Pearls before Breakfast

I linked the above article on the linkroll during the weekend, but there was a wonderful quote from lower down in the article that I wanted to point out. The article, for those who do not wish to read the whole thing, is about how the Washington Post convinced world class violinist Joshua Bell to play in a busy Washington subway station without any fanfare or any sign that this man was one of the greatest living classical violin players in the world. From the article:

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?...His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

There is a great passage about how most children passing by would slow and then try to stop and listen, pulling against their parents to halt and hear the man wearing jeans, t-shirt, and cap and playing a 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius in a Metro station. One of the other people who stopped and listened for a while was a man who played the violin while he was younger, finally giving it up around the age of 18. He recognized at once that this was no normal street musician, but someone who was in utter, spectacular command of their instrument. The Post reporter asked if he had any regrets, I suppose either that he had played the violin at all and was unable to reach the level of this man or that he had given up playing so young. His response was great:

"No. If you love something but choose not to do it professionally, it's not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have it forever."

So often creative people are encouraged to give up on expressing themselves creatively on the basis that they are unlikely to ever be good enough to make a living in whatever creative field they are in. Which, of course, is true to a certain extent. Few people, percentage wise, make their livings writing books, or poetry, or songs, or singing, or playing the guitar, or painting, or dancing. But, that does not mean that the rest of us are wasting our time.

What we have, not only in the work we create but in the sharpness it brings to the the other creative works that we imbibe, is worth all the struggle and persistence and effort. What we gain, beyond the simple joy of creation and the peace that comes from completing something we know is good, is a sharpened ability to recognize beauty in all its forms, whenever and wherever we encounter it. Whether it's someone at a poetry slam who actually knows what they are doing and has written some pretty good stuff, or a street painter that manages to capture something real and powerful in the quick sketch he does of you and your girlfriend, we sharpen our eyes and ears by doing and so learn to recognize that sharpness in others.

Which, of course, sharpens us even more.