Making time for beauty
January 14, 2013
image courtesy of photobucket.com
On January 12, 2007, over a thousand commuters passed through the L’Enfant Plaza station of the Washington, D.C. subway line. A rush of people, reading their morning papers, talking on their phones. Hurrying out for another day of the grind. The vast majority of these Everymen and Everywomen never noticed the violinist playing near the doors. Panhandlers are common enough in the subways, playing their instruments for dimes and quarters that will feed them for another day.
This particular panhandler remained at his spot for forty-five minutes and collected a grand total of $32.17. Of the 1,097 people who passed by, only twenty-seven paused long enough to listen. And only one recognized the man for who he was—Joshua Bell, one of the most talented violinists in the world.
I wonder about all those people who passed through the subway station that day. I wonder if they ever saw the newspaper articles and television reports and figured out they had been there, had walked right passed him, without even knowing who he was.
I wonder of Joshua Bell, too, and what he was thinking. All of those people so near on that gray January morning, too hurried to hear the music he played. It was Bach, mostly. And the sound—the most beautiful sound a violin ever made. A sound like angels. That day, Bell used the 1713 Stradivarius he’d purchased for nearly four million dollars.
You might say you’re not surprised by any of this. You’ll say it’s the modern world we live in. People are always in a rush to get from point A to point B. There’s so much we have to keep track of, so many things to do. So much vying for our attention. It’s a generational thing. Our parents and grandparents were the ones who enjoyed a slower life. We don’t have that luxury.
Maybe so.
And yet the very same thing happened in May of 1930. Seventy-seven years before Joshua Bell played inside the D.C. subway, Jacques Gordon, himself a master, played in front of the Chicago subway. The Evening Post covered the story this way:
“A tattered beggar in an ancient frock coat, its color rusted by the years, gave a curbside concert yesterday noon on an windswept Michigan Avenue. Hundreds passed him by without a glance, and the golden notes that rose from his fiddle were swept by the breeze into unlistening ears…”
Jacques Gordon collected a grand total of $5.61 that day. Strangely enough, the violin he used on Michigan Avenue was the very Stradivarius that Joshua Bell would use in L’Enfant Plaza station all those years later.
I ask myself what I would have done had I been present there in Chicago or Washington. I wonder if those golden notes would have reached my ears and if I would have paused to listen.
I want so badly to answer yes.
I want to believe that I’m never so busy that I have no time for beauty.
I want to know that in such a dark and shadowy world, I will still make room for music and light.
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5 Responses to “Making time for beauty”
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I’m a writer of two novels, Snow Day (2010) and Paper Angels (2011), with two more on the way by Thomas Nelson. That may make me sound smart and/or wise. Neither is particularly applicable. I count that as a blessing, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is you never know what you might run into.. 
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Billy, Thank you for this beautiful reminder to slow down and hear the music–or smell the flowers–or appreciate the sunrise. Then, to thank the Architect of our great universe for the opportunity to experience it all.
Nice post, friend.
I pray I would have made the time, to open ears, open eyes, open my heart to drink in what was being poured
A well-known story in these parts. If you’ve ever been on the subway here and watched the lack of presence and attentiveness of others to those around them, the story would not be unusual.
A Post columnist this morning wrote of a group of NSO musicians playing at a local Whole Foods. When she interviewed some store customers, several remarked that the music was a distraction. (We should all be so distracted!) Fortunately, she came across a man entranced. He got it!
Watching the clock is a construct of humans. Imagine what a different world it would be if presence mattered more than time.
Music is food for the soul, and I hope I would have stopped to listen and perhaps recognize the man or the music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myq8upzJDJc