When “Free” is Not Enough

Recently a Washington Post staff writer, Gene Weingarten, decided to conduct an usual experiment about high culture. He talked one of the world’s finest violinists, Joshua Bell, into taking his multimillion dollar fiddle to the Washington D.C. metro and playing incognito for commuters during the morning rush hour. The result? Hardly anyone slowed down, let alone stopped to listen. Weingarten’s article explores what happened in fascinating detail and raises troubling questions about how we experience free culture. Does art only matter when we enjoy it in the right context? After a few minutes in the subway, Bell said his own expectations were radically lowered, to the point that he was sickeningly grateful when someone dropped a dollar instead of a quarter into his (multimillion dollar) violin case. Check out his amazing performance (apparently the acoustics were pretty good in the metro station):

You can listen to the full version of Bell’s impromptu concert on the Washington Post website here. Incidentally, he went on to win the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize this week. Meanwhile Garten, the Washington Post writer who masterminded the stunt, discussed the experience on On the Media last Friday (iTunes – Feed – Site).

NOTE – A Welcome to Ed Finn:

Folks, I wanted to mention that the article above is from Ed Finn, who will now be  contributing to Open Culture, and we’re glad to have him. Ed is a graduate student in Stanford’s Department of English,
where he studies the intersections of literature and technology, new
media and media theory. Before coming to Stanford, he worked as an
Assistant Editor at Slate and Popular Science and spent some time as a
freelance journalist. He is also the author of The Legend of the O.K. Corral. Please keep an eye out for new pieces from Ed and also check out his professional blog.

And by the way — if you’re a culture afficionado who may want to contribute to Open Culture, feel free to get in touch. We’ll hopefully be adding new faces as things evolve.