While checking the Signals vs. Noise blog today, I read a very interesting article about a world-class violenist who played a ‘gig’ in a D.C. subway. You can decide whether or not to read the Washington Post article, but I found it insightful. A synoposis is this: a world-class musician dressed in plain clothes plays ingenious pieces during rush-hour. He’s largely unnoticed. A crowd never gathers and he earns less than $40 during his time. The only demographic which consistently took notice of him was children… who were hurried on by their hurried parents.
The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 has been on my mind on-and-off for the past 9 months or so. David Bell’s subway performance and Christ’s words are glaringly connected. Let me quote some of the parable to clarify that statement:
He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
” ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’[a] But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
…
The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
There were a few haunting comments in the article itself:
“The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.”
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
– from “Leisure,” by W.H. Davies
Maybe we should ’stop and smell the roses’ a little more often…
