Joshua Bell at L'Enfant Plaza

Perhaps you saw the headline earlier this week that the Washington Post newspaper had just won a nearly-unprecedented six Pulitzer Prizes in journalism. One of the prizes went to Gene Weingarten for his April 8, 2007 story "Pearls Before Breakfast." This story describes an unannounced "concert" by Joshua Bell, one of the world's most renowned violinists, at the entrance to the L'Enfant Plaza subway stop on the Washington DC Metro. The Post wanted to see how the regular commute crowd of "government Washington" (Bell played from about 7:50-8:35 a.m. on a Friday in January 2007), would react when it heard Bell playing not as a virtuoso in a tux-clad setting, but as a street musician in jeans, t-shirt and ball cap. Would he be recognized by the crowd? Would people stop and listen? Throw money into his open violin case? Cause a panic? Require police intervention? Ignore him? Billed as a study in priorities and perception, the Post noted that nearly 1100 people passed within feet of Bell in that 45 minutes, that only a handful stopped to listen, that he collected exactly $32.17 for his efforts, and that only one person recognized him. Many of the people who passed within feet of him, while he played Bach, Schubert, etc. on his 1713 Stradivarius, could not even recall, when interviewed later, that a musician was even playing at the Plaza. In every case when a child was involved, however, the child wanted to stop and listen--only to be scooted along by his/her caregiver as the adult rushed to work.

One could reach lots of conclusions about people, beauty and context from this experiment, and Weingarten examines several theories in his piece (Bell was "out of context" and people didn't recognize him; people were "in their zones" and didn't have time to listen, etc.), but I want to use this story to aid reflection on another point made in the piece. When interviewed after the event, Bell sort of shrugged off the fact that he was ignored by almost everyone. He, as he says, has regular validation in his life, where people pay hundreds of dollars to hear him play. He didn't "need" any kind of recognition in the DC subway. He simply went along for the ride, so to speak, to see what would happen.

The point I would like to explore, however, is that it may be true that unless you have a "place" in life from which to show your "genius" or "special interpretive talent," that you might simply be ignored by almost everyone in life, and the ones who don't ignore you throw into your "open violin case" enough money for you possibly to keep from starving, but not much more.

Joshua Bell's Lesson for My Life

Ever since he was a child growing up in Bloomington, IN, Bell's parents knew he was something special. His prodigious talents in violin have been recognized and richly rewarded over the years. He has played with most leading symphony orchestras around the world; at 39 he is at the top of his game. But, he also has a context, an acceptable and long-recognized social frame in which to demonstrate his "genius" (he didn't like that word--since he sees himself primarily as an interpreter rather than as a generator of music, like Bach/Schubert were). If he isn't known, regaled or otherwise recognized in the DC subway, so what?

But the reason this essay is on my "autobiography" rather than "Reviews" is that his situation brought to mind the precise lack that I have felt for many years--not having a "context" for the demonstration of my "creativity" or "interpretive" or "generative" force. If you are a symphony musician, the symphony is where you get your "validation." Recording contracts and other things follow from there. But what about if I have no social institution for validation? Oh, I have had jobs over the years--indeed, I pride myself sometimes in being probably the only person who has had jobs with so many high-profile Oregon intellectually-oriented institutions (Reed College, The Oregonian, Willamette University College of Law, Westminister Presbyterian Church (Portland), Stoel Rives LLP), but none of these jobs "stuck." My interests were always seemingly broader and narrower than the jobs permitted--broader because I wanted to search out fields beyond the field I was hired to work on; narrower because I also wanted to lose myself in "footnotes" of some broader cases/issues when I should have been only spending a moment or two on the "footnotes." So, I didn't "fit" into any job.

Finally, however, I feel I "fit" into my world. It consists, largely, of writing, thinking, research, study, memorizing and sometimes speaking in public contexts on what I have learned. It has led to these many essays--which not only reveal the worlds of the subjects but also scratch the surface of worlds of great significance. For example, in writing about the film Artemisia this morning, about the 17th century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi, I made a number of comments that could be taken in dozens of different directions by one who had a desire to learn in more detail. The problem, however, as I see it, is that I am like Joshua Bell playing at L'Enfant though without another source of validation. Thus, with respect to these essays, I can find an occasional person who thinks they are great, but there is no sense I have of any kind of institutional or other kind of validation which, frankly, most of us need in order to feel that we are in our best and highest use in life.

Conclusion

So, that is how I am primarily thinking of my life these days--in terms of being a sort of Joshua Bell without the DC Symphony or another recognized musical body to run back to when no one pays any attention to me at the L'Enfant Plazas of my life. For most of life, so it seems, I am playing my heart out at Bach Chaconnes or Schubert's Ave Maria. Occasionally someone may stop by and throw a few dimes or even a $5 bill into my open case. But, for most of life, it is as if the 1097 people just pass by and do nothing. At all.

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