Pearls Last Night

Can people recognize quality?  Can they recognize it out of context?  Does beauty for its own sake matter?  What would happen if the world's greatest violinist, playing one of the world's most famous and expensive violins were to give a solo performance incognito in a subway station?  In 2007, The Washington Post talked violin virtuoso Joshua Bell into doing just that, and everyone was surprised by what happened.  Gene Weingarten, a Washington Post humor columnist, won a Pulitzer Prize for his article, Pearls Before Breakfast.  It is very much worth your time- read the article by clicking here.

I always read Gene in the Post because I happen to like his particular blend of ridiculousness and lowbrow humor, so when I settled in with my coffee and the paper one Sunday morning in 2007, I was expecting typical Gene.  Instead, I was so blown away by his experiment, by his insight and those who participated, and his fantastic writing, that I made copies for practically everyone I knew and then proceeded to hound them until they read it too.

Last night, I am thrilled to report, I was invited to see Joshua Bell at the Kennedy Center! (!!!!!!!!!!) He was phenomenal.  I couldn't stop smiling.  He is fire and finesse.  The violin is rich, lush, soulful and so precise.  He makes the instrument soar, and whisper and yearn and sigh and laugh.  When he played the shimmering, powerful Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, I believe Johannes Brahms himself would have wept with delight.

How anyone could walk past this man playing a violin, is beyond me.  Plus he's cute.

The Kennedy Center itself always feels glamorous to me.  Thanks to Jacqueline Kennedy's grace and vision and dogged determination, it's one of the largest performing arts centers in the world.  The Kennedy Center is a public-private partnership, which means that while it is the National Center for the Performing Arts and a monument to President John F. Kennedy, it is self-supporting through ticket sales and donations from corporations and private individuals.

Just outside the main waiting gallery, there is a terrace with a fountain and several quotes from John F. Kennedy carved into the stone walls.  One inscription, above, says, “There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts...”

And this one is my favorite.

And finally from Gene Weingarten:

In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. 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.

"This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.

If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

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