. If you tend to fall into the "friend zone", this will be especially important. Real girls (girls with a strong sense of purpose and self-worth) don't like guys who have no lives or who cling to them like plastic wrap . Some girls do like that, but for all the wrong reasons—either they're insecure and needy for attention, or they're control freaks who have a need for dominating guys. Unless you want to sign up for one of those scenarios, focus filling your time with your own friendships, interests, hobbies, and goals. This also gives her a chance to do something with you without it becoming a date.
. Keep yourself well groomed and in shape. If you want to get a woman to like you, basic cleanliness and appearance are extremely important. Girls notice things like bad breath, flab, body odour and greasy hair before they notice that winning personality. Give them a chance to see your good qualities by making a good first impression with your appearance.
Stay in shape.
regularly: run a mile or two, do some sit ups, get a , etc. Note that while fitness is important, you shouldn' having too many muscles can make it look like you care more about going to the gym than fostering meaningful relationships. Also, some girls dislike having the Incredible Hulk as a boyfriend, and it makes you look slightly stupid - thanks to the dumb jock cut-out. So make it clear you're fit, but not thick. In other words, stay fit without being obsessive or a pair of walking biceps.
Have . Brush your teeth, shave etc. If you can't have access to a toothbrush, carry breath mints. When you take care of yourself, it makes you more appealing to others and it will thus have a positive impact on your level of confidence. Always be sure to smell and look nice, so shower regularly and nothing is worse than the post-gym stink out, so .
Speak to her. It's unlikely a girl will be at all interested in you if she doesn't know you exist. Make an effort to talk to her, even if approaching her seems scary at first. Highlight your compatibility as friends and more by talking about hobbies and interests that you have in common. B she can't get close to you unless you're friends.
Find a hobby you both like. It doesn't matter if it is anything from sports to school. If you both like hockey, invite her to a game. If you both like video games, play one together, or she could cheer you on if she doesn't usually play. Girls are all different in likes and dislikes.
If your conversation skills need a polish, read a few of these:
. Telling jokes or funny stories is a classic way to make a person laugh, but not the only way.
and think of some antics that will make her laugh, like clowning around. Find out which are her favourite comedians, funny movies, or sitcoms. Watch them with her. Tell her to dare you to do something, then do it (as long as it's not illegal, of course). Laughter will come by itself if both of you are relaxed and enjoying each other's company. The more she laughs, the more she wants - and she will want more.
. Girls don't just fall for random strangers. (Well, some do, but the relationship never goes very far!) Start being friendly to her in a non-invasive way. Get to know her and begin hanging out as friends.
If you're in the same lecture or tutorial as her, find out her name. Every time she walks into the room, smile and wave at her. Sometimes this is all it takes for a young woman to notice you. At the same time though, don' It will just end up looking like you're obsessed with her. If you're worried, greet some of your girl friends as they enter, too. If she doesn't seem to see you, when she walks by, just say "Hi _______," in a friendly way, but don't interrupt the class or any conversation she's holding.
If she's shy, she might just smile back, so don't take this as a sign that she doesn't like you.
If you want your relationship to move ahead faster, don't get stuck in the quicksand - that is the 'Friend Zone'. Sometimes a girl won't go out with you because she's afraid if the relationship ends badly, she'll lose your friendship! To start moving things along, a woman will only be intimate with a man she knows, trusts and cares about, and this can only be achieved with taking the time to get to know her through friendly chat. However, don't come on too quickly - part of the fun of the relationship is the chase - and have patience. Girls HATE being forced into something, especially on the relationship front.
. Being flirty will help keep you out of the friend zone because it will remind the girl that you're attractive as well as a good friend. When you see or meet a girl you like, make brief
and . Strike up a casual, flirty conversation and see how she reacts. If you avoid her eyes and act nervous, she's going to go into overdrive working out what on earth you mean. Girls react mainly on body language and emotions. If you make them feel happy, they'll see you as fun and caring. If you creep them out, they will get nervous - in the options between fight or flight, flight is the most preferable.
. Chill. Don't put pressure on yourself or her by thinking of her as the girl of your dreams. Try not to stress about what will happen if you make a bad joke or say the wrong thing. She may be just as nervous, and small mistakes will likely go unnoticed or will simply be ignored. Don't worry if flirting seems difficult at first. The more you , the more relaxed you'll become. Girls often are the most jumpy because of the thousands of different responses their brain puts together at every word. They stress over picking the right one, and that sets them so flustered that they'll barely notice the bad joke from trying to relieve your awkwardness.
Enjoy interacting with this attractive, friendly girl whose path crossed yours. While you don't want to stress yourself out, remember that the final goal is to get her to like you. Don't say things that will seem too forward or offensive. Mostly, the same girl is getting to like YOU.
. If you really like someone, you probably appreciate a lot of things about her. Why not let her know? If anything is different or new (her hairstyle, nail polish color, shirt, etc.), make note of it. The more unique the compliment, the better received it will be.
