like the woman at the end who actually recognized Josh Bell, I might not have been counted in the results.

And the number of people whom I've annoyed by stopping and going "where's that music coming from?" when they're not even hearing music... or by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to orient on the sound... yeah. Good thing I also married a musician!