It’s in Washington DC, Friday 12 January 2007 7:50 AM. Its rush hour
traffic in the Metro. There are people busying by. In one station
L’enfant Plaza at 7:50 AM, a nondescript American white male steps
out and walks across and positions himself next to the trash can. He’s
carrying a small case, he’s dressed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved
t-shirt and a baseball cap. He opens his case and there is a violin. He
puts his case down, puts in a few dollars and some change as seed
capital, he swivels around and starts to play. He starts playing some
beautiful classical numbers. For the first three minutes no one even
notices him, after three minutes there is someone who notices him
but doesn’t slow down. It takes another 30 seconds before a lady
actually takes out some money from her purse and without slowing
down puts the money in his case.
This performance goes on for 43 minutes. During these 43 minutes,
1097 people pass this scene and only 7 people stopped, the longest
for 3 minutes. The person who seemed to be most interested was
a three-year-old boy but who was hurried along by his mother who
needed to get to work. Now this experiment was done by the Washington Post and this was no ordinary musician this was Joshua Bell who at 39 was known as one of the world’s best musicians. In fact a one-time child prodigy and this was no ordinary violin, this is a violin
with a history which he had bought for $3.5 million. The same Joshua
Bell three days ago had played at Boston Symphony Hall where even
the average to good tickets were sold for $100. So the question is
why were people willing to pay $100 to listen to him whereas people
are not willing to listen to him when he was doing it for free. Thi was
because of context. The context was at the Symphony hall I know who
he is even if I don’t understand too much of music I like music and I
have gone in environment in a frame of mind where I value that. Here
my frame of mind is very different so context becomes very important.
The same Joshua Bell’s $100 seat in the Symphony Hall in Boston no
one stops to listen.
This brings me to a thought, are we speeding up too much? Are we
not being able to slow down and to quote the famous Welsh poet WH
Davis “What life is it, if full of care we do not even have time to stand
and stare.”
Business Points ( Tags )
#Stopandsmelltheroses #context #JoshuaBell #don’trush #appreciatelife
