The Fiddler in the Subway
Page 35
When he left, Picarello says, “I humbly threw in five dollars.” It was humble: You can actually see that on the video. Picarello walks up, barely looking at Bell, and tosses in the money. Then, as if embarrassed, he quickly walks away from the man he once wanted to be.
BELL THINKS HE did his best work of the day in those final few minutes, in the second Chaconne. And that also was the only time that more than one person was staying to watch. As Picarello stood in the back, Janice Olu arrived and took up a position a few feet away from Bell. Olu, a public trust officer with HUD, also played the violin as a kid. She didn’t know the name of the piece she was hearing, but she knew the man playing it has a gift.
Olu was on a coffee break and stayed as long as she dared. As she turned to go, she whispered to the stranger next to her, “I really don’t want to leave.” The stranger standing next to her happened to be working for the Washington Post.
In preparing for this event, editors at the Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous “what-if” scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up; tempers flare; the National Guard is called; tear gas, rubber bullets, etc.
As it happens, exactly one person recognized Bell, and she didn’t arrive until near the very end. For Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, there was no doubt. She doesn’t know much about classical music, but she had been in the audience three weeks earlier, at Bell’s free concert at the Library of Congress. And here he was, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money. She had no idea what the heck was going on, but whatever it was, she wasn’t about to miss it.
Furukawa positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. The grin, and Furukawa, remained planted in that spot until the end.
“It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Furukawa says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn’t do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?”
When it was over, Furukawa introduced herself to Bell and tossed in a twenty. Not counting that—it was tainted by recognition—the final haul for his forty-three minutes of playing was $32.17. Yes, some people gave pennies.
“Actually,” Bell said with a laugh, “that’s not so bad, considering. That’s forty bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn’t have to pay an agent.”
THESE DAYS, AT L’Enfant Plaza, lotto ticket sales remain brisk. Musicians still show up from time to time, and they still tick off Edna Souza. Joshua Bell’s latest album, The Voice of the Violin, has received the usual critical acclaim. (“Delicate urgency.” “Masterful intimacy.” “Unfailingly exquisite.” “A musical summit.” “. . . will make your heart thump and weep at the same time.”)
Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting the Avery Fisher Prize, recognizing the Flop of L’Enfant Plaza as the finest classical musician in America.
About the Author
GENE WEINGARTEN IS an essayist, a feature writer, and the nationally syndicated humor columnist for The Washington Post. He has written three books: The Hypochondriac’s Guide to Life. And Death. (Simon & Schuster, 1998); I’m with Stupid (with Gina Barreca, Simon & Schuster, 2004); and Old Dogs (with Michael S. Williamson, Simon & Schuster, 2008). His story about violinist Joshua Bell playing in the Washington, D.C., Metro won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. In 2010 Weingarten won a second Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for a story about parents who accidentally leave their infant children to die in cars.
Together with his son, Dan, and cartoonist David Clark, Weingarten has created a new daily comic strip, Barney & Clyde, which is scheduled for release by The Washington Post Writers Group in summer 2010.