“Swine”

Kevin Drum points out that a Washington Post experiment designed to show that people are Philistines who don't appreciate beauty does no such thing.

Basically, [the Post's Gene Weingarten] took a world-class violinist (Joshua Bell) and had him play for about an hour at the entrance to a DC Metro stop to see if anyone would notice. To a good approximation, no one did. The tone of the story is a sort of artificially mournful tsk-tsking over our inability to recognize beauty in the world around us, take time out to smell the roses, etc. etc.

Weingarten should come to Philadelphia in the fall. If he takes the train up to Suburban Station he'll have a good chance of hearing some world-class violin played live there by one of the kids from Curtis. There might not be throngs of admirers surrounding him, but the kid's case is pretty full. People are in a hurry, but they're appreciative.

Anyway, what Weingarten really needs to come see is up the stairs and a few blocks south, at the Kimmel Center. Inside, the Philadelphia Orchestra is playing a sold-out concert. Outside, the same concert is being shown on giant TV screens. The crowd of music lovers he didn't find in L'Enfante Plaza is gathered there on the corner of Broad and Spruce — on all four corners, actually, and all kinds of people.

These folks didn't come here to see this, to hear this, they were headed somewhere else. But they've stopped, deciding they can be late for whatever it is they were rushing off to do. There's no where to sit, and there's a steady stream of cars and buses driving by just a few feet away, but they stand there, taking it all in, for five or 10 minutes before heading off again for the evening's intended business. Some may stay longer, standing there for the full concert for all I know, but I have to go too.

Of course, if Weingarten were to come and see this, he'd probably write much the same piece he wrote following the Joshua Bell busking experiment. After all, I and most of the other pedestrians gathered outside of the Kimmel Center wouldn't be able to name the works or the composers we heard there. It wouldn't be too hard to paint us as uncultured Philistines who ignorantly walked away just before the really good bits.

But Weingarten's apparent pleasure at having his lack of faith in the hoi polloi confirmed isn't what's most annoying about his piece. What's most annoying isn't his lack of faith in people, but his lack of faith in the music itself. He concludes by mocking the inappreciative passers-by, calling the great Joshua Bell "the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza" for failing to produce a scene like this. But assuming that everything he writes about the beauty of the music and of Bell's performance is true (which the video seems to confirm), then why assume that this experiment had no other, greater effect?

The headline for the Post story is "Pearls Before Breakfast," a play on Matthew 7:6, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine …" If Weingarten had more faith — not just in the commuting "swine," but in the music itself — he might have chosen instead Ecclesiastes 11:1, "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days."

P.S.: So what's your coolest busker/street musician/performer story?

Update: To Raka and others in comments who think my reading of Weingarten's piece is overly hostile: Fair enough. I think I may have allowed the Swine-hint headline (which Weingarten most likely had nothing to do with) to color my take on his piece. I do think there's a good bit of condescension at work there, but I also have to admit that the idea and execution of this stunt were pretty cool — especially when you consider that Weingarten managed, essentially, to arrange an hour-long command performance from one of his favorite musicians, not a bad day's work.

Update No. 2: Matt B. e-mails to say he is a fan of Weingartern's, recommending his delivious takedown of Christopher Hitchens — "The Male of the Specious" — which probably justifies such fandom.