The True Meaning of Beauty in This World

This article is about an awesome violinist named Joshua Bell. Even though i am not into violin music, I looked him up on youtube and found out that his is both a big influence in the world of music as well as the world in general. It surprised me a lot to hear that for few people stopped to listen to him play during the Washington Post experiment describe in the article "Pearls Before Breakfast."  The article talks about how Bell was standing on a busy metro platform, in front of thousands of people during the morning rush hour.  He ended up only getting a couple people to look at him and not even enough change to buy a small coffee.

Gene Wiengarten did a pretty legitimate job at showing me everything that was going on at the metro scene. He went into detail about what Bell was wearing along with some other details for the experiment.  The descriptions throughout the article were broken up by conversations, but it was done very well.  Then Wiengarten goes into detail about Bell's background and why he chose music and whatnot.  

When I started to read the part about L’Enfant Plaza it showed me that it was a performance that didn't live up to anything like Bell's normal ones.  Wiengarten talks about the satire of the lottery ticket patrons.  The ones who were getting the show of their lives and didn't seem to care.  Even though no one gave him the time of day Bell still played beautiful music.  He was taken out of the music world and put into the general world and it seems like no one cared what he had to share with them.  


I really enjoyed reading this article, I didn't know what to think about it because of the title.  The next time I see someone playing on a busy street corner I think I might stop and listen for awhile before I assume that they are either not good at what they are doing or just another homeless person looking for some change.