The Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing this year went to Gene Weingarten, a columnist for the Washington Post, for a story he wrote about violinist Joshua Bell – one of the best known performers in classical music – playing great music on his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin in a Washington D.C. subway station one January morning, and seeing what would happen.
The answer was: nothing much. More than 1,000 people passed by where Bell fiddled, only a handful stopped to listen, only one recognized the person playing, and Bell’s busking netted him $32.17.
We don’t begrudge Weingarten his award – even though it was chosen over Tulsa World writer Michael Overall’s excellent series “Going to Prison,” which the World submitted for the Pulitzer committee’s consideration.
It’s just that Weingarten’s victory reminds me about how depressing his story is to those who try to convince the world about the worth of the arts – either by creating art or writing about it.
On one hand, it was something of a stacked deck. I’ve been through the Washington D.C. subway system a time or two, and while it is remarkable well-kept and efficiently run (at least, when I’ve been there it has been), it’s not a place people tend to dawdle. People move through these tunnels with a sense of purpose.
They have things to do. And in order to accomplish these things they have to do, they tend to seal themselves off from all that goes on around them.
We all do that, to one extent or another. Many of our technological toys – iPods, Bluetooth headsets, BlackBerry devices, computer chat boards, etc. – are designed to isolate us in our own individual little worlds, where the only human interaction we have comes safely sealed in electronic signals.
In his article, Weingarten quoted the Welsh poet W.H. Davies: “What is this life if, full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare.”
“The thought was simple, even primitive, but somehow no one had put it quite that way before,” Weingarten wrote. “If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?”
What, indeed?
I can think of two things: Lynn Redgrave's play "Nightingale," and "1984," the Actors' Gang adaptation of George Orwell's novel, brought to Tulsa by Choregus productions.
Two very different works of theater -- the quiet story of an everyday woman, and a chilling glimpse at the things a government's desire for power and fear of freedom can do to the people it is supposed to serve.
I was at one show Tuesday, the other Wednesday. Neither drew anything close to a full house -- in spite of the pedigree of the performers, in spite of the relevance of the story, in spite of the fact that this town likely won't see theater of this quality for a long time to come.
Live theater -- for that matter, live anything -- no longer seems to exert the fascination it once did. Perhaps it's because all of our efforts to seal ourselves into various electronic cocoons makes the idea of sharing a space with others to witness artists striving to make something that with strike at the heart, stir the mind or tickle the funny bone is just too ... too ... messily human to contemplate.
Ah, but the things you will miss......
