Hmm, what do you think would happen if one of the best violinists in the world, played some the greatest compositions for violin in the history of the world, on one of the best violins in the world, incognito, in a crowded Washington DC subway station during rush hour?
Do you think the commuters would notice? Would they stop and listen? Would a crowd gather? How much money would the virtuoso make?
Well wonder no more. It happened recently.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
If you’re curious, like I was, read Pearls Before Breakfast from the Washington Post.
I was not surprised with the way it turned out. What about you?