Take Notice

The great Renaissance artist Michelangelo was once asked how
he created sculptures such as the masterpiece known simply as David. He explained that he began by imagining the
statue already inside the block of rough marble, then chipped away the excess
to reveal what had always been there. According
to Michelangelo, David, already created and eternally present, but hidden in
the interior of the rock, was all but waiting to be revealed. In her book, Life Lessons, Elizabeth Kubler
Ross, teaches the same message when she offers, “So too, is the great person
already inside of you, ready to be revealed.
Everyone carries the seeds of greatness. (pg. 26)”

There is a basic human need that each of has - to be seen, to be recognized, and to be appreciated. However, too often we feel unnoticed, unknown
and all but invisible.

Last January the Washington Post engaged in human
experiment that is worthy of our notice today.
Here is the story as reported in the Post:

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday morning, the middle of the
morning rush hour. He emerged from the Metro at the Lenfant Plaza Station and
positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a
youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals
baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at
his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money,
swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make: Do I stop and listen? Or do I hurry past with
a blend of guilt and irritation? Or do I throw in some change, just to be
polite? Does it matter if the musicianship is good? What if the musician looks happy? What if he looks lonely or lost? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On this particular day, those private questions would be
answered in an unusually public way. While no one who walked past him knew it,
the fiddler standing against that bare wall was one of the finest classical
musicians in the world; and he was playing some of the most elegant music ever
written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. And the entire morning was being video taped.

Before he was famous, Joshua Bell was a child prodigy. Today, at 39, Joshua Bell is an
internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro
station, Bell filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony
Hall. When he plays in concert venues,
the crowds are standing-room-only and the audience so respectful of his
artistry stifles their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that morning
as he played in the subway hall, Joshua Bell was just another street performer
competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.

Bell
always performs on the same instrument, a Stradivarius crafted in 1713. Bell Bells’ violin is worth upwards of $3.5
million dollars.
bought it a few years ago. He had to borrow money to make the purchase.

That morning, Bell
began with Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. To hear Joshua
Bell describe it, the Partita #2 is "not just one of the greatest pieces
of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements in human history.
It's emotionally and spiritually powerful, and structurally it’s perfect.”

So, that's the piece Bell
started with. And sixty-three people had
already passed, oblivious to his playing, when finally, there came a
breakthrough. A middle-age man slowed for a split second, turned his head aware
that a guy was playing music. Yes, the
man kept walking, but it was something.

A then, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a
dollar and scooted off. However, it was not until a few hundred people had
streamed by that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

From there, things never got much better. In three-quarters
of an hour more than a 1000 swept by and only seven people stopped long enough
to take in even a portion of the performance.
Twenty-seven people gave money, for a total of $32 and change. However,
the vast majority – 1070 people to be exact hurried by obliviously.

"It was a
strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."The word doesn't come
easily. ". . . ignoring me." Bell reports. He’s laughing at himself.

"At a concert, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if a
cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to
appreciate any acknowledgment at all, even a slight glance up. I was oddly
grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a
man whose hour long performances and talents can command $50,000 or more.

"The most awkward parts of the experience,” Bell recalls, was what
happens after each piece ends, which is the silence of nothing. The music
stops, the same people who hadn't noticed me playing before now, don't notice I’ve
finished. No applause, no acknowledgment.”

Joshua Bell – and we - understand why he's not drawing a
crowd, after all, he’s playing in the middle of a rush hour commute. But says
he: "I'm surprised at the number of people who don't pay attention at all,
as if I'm invisible.”

Almost without exception every human being wants to be seen
and noticed and appreciated. When we
start seeing in one another artistry and sculptures of beauty, the divine magnificence
within us will be brought to life and our world will be filled with the most
delicate, finally tuned and holy of all entities – the pure human spirit.