Most girls like being complimented on something that makes them distinct, not something that plenty of other women have. If you compliment her appearance, try to be original, perhaps by specifying a particular feature. Better yet, compliment her personality or skills. If you're not sure what's good or bad complimenting, read .
Don't tell her she's beautiful too often. If she's very pretty, it's likely that several other guys have already it may sound trite after a while. If you're going to , stand out by making comments about her personality, how good she is at something, how she does things, etc. Complimenting her appearance too much may make her think you're shallow and maybe that you just want to have sex with her, and you don't want to give that impression.
. There's no one-size-fits-all solution here. What impresses one girl might make another roll her eyes. Your best bet is to . Demonstrate a unique skill, talent or something difficult to do that you're proud of, something that sets you apart from the crowd. Not only will this make her feel good about you, but it can , too.
Be careful not to be cocky. Impress her, but do not boast too much about your great achievements and plans. While self confidence is an attractive quality, extreme cockiness is a huge turnoff for most girls.
. There are several ways to
without being sleazy. Hold her coat while she puts it on. Offer her your hand when she's stepping on an uneven surface. Hold out your hand so you can lead her through a crowd, catch her if she stumbles, and hug and high-five her when she's euphoric. If she's worried, put your hand lightly on her shoulder to comfort her. These are all polite ways to get a little closer to someone without being creepy.
Women feel touch more sensitively than most men, even if they put up a tough front, so make sure t for example, don't slap her on the back, but pat her on the shoulder. If you see any signs of discomfort, stop!
. After there’s a bit of mutual attraction, start throwing out low-level “bait”—little jokes that hint at interest—to see if she bites. A good baiting statement should be light and playful, and usually ambiguous. "Baiting” is how women flirt too, so be on the lookout for things she might be “joking” about or things that could have a double meaning.
There’s a certain look a woman will give you if you get that right (and if she’s the right girl to begin with). It’s like you gave her the secret handshake. She’ll look back at you for a couple of seconds, wondering if you “get it” or if you just accidentally stumbled on the right words. When she does this, hold eye contact, half-smile, and don’t react otherwise. This is like being one point of the world's high score: it's probably the most fragile moment in the history of both of you. Wait for her to say the next thing, and cross your fingers it'll be yes.
Take your time. Don't be pushy or needy. Nice girls normally need longer time than boys to develop deep feelings. Continue courting her by following the steps above, but don't rush things. If you end up in a relationship with this girl, she'll always remember how you made her feel when you were just getting to know each other.
Make her feel appreciated, not invisible or smothered. Do the chase slowly and gently (but steadily) to reduce fear of sexual advances (if any), avoid looking desperate, and to allow her to get accustomed to a new man in her life,. Do not fo carefully look for clues on where and when you can see her again.
. Once you feel comfortable, invite her to go somewhere or to do something with you. Make sure it's something that you're both interested in. If you want, show her your world. Bring her somewhere that you feel comfortable and preferably, where you have or do something you're proud of.
Alternatively, you can express interest in seeing her world. Is she a musician? Ask if you can see her perform. Is she a mathematician? Ask to read her report or thesis.
If you aren't yet ready or comfortable with the idea of sharing your personal lives to that extent, just go out for lunch or do something simple together where you can get to know her better.
Chivalry is not dead. Keep it up by opening doors, holding an umbrella over her, carrying stuff when she has her hands full, lending her your jumper, and basically caring for her. The mark of a true gentleman is to a lady feel like a lady. Women want to feel important and valued. When communicating with her, make an effort to say more rather than less and to keep things personal rather than generic. When you want to ask her out or to do something with you, ask in person, preferably at her home. She needs to know that you're prepared to go the extra mile and not wuss out on her.
. The stereotypical icons of romance (roses, candles, chocolate and teddy bears) can only go so far. Think about what really gets that special someone excited. Recognize w find and do things that only she would appreciate. Being romantic means acknowledging how special a person is, and that means demonstrating that you know––better than anyone else in the world—–what makes her unique.
Pay attention when she's talking! Keep a mental list of things that she loves and that make her unique. What are her quirky (perhaps secret) interests, obsessions and fantasies? What makes her eyes light up? Girls are quick to notice if you remember things they told you a long while ago.
Confide in each other. Tell her what you really enjoy in life, what gets you excited and find out what gets her excited. . If you had a bad day, still greet her pleasantly with a big smile. Most importantly, . Whether she talks about herself, her family, or her hobbies, pay attention. Some things could be useful or important to know later in the relationship. Nod to show that you're listening, and also respond to what she says so she knows that you really are listening. Women are very appreciative of guys who demonstrate
interest in what they say.
. You are unique. Be the authentic you. Bring out your best. Let her know you as who you truly are. Use your talents, gifts, and strengths and let yourself be known. If you have great sense of humor, share that with her. If you love science, music, poetry, politics, or sports, let her know what you love. The right woman will fall for you and love you just the way you are.
Can you tell us aboutstoring food?
