Yes, and that message is "art is as much about the object itself as it is about its sociological context."
Put something into a museum and everybody will look at it reverently. Sell it on the street and most will ignore it. Sad. But human.
Put something into a museum and everybody will look at it reverently. Sell it on the street and most will ignore it. Sad. But human.
I still don't know how this makes me feel. You can say it's human to ignore things on the street, but there were more children who stopped than adults.
I think it's moreso that the older we get, the less we trust our emotions. We're scared to have an original opinion, or go against the grain. We let the responsibilities of life take over-- it's easier than reflecting on who you are and how things feel. We don't want to get in trouble, don't want to be late for work, don't want people to laugh at us, don't want to feel alone.
I wish I knew how to fix this in the world. I think we're missing out on a lot.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04...
I've often seen people say that one of the great things about having kids is getting an opportunity to see the world through their "everything is interesting" perspective. So there's an option…
BTW, my favorite part about Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize-winning Joshua Bell subway busking experiment is that after he won the prize, someone noticed that this experiment had also been performed in 1930 with similar results — see http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-06-29/opinions/36873... .
Should people at a metro station even be able to tell the difference between a violin worth $3.5k and one worth $3.5M anyway?
I've seen musicians on the level of a talented high schooler draw a big crowd and rake in cash at chinatown a few stops away. If Bell had done that experiment in Dupont Circle at 6pm on a Saturday night he'd have probably started a riot =).
The prison of modern life in a nutshell.