Take one of the leading concert violinists in the world, a $3.5 million Strad, and fifteen minutes of the greatest music ever composed.
Then busk at a DC subway station during rush hour.
Get almost totally ignored, and make - $32.17
Read the details here
The best busker ever
Moderator: Beowulf
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Androsphinx
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The best busker ever
"what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent? Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror - the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its colossal chops in the unsuspected abyss, fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist" - Harry Houdini "Under the Pyramids"
"The goal of science is to substitute facts for appearances and demonstrations for impressions" - John Ruskin, "Stones of Venice"
"The goal of science is to substitute facts for appearances and demonstrations for impressions" - John Ruskin, "Stones of Venice"
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Starglider
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Re: The best busker ever
Morning rush hour, when people literally do not have time to hang around.Androsphinx wrote:Then busk at a DC subway station during rush hour.
This is staged and completely over-analysed. Yes of course people don't have time to stand around. They're likely thinking about work and too busy even to notice. The article is all 'oh they're not real people, the artist is the only real person there'. Actually the arrogance is entirely on the part of the artists for thinking that they're so important that people should interrupt the busiest part of their day - pay attention, drop what they're doing and make themselves late for work just to stand in awe of a performer. Music, like all art, is ultimately just entertainment. People want entertainment on their own terms. Is this supposed to be a surprise?A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand.
"I had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement."
Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.
You can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.
"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."
So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs.
"Evan is very smart!"
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Soontir C'boath
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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