Can you help usrate articles?
storing food
different ways to store herbs
Can you tell us aboutturf lawns?
turf lawns
how to prepare to lay turf lawns
Can you tell us aboutrabbit traps?
rabbit traps
how to make a rabbit snare
Can you tell us abouttreating jock itch?
treating jock itch
how to treat jock itch
Tell us everything you know here. Remember, more detail is better.
Please be as detailed as possible in your explanation. Don't worry about formatting! We'll take care of it.
For example:Don't say: Eat more fats.Do say: Add fats with some nutritional value to the foods you already eat. Try olive oil, butter, avocado, and mayonnaise.
Video about getting a girl to like you
Be honest. Never lie to a girl just to impress her.
Don’t talk about yourself the whole time. People have a tendency to talk about themselves too much, especially when they are nervous. If you feel like you need to say something, ask a question instead. Remember to listen as much as you speak.
Try not to compare her with other girls you have been on dates with, even in your mind.
Don't be afraid to . Even if you don't have much of a smile, it will make you seem down-to-earth and friendly. A calm smile will make you more , especially if you're just getting to know her.
helps to . For example, open doors for her and pull a chair out for her to sit (or the whole "laying your jacket over a puddle" thing). If you're just getting to know her, more subtle manners will help you. You don't want to creep her out by randomly pulling out her chair in the cafeteria if she barely knows you! And when you do this, don't stand there grinning and waiting for her to thank you profusely. Pull out her chair, let her get seated, and then go sit down. Open the door for her, continue listening if she's talking, and come in after her. Continue with what you were doing. If she does thank you, just nod and smile or say "My pleasure." No big deal.
A girl likes a guy who is true to himself. It shows that he isn't fake and that he will most likely not be playing her. Pretending to conform to an image in an attempt to impress her will instead make it more difficult for her to trust you when she finds out, which will happen eventually.
If you know her birthday, maybe you could bring her a gift card for her favorite store (it doesn't have
she'll appreciate it just the same) or that new scarf you've heard her talking about with her friends. Just the fact that you 1) remembered her birthday and 2) brought her a gift will make you stick out as a sweet guy in her mind.
Don’t talk about dates you have had with other people, especially on a first date. You can find better, kinder things to talk about.
Understand that it's an urban myth that most girls like "bad boys" best. Many girls love a sweet guy, rather than the jerk who only likes them for looks. If you try to be a sweet rather than "bad" guy, you will have longer lasting relationships that are strong, too!
Remember, the girl you fancy is not a trophy to be won or ju you are finding out if your relationship will work for your whole life. If you both go into a relationship like that, whatever happens will be best for both of you.
Remember that if she doesn’t fall for you, it' you will learn more about yourself and eventually you will find the woman you are meant to be with. There is no perfect way to get every woman to like you. But as you become a better person, you will find you attract more people to you.
If you want to show a girl how much she means to you, really spend some time getting ready for a date. All-out date activities are not just cute, but show your date if you really did spend the afternoon preparing things for the date.
Take the the lead in your courtship. For example, initiate the date, decide what to do during the date and decide when to end the date. This reduces the chances of relationship failure or rejection of you later.
Make her feel positive about herself.
As you approach her don't point your body towards her she will see this as you being needy.
To get girls online, you need your post high school education course information and one useful personal interest, or two to three useful personal interests or hobbies written in you own words. To be able to call a girl at will to your place, you need to improve the quality of your work and property, and have your business or career already running.
. You have no idea how much this will help you! Body odor and uncleanliness are universal turn-offs. That includes bad breath, flatulence, burping, and foot odor. Shower and brush your teeth daily (right before you see her is ideal), trim your nails, and
and shoes regularly. Some girls find the smell of cigarette smoke or strong cologne offensive.
, and don't expect perfection from the girl you like. Nobody is perfect. Accept that both of you have flaws, make mistakes, and sometimes have bad days.
Never try to make her jealous. This tends to backfire on the guy who does this. If you're trying to find out if, in fact, she does like you, ask one of her friends. Or compare how she acts around you and around other guys. If she acts differently around you, then something is there. Trust your instincts. If you believe there's good chemistry between you and her, be patient and let it develop. Do not tell or show her about your current and past dates with other women even if she asks if you can show loyalty for her, the relationship will go smoother faster. A woman may take this relationship investment seriously, and looking and showing interest by you in other beauties in a restaurant in front of her can be seen as inconsiderate and insensitive, so focus your eyes and effort only on her on this date.
Too much of anything is bad. Being too preoccupied with her, using every single opportunity to touch her, showering her with too many compliments, and cracking enough jokes to rival a stand up comedian can all ruin your chances with a girl. Try to be a little more casual at first.
Don't be too perverted when flirting. It could be a sign that you want her body and not her. A lot of girls don't like it when boys are all gross and talk about body parts. Some girls (very rarely) like to be all gross and perverted, but most of them don't.
it's rude. It's guaranteed that 99 percent of girls out there won't appreciate you cracking up about your body parts and stuff like that. They'll just think you're disgusting and immature and stay away from you. But the other one percent love it!
Don't stalk her. If she doesn't want to date, it means that she doesn't want a stalker either. Move on to another girl.
