Stop and stare
A colleague sent this link to me last week which got me thinking about the way we perceive one another in our cities.
http://www.jeffbridges.com/perception.html
Don’t worry, it’s not a dodgy link, it’s a webpage from the actor Jeff Bridges’s website. It talks about an experiment in which one of the world’s finest violinist, Joshua Bell, went to busk (undercover) at a subway station in Washington, DC. As you would expect, the number of people that stopped to appreciate the world class music was slim to none and it raises the question – what are we missing out in our lives just because we’ve become accustomed to the things around us and have perfected our reactions towards them?
A few months ago I would have scoffed and empathised with the people who took no notice of the musician but after I found myself in a similar position in March this year, my reaction after reading the webpage was different. I volunteered to hand out free copies of the award winning book “Half of a Yellow Sun” as part of the new reading incentive World Book Night. That is of course nothing compared to what the violinist was trying to accomplish but the idea was – me outside a busy tube station handing out “free”…again, “free” books. Easy – or so I thought. I dragged along my sister for moral support and because there is safety in numbers and let’s be honest, London is too dodgy for me to be standing alone outside a station looking like a weirdo giving stuff out. Continue reading
caeblogs 