The Maestro Set-up

There’s been a lot of chat about the Subway Maestro, some of it wistfully sad, most of it implicitly self-congratulatory, and all of it lamenting the sorry state of mankind.

For the four of you who missed the story, Joshua Bell, who is the current Best Violinist Ever, did a stunt where he spent a few hours busking in a Washington subway station. The story is that few people stopped to listen, and this guy, who probably gets to keep the limousine they use to drive him to Carnegie Hall each Saturday, made about $35 bucks in change. The Washington Post showed a video of people hurrying by as Joshua played, paying special attention to the mom dragging her fascinated 3-year-old away and the career table-busser who risked his job to get closer. But the masses of educated, government workers hurried on by. What a situation we’ve made, what a depth we’ve plumbed, how we’ve civilized civilization right out of ourselves.

What a crock.

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how the expert eye can recognize quality or authenticity is something, seemingly by intuition: they glance at something, and they simply know. But he points out that those people rarely know exactly why they recognize authenticity, cannot pass the knowledge on to others, and, most importantly, that ability takes years and years of experience. And years of experience doesn’t mean you’ll have it: even among the veterans in a field, the expert eye is rare.

Now consider the passers-by in the subway station. They have their own internal context. There is often a busker at that spot, and there is one today as well — nothing out of the ordinary to alert them or cause them to pay attention. They are in a crowd, they have a mission, and they are close enough to Mr. Bell to hear him clearly for around five seconds, ten if they’re eating a sandwich while walking.

Many of these people may enjoy classical music, but they are probably not experts. Certainly, they likely have a limited exposure to various violinists, and would be hard pressed to name one, much less tell two professionals apart. And yet we’re surprised that in five seconds of exposure they did not realize that Bell was an excellent violinist and not just a good one. Or that he was playing a violin worth more than that limo.

Of course they didn’t realize it. They’re not experts. And they’re not boors, either. They’re just people who don’t happen to be musicologists.

When I related this story to my wife, her first question was “why didn’t they do it at the farmers’ market?” Good question. In my town, there is a farmers market where people browse produce and, as it turns out, listen to buskers. With a receptive crowd, the musicians often make good coin and usually have a crowd around them. At our farmers’ market, Joshua probably would have made $1500 in an hour and been featured on the community cable station. In a subway station, people are rushing for trains.

Actually, I do know why they did it in the subway station. They did it there because that’s where people wouldn’t stop and listen.

The conclusion was made before the stunt was pulled. There’s a pervasive meme that seems to dominate the media nowadays. Left or right, reporters seem generally convinced that the sky is falling. Civilization is ending. We suck. We’re going the way of the Roman Empire, and we deserve it. Think of all the reporters who are politically opposite your views and you’ll see what I mean. (Take my word for it that the reporters on your side of the fence are the same.) As entrepreneurs, we have a sacred duty to not buy into that baloney. We know that in the history of the world the average person has never had it so good as they do now in the West, and that’s a direct result of entrepreneurs taking the things around them and making them better. They’re still doing that, faster than ever, and things are getting better faster than ever.

Edit: Sometimes one writes something, and then stumbles upon the article one meant to write. That’s the case here.

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