Writings On The Wall

I found this piece of poetic genius on a random bathroom stall today. Enjoy!

Life Slowly Starts to Choke the Poetry Out of Us

The Washington Post, in a social experiment, convinced world famous violinist, Joshua Bell, to play in a subway station in Washington D.C. He is used to selling out massive arenas and plays with a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin.

Yet out of the 1,097 that walked past while he played some of the most difficult and beautiful pieces ever written, only seven people stopped briefly to listen.

There is an article about it in the Washington Post for May 4, 2007.

What does this tell us about our culture? We are self-centered and caught up in our own world. Getting to work on time is more important than art and life.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not looking down on the people that did not stop. I think our culture has trained us to ignore anything that might slow down production, and to view a street performer as a slacker. Frankly, I don’t know if I would have stopped had I something “important” to do. I think that is why the article interests me so much. Who knows what great things I have missed in my life by simply not paying attention.

Right now I am counting down the days until my graduation, waiting to get out of here. But in doing so, I may be ignoring or disregarding beautiful and important people and things in my life.

My favorite part of the article says:

“The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music too.”

I hope this never happens to me.