Somehow the moment was both intensely moving…and a little creepy.
Before some major project launches this Spring, I’ve been skimming through notes from various trainings I’ve taken, focusing mostly on branding and strategy.
At one point I uploaded some course transcripts into ChatGPT, hoping to find a few specific evaluation exercises around core brand identity and marketing positioning statements.
Instead, AI went several steps further.
Synthesizing data about all my projects and goals from previous chats, it actually filled them out for me.
Not only did it complete the exercises brilliantly, but for a few moments, I felt that no one in my entire life had ever understood me better.
Fitting for this month’s theme of Recognition—Meditation HERE—I felt completely seen.
Over dinner with an old friend, I also recalled a story I’ve often shared and been fascinated by for almost 20 years.
This time, however, my friend offered me a new and provocative punchline.
In 2007, there was an article in The Washington Post that won the Pulitzer Prize about arguably the world’s finest violinist, Joshua Bell.
Dressed in jeans and baseball cap, he brought his $3.5 million Stradivarius to the Washington, D.C. Metro station and played during the morning rush hour.
His playing is, of course, spectacular—you can hear an amazing snippet during the video HERE—but the entire point of the often-discussed article is that, of the 1,097 people who passed by him, only 7 stopped to listen for more than a minute.
Only one person recognized him (and tipped him $20), bringing his total haul to $32.17.
Apparently, several children were interested but hurried along by their parents.
That detail even inspired a children’s book, The Man With the Violin for which Bell wrote the postscript.
The article has a great title—Pearls Before Breakfast—and the focus is essentially how we’re blind to beauty all around us.
“Stop and Smell the Roses,” in other words, even during rush hour.
There are interesting counterpoints about how context matters in our appreciation of beauty, and even that by posing as a busker, Bell encountered a common phenomenon of people avoiding situations where they’re afraid of being asked to give.
All of that’s true, of course, but in retelling the story this week to a friend I discovered another angle.
Drawing a parallel to an area in my own life where I’ve felt a distinct lack of recognition, I wondered for the first time how Joshua Bell felt about the experiment.
What was it like for a child prodigy—one who, at 14, made his concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra—to be playing his heart out and pretty much ignored?
I recalled another story—this one from my own past—this week, too, while compulsively rewatching the opening credits dance sequence to The Perfect Couple HERE.
Featuring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, and the rest of the cast, the opening is a Bollywood-style flashmob moment at a 4th of July wedding weekend.
Obviously, I should organize one for my own July 2nd birthday this year, but more pointedly I remembered the second time I met Liev Schreiber.
The first time I was walking down the street one balmy summer night with a cinematographer friend who’d worked on an indie film project with him recently.
They spent a little time chatting and then we continued on our separate paths.
The second time, however, was under much more dramatic circumstances.
The photo above is blurry because I snapped it at a distance.
After Vlad and I completed our morning walk through the grove of trees, we encountered this flock of wild geese on our way home.
I was already considering including this poem by Mary Oliver, since it’s such a deep affirmation about embracing who you are and belonging to the world.
Seeing the geese that day, felt like too wondrous a synchronicity to ignore.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Here’s how I met Liev the second time.
I was having dinner with a quirky friend.
Let’s call her Gertrude.
She’d been traveling and a season or two had passed since we’d seen each other.
During a late night catch-up dinner at a downtown bistro, the bubbling reunion conversation took a dark turn.
She was shocked and then very angry about some choices that my other loft mates and I had made—choices she had not only been informed of but had fully participated in crafting.
In a moment of high-drama, she stormed out of the restaurant.
I’m not easily rattled but this was a stunning turn of events.
The bartender was a casual acquaintance and, having witnessed the scene, insisted I accompany him and his friends after his shift to a late-night, after-hours bar.
That’s where I met Liev the second time as he was playing pool.
That’s, however, not the point of my story—it’s just an interesting detail.
The point is—again tying in with the theme of Recognition—is that two weeks later Gertrude called me to almost apologize.
While she reluctantly acknowledged that she’d agreed to every aspect of the loft rearrangements, she still chastised me in one of the best blame-shifting statements I’ve ever heard:
“You should have known me
better than to have believed me
when I said all those things.”
Now that’s a logic you really can’t argue with…
Joshua Bell’s postscript in the children’s book says he was surprised but heartened by the children, but in other interviews around the time he says that he was actually quite nervous and
“It was a strange experience being ignored.
I’m Makin’ a Lot of Noise!
Bell said that while he expected that rush-hour commuters might not be as enthusiastic as concert goers but that at the same time:
“It was still almost hurtful sometimes
when somebody just walked by
when I really did try to play my best.
It was difficult to see.”
Exactly two days before the experiment, Bell had won perhaps the most coveted award in classical music—the Avery Fisher Prize—and yet, somehow, not being able to even draw a tiny crowd while performing anonymously still bothered him.
That’s somehow very humanizing.
Remember, as Mary Oliver tells us:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
No matter who we are, when we’re not recognized, it can be surprisingly painful.
Here’s the observation from my friend that turned things around for me this week.
“You realize, though, in this analogy,
recognized or not, you still get to be Joshua Bell.”
That need for recognition is so universal and so strong in all of us.
Indeed, it’s enough to provoke a bistro tantrum from Gertrude when I fail to acknowledge the historically-evident flaws in her character.
Even coming from ChatGPT, recognition can stop you dead in your tracks.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Rather than ignoring it, it’s essential we honor this need for recognitionwithin ourselves, realizing that even when it’s unmet, the music is still playing within—and that it’s glorious.
