A great read

Weingarten does a weekly humor column for the Post magazine, which ran with - and eventually replaced - Dave Barry. That column isn't always for me, but his full-length pieces are generally outstanding.

I linked to this a few years ago when it was first published, and here it is again: His story on going to a remote corner of Alaska in the dead of winter to get a story out of it, presumably a humorous one, but it turned out quite differently:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042601144_pf.html

(I rediscovered the story a few months ago and the chat he did with it a few days after it was published. He said in the chat he was very concerned about the locals' reaction; I e-mailed him to ask whatever came of it, and he said they didn't like it because they resented the exposure.)

To me, the second story is more compelling for the story. But I think the writing is far better in the violinist story.

 

The Post now has video of Bell's entire performance on its website, if you're interested.

EDIT: Sorry, it's just audio of the full performance.

 

Link?

The only word that came to mind after reading that piece was "Wow!!"

This will stay with me for a long time.

Here's a link to the Chaconne piece but perfromed by Jascha Heifetz for those like me who aren't up on their Bach

 

Here's a link to the audio:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/04/09/VI2007040900536.html?hpid=topnews

Here's a transcript of Weingarten's Q&A:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601228.html?hpid=topnews

There's a link in there to a street performance by Springsteen.

 

great story. thanks for posting, grohl.

 

Oh, barf.

1) It was a frapping Metro station, for pity's sake. People were hurrying to work.
2) Classical violinists are not famous people. Nobody recognized him because nobody knows who the hell he is. Put him in the main reading room of the NY Public Library and nobody would have known him there, either.
3) Maybe 15 people out of 100 know and/or love classical music. The pieces he played, while difficult, are utterly obscure. What does the author want? A standing O from people running for the train to Silver Spring?

I hate to sound vaguely Boom-ish here, but this piece just reeks of perfumed dilettantism.

 

Good stuff.

 

I didn't think the point was whether people would recognize the violinist, but if they would take the time to recognize beauty/genius while rushing through their everyday lives.

 

Which is exactly my point -- the piece is hectoring and condescending. Fuck a buncha Gene Weingarten. He's not running to the subway in the morning to make his job. You can stand the Venus de Milo in that station some morning and people would hang their backpacks on it.
Now, if they did this over a couple of days, and then did it at night, too, when people are more likely to be relaxed, I might see a point to it.

 

Where?

 

The nipples, I assume. Have you seen some of the tiny backpacks girls wear these days?

 

I had the good fortune to have once heard the Chaconne performed live -- that's all it takes for it to be permanently burned into the brain -- and am quite sure if I heard it being played in a subway station by Joshua Bell on a strad it could only mean that I had in fact been hit by a train and was no longer living.