Guest Column

Statistics prove most of us are too absorbed in our own stuff to appreciate sudden beauty

The writer will be a sophomore in journalism at Iowa State University, and is contributing occasional Guest Columns on our site. —Chuck Offenburger

By KATHRYN STROTHER
June 5, 2007
UNION, IOWA

A few days ago, my boyfriend David Bartling handed me a stack of papers, encouraging me to read a Washington Post story he had found online. Written by Gene Weingarten, the article was simply titled “Pearls Before Breakfast,” and while I was intrigued and curious, time was short, so I placed it in my bag with all intentions of reading it as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, my good intentions were shrouded by time’s unforgiving grip. It wasn’t until a very dry day in a statistics class I was taking in May from Mark Monroe at Marshalltown Community College that I remembered that the intriguing Post story was stashed in my oversized purse. Quietly sneaking the article out of my bag, I began to read paragraphs in between standard deviation calculations, and before long, I’ll admit that whatever attention span I had for statistical probabilities was long gone. Sorry Mr. Monroe!

The story reported how, on a blustery day last January in Washington, D.C., an “unofficial” experiment was performed in the L’Enfant Plaza Station, one of the central subway hubs for those who work for the federal government. The experiment, conducted during the morning rush hour, used a casually dressed man and his violin. While this may not at first seem like anything more than the street musicians you inevitably hear while roaming the stations and sidewalks of the Capitol city, it indeed was. The musician was Joshua Bell.

Known throughout the world for his famously heartfelt performances on his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin, Bell began his complimentary performance – an ironic twist to this stunt, considering that balcony seats for this virtuoso usually sell for nearly $100 a piece. So what do you think happened when this acclaimed but unannounced musician performed Bach to the standing and bustling crowd of D.C.?

Chaos, autograph sessions, paparazzi, camera flashes, police squads with pepper spray? Complete and utter ballyhoo, right?

Wrong.

Instead, Bell performed to an American workforce that was too busy to pay any attention. Community members, who when asked by reporters if they had enjoyed the violinist performing in the plaza, simply shrugged their shoulders and stated that they didn’t recall any man performing.

And so, as this ugly fact and observation rested uneasily on my shoulders during that particular statistics class, I found myself questioning what I might have done had I been there. I certainly hope I wouldn’t have been the person who didn’t take the iPod headphones out of the ears to listen to the live violinist. And someone help me if I would ever become the mother who yanked her pre-school son away from the mini-concert when he stopped to listen.

It was easy to start passing judgment on those who had wandered so close to a musical genius and didn’t even realize it, or to accuse those who couldn’t appreciate the music of being closed-minded to different forms of art. I’ve been in band and played piano for 12 years, and while I certainly wouldn’t be one wanting to discuss, say, the Baroque period and how it affected Beethoven’s future music, I certainly think I would have been one of the few to stop and listen on that January day.

As I sat there in class thinking, bigger questions soon arose, and those questions prompted me to think about my own actions and attitudes for the future.

It scares me to think that somewhere down the line, I might be similar to those who didn’t have time to take in the beauty of the music. After all, I was the one far too busy to read the Washington Post story in a timely manner. What if I too become so busy and wrapped up in my own woes and responsibilities that I don’t see the beauty of life anymore?

In college, they always tell you that following a schedule is necessary for success. You have to plan studying times, social hours and even have a four-year plan. But how many times do you actually sit back and take something in “just because”? How many times do we, as a society, actually watch something or listen to something without a time frame?

And while it’s easy to say or hope that one of us is the exception to the norm, I think that when it comes down to it, the “busy ideology” has far exceeded our own understandings. We’ve been raised and molded to think “with a plan.”

While that plan is wonderful, it’s also debilitating and confining because we don’t see the color in the sunsets. Instead, we see the sunset as the end to a day in which we didn’t accomplish everything we wanted. We don’t feel the rain because instead, it’s making the bottom of our pants muddy, and that means that there is one more thing to add to the laundry list.

Sadly enough, we certainly don’t hear the music, because our own life’s speaker is already amplifying far too loud.


Kathryn Strother just completed her first year at Iowa State University, where she is majoring in journalism. She is spending this summer in her hometown of Union, pop. 427 in east central Iowa, where she is working more at her father’s veterinary clinic now that she has completed the statistics class. She notes, “And yeah, the stats class is over – a majorly good thing for both parties!” You can read an earlier commentary she wrote for our site by going the Archives for Guest Columns, and scrolling to her story dated May 17, 2007. You can e-mail Strother at kitkat88@iastate.edu.

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