Always do the chase, courtship or ask personal questions in person (face to face) when you have the ability to do so. You must show the courage, confidence and courtesy to do so. If you have her street address and you live in the same city, never ask personal questions be email. Do not use contact methods that can be easily falsified.
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 14,178,951 times.
Very helpful
14,178,951&views
307 Co-authors
78% of people told us that this article helped them.Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.
Resize Text
HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
(The Washington Post)
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant. Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment? On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend? The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls. The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician’s masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous. So, what do you think happened? HANG ON, WE’LL GET YOU SOME EXPERT HELP. Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was asked the same question. What did he think would occur, hypothetically, if one of the world’s great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people? “Let’s assume,” Slatkin said, “that he is not recognized and just taken for granted as a street musician . . . Still, I don’t think that if he’s really good, he’s going to go unnoticed. He’d get a larger audience in Europe . . . but, okay, out of 1,000 people, my guess is there might be 35 or 40 who will recognize the quality for what it is. Maybe 75 to 100 will stop and spend some time listening.” So, a crowd would gather? “Oh, yes.” And how much will he make? “About $150.” Thanks, Maestro. As it happens, this is not hypothetical. It really happened. “How’d I do?” We’ll tell you in a minute. “Well, who was the musician?” Joshua Bell. “NO!!!” A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work. Bell was first pitched this idea shortly before Christmas, over coffee at a sandwich shop on Capitol Hill. A New Yorker, he was in town to perform at the Library of Congress and to visit the library’s vaults to examine an unusual treasure: an 18th-century violin that once belonged to the great Austrian-born virtuoso and composer Fritz Kreisler. The curators invited B good sound, still. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Bell confided, as he sipped his coffee. “I’m thinking that I could do a tour where I’d play Kreisler’s music . . .” He smiled. “. . . on Kreisler’s violin.” It was a snazzy, sequined idea -- part inspiration and part gimmick -- and it was typical of Bell, who has unapologetically embraced showmanship even as his concert career has become more and more august. He’s soloed with the finest orchestras here and abroad, but he’s also appeared on “Sesame Street,” done late-night talk TV and performed in feature films. That was Bell playing the soundtrack on the 1998 movie “The Red Violin.” (He body-doubled, too, playing to a naked Greta Scacchi.) As composer John Corigliano accepted the Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score, he credited Bell, who, he said, “plays like a god.” When Bell was asked if he’d be willing to don street clothes and perform at rush hour, he said: “Uh, a stunt?” Well, yes. A stunt. Would he think it . . . unseemly? Bell drained his cup. “Sounds like fun,” he said. Bell’s a heartthrob. Tall and handsome, he’s got a Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes, and, onstage, cute elides into hott. When he performs, he is usually the only man under the lights who is not in white tie and tails -- he walks out to a standing O, looking like Zorro, in black pants and an untucked black dress shirt, shirttail dangling. That cute Beatles-style mop top is also a strategic asset: Because his technique is full of body -- athletic and passionate -- he’s almost dancing with the instrument, and his hair flies. He’s single and straight, a fact not lost on some of his fans. In Boston, as he performed Max Bruch’s dour Violin Concerto in G Minor, the very few young women in the audience nearly disappeared in the deep sea of silver heads. But seemingly every single one of them -- a distillate of the young and pretty -- coalesced at the stage door after the performance, seeking an autograph. It’s like that always, with Bell. Bell’s been accepting over-the-top accolades since puberty: Interview magazine once said his playing “does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live.” He’s learned to field these things graciously, with a bashful duck of the head and a modified “pshaw.” For this incognito performance, Bell had only one condition for participating. The event had been described to him as a test of whether, in an incongruous context, ordinary people would recognize genius. His condition: “I’m not comfortable if you call this genius.” “Genius” is an overused word, he said: It can be applied to some of the composers whose work he plays, but not to him. His skills are largely interpretive, he said, and to imply otherwise would be unseemly and inaccurate. It was an interesting request, and under the circumstances, one that will be honored. The word will not again appear in this article. It would be breaking no rules, however, to note that the term in question, particularly as applied in the field of music, refers to a congenital brilliance -- an elite, innate, preternatural ability that manifests itself early, and often in dramatic fashion. One biographically intriguing fact about Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch. TO GET TO THE METRO FROM HIS HOTEL, a distance of three blocks, Bell took a taxi. He’s neither lame nor lazy: He did it for his violin. Bell always performs on the same instrument, and he ruled out using another for this gig. