Doing an experiment for Gene Weingarten’s story in The Washington Post, Joshua Bell, one of the nation’s greatest violinists and musician plays a few songs in a D.C. Metro stop.
What happens? A lot of people walk past, and a few dollars appear in his violin case. This leaves two options. The first is that the metro shop is something like Bell’s kryptonite. The second is that people have stopped listening.
Have we ceased to pay attention to the rhythms of life that really matter? Is our routine impenetrable? When reality speaks, when our own heart speaks, when God speaks… are we listening?
“Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God’s generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things.”
–Saint Augustine, Epis. 161. De origine animae hominis, 1, 2; PL XXXIII, 725.
