January 12, 2007, Washington D.C., L'Enfant Plaza subway station ...  a true story.

It was a cold January morning, 7:51 a.m.  A man stood in a metro station, playing the violin.  It was rush hour.  Streams of people passed him, most of them hurrying to work.  Three minutes went by, the strains of the violin filling the air.  One man slowed for a few seconds to listen and decided to move on.  A minute later, a woman dropped a dollar in the till without stopping.  Another man stopped, looked at his watch, and kept walking.  The person who paid the most attention was a three-year-old boy.  He stopped to look as his mother pulled his arm.  He craned his head backward to see as she forced him along.  Other children did the same.  All the parents, without exception, made them move on.

The musician played for 45 minutes.  Half a dozen people stopped and lingered for a while.  Twenty contributed money -- the total he collected was $32.  When he stopped and packed up, nobody noticed.  No one applauded -- no one seemed to care.  No one knew that the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians alive.  He had played "Chaconne" from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor (one of the most difficult pieces written for solo violin) on a violin worth $3.5 million.  Two days prior, he had sold out a concert in Boston -- tickets going for over $100.

Joshua Bell's appearance in the subway was organized by The Washington Post as part of an experiment on our perceptions and priorities.  Do we perceive beauty?  Do we stop to appreciate it?  Do we recognize talent out of a contextual setting?  If we don't have a moment to stop and listen to one of the world's finest musicians playing the most difficult music ever written, how many other things are we missing?  (Everything, dude!)  Read more here.