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master’s “golden period,” toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection. “Our knowledge of acoustics is still incomplete,” Bell said, “but he, he just . . . knew.” Bell doesn’t mention Stradivari by name. Just “he.” When the violinist shows his Strad to people, he holds the instrument gingerly by its neck, resting it on a knee. “He made this to perfect thickness at all parts,” Bell says, pivoting it. “If you shaved off a millimeter of wood at any point, it would totally imbalance the sound.” No violins sound as wonderful as Strads from the 1710s, still. The front of Bell’s violin is in nearly perfect condition, with a deep, rich grain and luster. The back is a mess, its dark reddish finish bleeding away into a flatter, lighter shade and finally, in one section, to bare wood. “This has never been refinished,” Bell said. “That’s his original varnish. People attribute aspects of the sound to the varnish. Each maker had his own secret formula.” Stradivari is thought to have made his from an ingeniously balanced cocktail of honey, egg whites and gum arabic from sub-Saharan trees. Like the instrument in “The Red Violin,” this one has a past filled with mystery and malice. Twice, it was stolen from its illustrious prior owner, the Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman. The first time, in 1919, it disappeared from Huberman’s hotel room in Vienna but was quickly returned. The second time, nearly 20 years later, it was pinched from his dressing room in Carnegie Hall. He never got it back. It was not until 1985 that the thief -- a minor New York violinist -- made a deathbed confession to his wife, and produced the instrument. Bell bought it a few years ago. He had to sell his own Strad and borrow much of the rest. The price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million. All of which is a long explanation for why, in the early morning chill of a day in January, Josh Bell took a three-block cab ride to the Orange Line, and rode one stop to L’Enfant. AS METRO STATIONS GO, L’ENFANT PLAZA IS MORE PLEBEIAN THAN MOST. Even before you arrive, it gets no respect. Metro conductors never seem to get it right: “Leh-fahn.” “Layfont.” “El’phant.” At the top of the escalators are a shoeshine stand and a busy kiosk that sells newspapers, lottery tickets and a wallfull of magazines with titles such as Mammazons and Girls of Barely Legal. The skin mags move, but it’s that lottery ticket dispenser that stays the busiest, with customers queuing up for Daily 6 lotto and Powerball and the ultimate suckers’ bait, those pamphlets that sell random number combinations purporting to be “hot.” They sell briskly. There’s also a quick-check machine to slide in your lotto ticket, post-drawing, to see if you’ve won. Beneath it is a forlorn pile of crumpled slips. On Friday, January 12, the people waiting in the lottery line looking for a long shot would get a lucky break -- a free, close-up ticket to a concert by one of the world’s most famous musicians -- but only if they were of a mind to take note. Bell decided to begin with “Chaconne” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it “not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It’s a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won’t be cheating with some half-assed version.” Bell didn’t say it, but Bach’s “Chaconne” is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. M few succeed. It’s exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility. If Bell’s encomium to “Chaconne” seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.” So, that’s the piece Bell started with. He’d clearly meant it when he promised not to cheap out this performance: He played with acrobatic enthusiasm, his body leaning into the music and arching on tiptoes at the high notes. The sound was nearly symphonic, carrying to all parts of the homely arcade as the pedestrian traffic filed past. Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something. A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened. Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. No, Mr. Slatkin, there was never a crowd, not even for a second. It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity. Even at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler’s movements remai he seems so apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard, otherworldly -- that you find yourself thinking that he’s not really there. A ghost. Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts. IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD? It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)? We’ll go with Kant, because he’s obviously right, and because he brings us pretty directly to Joshua Bell, sitting there in a hotel restaurant, picking at his breakfast, wryly trying to figure out what the hell had just happened back there at the Metro. “At the beginning,” Bell says, “I was just concentrating on playing the music. I wasn’t really watching what was happening around me . . .” Playing the violin looks all-consuming, mentally and physically, but Bell says that for him the mechanics of it are partly second nature, cemented by practice and muscle memory: It’s like a juggler, he says, who can keep those balls in play while interacting with a crowd. What he’s mostly thinking about as he plays, Bell says, is capturing emotion as a narrative: “When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you’re telling a story.” With “Chaconne,” the opening is filled with a building sense of awe. That kept him busy for a while. Eventually, though, he began to steal a sidelong glance. “It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . .” The word doesn’t come easily. “. . . ignoring me.” Bell is laughing. It’s at himself. “At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute. Before he began, Bell hadn’t known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous. “It wasn’t exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies,” he says. “I was stressing a little.” Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro? “When you play for ticket-holders,” Bell explains, “you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence . . .”
