A street performer

After reading only a brief amount of the article listed below, I knew I wanted to write a post to share it with those who otherwise might have walked past without noticing. Early on, I jotted down a few brief notes regarding my increased readership of The Washington Post due to their high quality and willingness to embrace web technology, I posed the question asking if I would have done anything differently, I noted my increased respect for Joshua Bell for participating in the exercise and I questioned the subjective nature of beauty itself. However on completing the reading, I am left slightly numb. Suddenly my linguistic ability to express the rush of thoughts and insights seems inadequate. I feel a certain affinity with those oblivious commuters, as I know I too move through life oblivious at times: an idea explored in a previous post.

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

- Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten for The Washington Post

I hope you can find time to read the article.