Pay Street Musicians

Mean Gene Weingarten recently published an eloquent article on the plight of the street musician - or better said, the tunnel vision of the American commuter. They took a world-class violinist, a $3 million violin, and put both in a Metro station during rush hour. Usually, tickets to see Joshua Bell perform run upwards of $100 per. In 45 minutes, Bell cleared $32 and was largely ignored.

Here's the article. Give yourself some time to watch the videos, which are critical. And there's some good psychoanalysis of the American Way of Life, focusing to get to work on time, a compulsion to stay out of it, the goal usually being money.

Weingarten also notes that every single kid who walked by tried to watch Bell perform. My favorite quote:

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

I always tip street musicians if they're halfway decent because they make life better. Beware the chokehold of life!