He was, in short, art without a frame. Which, it turns out, may have a lot to do with what happened -- or, more precisely, what didn’t happen -- on January 12. MARK LEITHAUSER HAS HELD IN HIS HANDS MORE GREAT WORKS OF ART THAN ANY KING OR POPE OR MEDICI EVER DID. A senior curator at the National Gallery, he oversees the framing of the paintings. Leithauser thinks he has some idea of what happened at that Metro station. “Let’s say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It’s a $5 million painting. And it’s one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: ‘Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.’” Leithauser’s point is that we shouldn’t be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters. Kant said the same thing. He took beauty seriously: In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one’s ability to appreciate beauty is related to one’s ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America’s most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal. “Optimal,” Guyer said, “doesn’t mean heading to work, focusing on your report to the boss, maybe your shoes don’t fit right.” So, if Kant had been at the Metro watching as Joshua Bell play to a thousand unimpressed passersby? “He would have inferred about them,” Guyer said, “absolutely nothing.” And that’s that. Except it isn’t. To really understand what happened, you have to rewind that video and play it back from the beginning, from the moment Bell’s bow first touched the strings. White guy, khakis, leather jacket, briefcase. Early 30s. John David Mortensen is on the final leg of his daily bus-to-Metro commute from Reston. He’s heading up the escalator. It’s a long ride -- 1 minute and 15 seconds if you don’t walk. So, like most everyone who passes Bell this day, Mortensen gets a good earful of music before he has his first look at the musician. Like most of them, he notes that it sounds pretty good. But like very few of them, when he gets to the top, he doesn’t race past as though Bell were some nuisance to be avoided. Mortensen is that first person to stop, that guy at the six-minute mark. It’s not that he has nothing else to do. He’s a project manager for an international program at the Department of E on this day, Mortensen has to participate in a monthly budget exercise, not the most exciting part of his job: “You review the past month’s expenditures,” he says, “forecast spending for the next month, if you have X dollars, where will it go, that sort of thing.” On the video, you can see Mortensen get off the escalator and look around. He locates the violinist, stops, walks away but then is drawn back. He checks the time on his cellphone -- he’s three minutes early for work -- then settles against a wall to listen. Mortensen doesn’t know cl classic rock is as close as he comes. But there’s something about what he’s hearing that he really likes.
(The Washington Post)
As it happens, he’s arrived at the moment that Bell slides into the second section of “Chaconne.” (”It’s the point,” Bell says, “where it moves from a darker, minor key into a major key. There’s a religious, exalted feeling to it.”) The violinist’s the music becomes upbeat, playful, theatrical, big. Mortensen doesn’t know about major or minor keys: “Whatever it was,” he says, “it made me feel at peace.” So, for the first time in his life, Mortensen lingers to listen to a street musician. He stays his allotted three minutes as 94 more people pass briskly by. When he leaves to help plan contingency budgets for the Department of Energy, there’s another first. For the first time in his life, not quite knowing what had just happened but sensing it was special, John David Mortensen gives a street musician money. THERE ARE SIX MOMENTS IN THE VIDEO THAT BELL FINDS PARTICULARLY PAINFUL TO RELIVE: “The awkward times,” he calls them. It’s what happens right after each piece ends: nothing. The music stops. The same people who hadn’t noticed him playing don’t notice that he has finished. No applause, no acknowledgment. So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord -- the embarrassed musician’s equivalent of, “Er, okay, moving right along . . .” -- and begins the next piece. After “Chaconne,” it is Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which surprised some music critics when it debuted in 1825: Schubert seldom showed religious feeling in his compositions, yet “Ave Maria” is a breathtaking work of adoration of the Virgin Mary. What was with the sudden piety? Schubert dryly answered: “I think this is due to the fact that I never forced devotion in myself and never compose hymns or prayers of that kind unless it o but then it is usually the right and true devotion.” This musical prayer became among the most familiar and enduring religious pieces in history. A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She’s got his hand. “I had a time crunch,” recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. “I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement.” Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3. You can see Evan clearly on the video. He’s the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door. “There was a musician,” Parker says, “and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time.” So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan’s and Bell’s, cutting off her son’s line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs. “Evan is very smart!” The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too. There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away. IF THERE WAS ONE PERSON ON THAT DAY WHO WAS TOO BUSY TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE VIOLINIST, it was George Tindley. Tindley wasn’t hurrying to get to work. He was at work. The glass doors through which most people exit the L’Enfant station lead into an indoor shopping mall, from which there are exits to the street and elevators to office buildings. The first store in the mall is an Au Bon Pain, the croissant and coffee shop where Tindley, in his 40s, works in a white uniform busing the tables, restocking the salt and pepper packets, taking out the garbage. Tindley labors under the watchful eye of his bosses, and he’s supposed to be hopping, and he was. But every minute or so, as though drawn by something not entirely within his control, Tindley would walk to the very edge of the Au Bon Pain property, keeping his toes inside the line, still on the job. Then he’d lean forward, as far out into the hallway as he could, watching the fiddler on the other side of the glass doors. The foot traffic was steady, so the doors were usually open. The sound came through pretty