Would You Have Stopped?

If a world-class musician were dressed like a street performer and playing in a subway station on your way to work, would the beauty and brilliance of the music transcend the surroundings?

Would you even notice?

Or would you - like almost all of the 1,000+ people that passed Joshua Bell playing his Stradivarius violin in the L'Enfant Square metro station that morning - walk by without so much as a glance of appreciation?

This article absolutely mesmerized me. Very rarely does one find such a poetic and disturbing philosophic exposé on music, beauty, art and modern life in the Sunday paper.

Have we become so jaded and numb that we no longer appreciate beauty, art, music... life?

For our sake, I hope not.

(You can listen to the full audio of Joshua Bell's performance on Washingtonpost.com. It is breathtakingly beautiful.)