On 10 Apr 2007, at 12:09 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
The fact that context changes people's reactions, sometimes in the
opposite direction of what they'd have in a different context, is
something to LAMENT, because it shows how shallow is people's
actually absorption and appreciation of the art they are responding
to.
You might as well lament the cruelty of chimpanzees to bushbabies. As
far as I can tell, context has always been at least as important as
merit when it comes to how human beings evaluate art. Indeed, context
is how we determine what "merit" means in the first place.
The fact that Sting wasn't conducting an experiment aside,
Actually, Sting *was* conducting his own experiment, which was to see
if people would respond to him as a performer if they didn't know who
he was and hadn't already paid money to see him.
you keep
returning to the issue of recognition of the *performer*, which is
completely beside the point (and wasn't the point of the WaPo article
either).
I didn't expect anyone to recognize Josh Bell. I only mention
recognition it in the context of Sting busking because if a lot of
people had recognized him, it would have skewed the results.
It is that people either didn't recognize that their music-making was
worthy of attention, or determined that it wasn't worth paying
attention to.
Or, they didn't even have time to stop for a short time to evaluate
whether it was worth stopping for a longer time so they could
determine whether the subway music-making was worthy of attention
and, therefore, an even longer stop, because -- again -- most people
do not have the luxury of a flexible morning schedule.
As Ben H. comments on another S21 thread:
Comment from Ben.H
Time: April 10, 2007, 9:10 am
Perhaps the Post could do a whole series of articles about
philistines ignoring Joshua Bell’s sublime music-making in
different locations:
1. Outside a burning building (not one fireman stopped to listen!)
2. At a car crash site (one paramedic actually pushed him aside!)
3. During a graduation exam (shushed by the invigilators!)
4. At a school play (thrown out by angry parents!)
5. On an airport runway (passing jet liners seemed oblivious!)
This could be followed by a series about how busy commuters are too
thick to realise when a busker is performing 4′33″, instead of
just taking a break.
Did you really miss that or do you really not feel it's worth being
concerned about?
No, I don't think it's worth being concerned about, because as I
said, I don't think it's demonstrative of anything other than the
trivial point that "people have jobs they need to be on time for."
And I while I am certainly concerned about a lot of labor issues --
the absurdly large and ever-widening gap between CEO pay and average
worker pay, for instance -- that particular one isn't very high on my
list.
Cheers,
- Darcy
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