well. “You could tell in one second that this guy was good, that he was clearly a professional,” Tindley says. He plays the guitar, loves the sound of strings, and has no respect for a certain kind of musician. “Most people, they don’t feel it,” Tindley says. “Well, that man was feeling it. That man was moving. Moving into the sound.” A hundred feet away, across the arcade, was the lottery line, sometimes five or six people long. They had a much better view of Bell than Tindley did, if they had just turned around. But no one did. Not in the entire 43 minutes. They just shuffled forward toward that machine spitting out numbers. Eyes on the prize. J.T. Tillman was in that line. A computer specialist for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he remembers every single number he played that day -- 10 of them, $2 apiece, for a total of $20. He doesn’t recall what the violinist was playing, though. He says it sounded like generic classical music, the kind the ship’s band was playing in “Titanic,” before the iceberg. “I didn’t think nothing of it,” Tillman says, “just a guy trying to make a couple of bucks.” Tillman would have given him one or two, he said, but he spent all his cash on lotto. When he is told that he stiffed one of the best musicians in the world, he laughs. “Is he ever going to play around here again?” “Yeah, but you’re going to have to pay a lot to hear him.” “Damn.” Tillman didn’t win the lottery, either. BELL ENDS “AVE MARIA” TO ANOTHER THUNDEROUS SILENCE, plays Manuel Ponce’s sentimental “Estrellita,” then a piece by Jules Massenet, and then begins a Bach gavotte, a joyful, frolicsome, lyrical dance. It’s got an Old W you can imagine it entertaining bewigged dancers at a Versailles ball, or -- in a lute, fiddle and fife version -- the boot-kicking peasants of a Pieter Bruegel painting. Watching the video weeks later, Bell finds himself mystified by one thing only. He understands why he’s not drawing a crowd, in the rush of a morning workday. But: “I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t pay attention at all, as if I’m invisible. Because, you know what? I’m makin’ a lot of noise!” He is. You don’t need to know music at all to appreciate the simple fact that there’s a guy there, playing a violin that’s throwing out a w at times, Bell’s bowing is so intricate that you seem to be hearing two instruments playing in harmony. So those head-forward, quick-stepping passersby are a remarkable phenomenon. Bell wonders whether their inattention may be deliberate: If you don’t take visible note of the musician, you don’t have to feel guilty about no you’re not complicit in a rip-off. It may be true, but no one gave that explanation. People just said they were busy, had other things on their mind. Some who were on cellphones spoke louder as they passed Bell, to compete with that infernal racket. And then there was Calvin Myint. Myint works for the General Services Administration. He got to the top of the escalator, turned right and headed out a door to the street. A few hours later, he had no memory that there had been a musician anywhere in sight. “Where was he, in relation to me?” “About four feet away.” “Oh.” There’s nothing wrong with Myint’s hearing. He had buds in his ear. He was listening to his iPod. For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear
we program our own playlists. The song that Calvin Myint was listening to was “Just Like Heaven,” by the British rock band The Cure. It’s a terrific song, actually. The meaning is a little opaque, and the Web is filled with earnest efforts to deconstruct it. Many are far-fetched, but some are right on point: It’s about a tragic emotional disconnect. A man has found the woman of his dreams but can’t express the depth of his feeling for her until she’s gone. It’s about failing to see the beauty of what’s plainly in front of your eyes. “YES, I SAW THE VIOLINIST,” Jackie Hessian says, “but nothing about him struck me as much of anything.” You couldn’t tell that by watching her. Hessian was one of those people who gave Bell a long, hard look before walking on. It turns out that she wasn’t noticing the music at all. “I really didn’t hear that much,” she said. “I was just trying to figure out what he was doing there, how does this work for him, can he make much money, would it be better to start with some money in the case, or for it to be empty, so people feel sorry for you? I was analyzing it financially.” What do you do, Jackie? “I’m a lawyer in labor relations with the United States Postal Service. I just negotiated a national contract.” THE BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE WERE UPHOLSTERED. In the balcony, more or less. On that day, for $5, you’d get a lot more than just a nice shine on your shoes. Only one person occupied one of those seats when Bell played. Terence Holmes is a consultant for the Department of Transportation, and he liked the music just fine, but it was really about a shoeshine: “My father told me never to wear a suit with your shoes not cleaned and shined.” Holmes wears suits often, so he is up in that perch a lot, and he’s got a good relationship with the shoeshine lady. Holmes is a good tipper and a good talker, which is a skill that came in handy that day. The shoeshine lady was upset about something, and the music got her more upset. She complained, Holmes said, that the music was too loud, and he tried to calm her down. Edna Souza is from Brazil. She’s been shining shoes at L’Enfant Plaza for six years, and she’s had her fill of st when they play, she can’t hear her customers, and that’s bad for business. So she fights. Souza points to the dividing line between the Metro property, at the top of the escalator, and the arcade, which is under control of the management company that runs the mall. Sometimes, Souza says, a musician will stand on the Metro side, sometimes on the mall side. Either way, she’s got him. On her speed dial, she has phone numbers for both the mall cops and the Metro cops. The musicians seldom last long. What about Joshua Bell? He was too loud, too, Souza says. Then she looks down at her rag, sniffs. She hates to say anything positive about these damned musicians, but: “He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn’t call the police.” Souza was surprised to learn he was a famous musician, but not that people rushed blindly by him. That, she said, was predictable. “If something like this happened in Brazil, everyone would stand around to see. Not here.” Souza nods sourly toward a spot near the top of the escalator: “Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look. “People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?”
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
-- from “Leisure,” by W.H. Davies Let’s say Kant is right. Let’s accept that we can’t look at what happened on January 12 and make any judgment whatever about people’s sophistication or their ability to appreciate beauty. But what about their ability to appreciate life? We’re busy. Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth. Not much has changed. Pop in a DVD of “Koyaanisqatsi,” the wordless, darkly brilliant, avant-garde 1982 film about the frenetic speed of modern life. Backed by the minimalist music of Philip Glass, director Godfrey Reggio takes film clips of Americans going about their daily business, but speeds them up until they resemble assembly-line machines, robots marching lockstep to nowhere. Now look at the video from L’Enfant Plaza, in fast-forward. The Philip Glass soundtrack fits it perfectly. “Koyaanisqatsi” is a Hopi word. It means “life out of balance.” In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said -- not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them. “This is about having the wrong priorities,” Lane said. If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the bes if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing? That’s what the Welsh poet W.H. Davies meant in 1911 when he published those two lines that begin this section. They made him famous. The thought was simple, even primitive, but somehow no one had put it quite that way before. Of course, Davies had an advantage -- an advantage of perception. He wasn’t a tradesman or a laborer or a bureaucrat or a consultant or a policy analyst or a labor lawyer or a program manager. He was a hobo. THE CULTURAL HERO OF THE DAY ARRIVED AT L’ENFANT PLAZA PRETTY LATE, in the unprepossessing figure of one John Picarello, a smallish man with a baldish head. Picarello hit the top of the escalator just after Bell began his final piece, a reprise of “Chaconne.” In the video, you see Picarello stop dead in his tracks, locate the source of the music, and then retreat to the other end of the arcade. He takes up a position past the shoeshine stand, across from that lottery line, and he will not budge for the next nine minutes. Like all the passersby interviewed for this article, Picarello was stopped by a reporter after he left the building, and was asked for his phone number. Like everyone, he was told only that this was to be an article about commuting. When he was called later in the day, like everyone else, he was first asked if anything unusual had happened to him on his trip into work. Of the more than 40 people contacted, Picarello was the only one who immediately mentioned the violinist. “There was a musician playing at the top of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza.” Haven’t you seen musicians there before? “Not like this one.” What do you mean? “This was a superb violinist. I’ve never heard anyone of that caliber. He was technically proficient, with very good phrasing. He had a good fiddle, too, with a big, lush sound. I walked a distance away, to hear him. I didn’t want to be intrusive on his space.” Really? “Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day.” Picarello knows classical music. He is a fan of Joshua Bell but didn’ he hadn’t seen a recent photo, and besides, for most of the time Picarello was pretty far away. But he knew this was not a run-of-the-mill guy out there, performing. On the video, you can see Picarello look around him now and then, almost bewildered. “Yeah, other people just were not getting it. It just wasn’t registering. That was baffling to me.” When Picarello was growing up in New York, he studied violin seriously, intending to be a concert musician. But he gave it up at 18, when he decided he’d never be good enough to make it pay. Life does that to you sometimes. Sometimes, you have to do the prudent thing. So he went into another line of work. He’s a supervisor at the U.S. Postal Service. Doesn’t play the violin much, anymore. When he left, Picarello says, “I humbly threw in $5.” 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. Does he have regrets about how things worked out? The postal supervisor considers this. “No. If you love something but choose not to do it professionally, it’s not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have it forever.” BELL THINKS HE DID HIS BEST WORK OF THE DAY IN THOSE FINAL FEW MINUTES, in the second “Chaconne.” And that also was the first time more than one person at a time was listening. 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 well 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 peopl rush-hour pedestr the National G 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.
(The Washington Post)
“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 43 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 40 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 best classical musician in America.
(The Washington Post)
Emily Shroder, Rachel Manteuffel, John W. Poole and Magazine Editor Tom Shroder contributed to this report. Gene Weingarten, a Magazine staff writer, can be reached at . He will be fielding questions and comments about this article
Gene Weingarten is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and writes "Below the Beltway," a weekly humor column that is nationally syndicated.
Continue reading
SuperFan Badge SuperFan badge holders consistently post smart, timely comments about Washington area sports and teams.
Culture Connoisseur Badge Culture Connoisseurs consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on the arts, lifestyle and entertainment.
Fact Checker Badge Fact Checkers contribute questions, information and facts to .
Washingtologist Badge Washingtologists consistently post thought-provoking, timely comments on events, communities, and trends in the Washington area.
Post Writer Badge This commenter is a Washington Post editor, reporter or producer.
Post Forum Badge Post Forum members consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on politics, national and international affairs.
Weather Watcher Badge Weather Watchers consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on climates and forecasts.
World Watcher Badge World Watchers consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on international affairs.
Post Contributor Badge This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post contributors aren’t staff, but may write articles or columns. In some cases, contributors are sources or experts quoted in a story.
Post Recommended Washington Post reporters or editors recommend this comment or reader post.
You must be logged in to report a comment.
You must be logged in to recommend a comment.
To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.
Spam Offensive Disagree Off-Topic
lifestyle magazine
Success! Check your inbox for details.
Please enter a valid email address
You might also like:
Sign Up No Thanks
Our Online Games Play right from this page
lifestyle magazine
Success! Check your inbox for details.
Incorrect email