The Ear of the Beholder?

Carl Jung used the term “synchronicity” to refer to a similar idea as that expressed in the maxim: “An ‘accident’ is a case of God choosing to remain anonymous.” Leaving aside the prickly theological questions of free will and determinism, I recently experienced one of those moments of synchronicity that made me think of God. I missed the original article, but I’ve been hearing the post-article ‘buzz’ about Gene Weingarten’s April 8th piece in the Washington Post Magazine on the “sociological experiment” he ran at a busy D.C. metro station during the morning rush hour with the help of the virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/).

Bell (incognito), played a fabulous program at L’Enfant Plaza metro station. Astoundingly few commuters even noticed him or his music—so engrossed were they in their single-minded rush to the office. Even fewer actually stopped to listen for a while. The whole thing was recorded on video. Apparently children were somewhat more likely to notice than adults. You may be asking yourself: So where’s the synchronicity?

On the same day I heard about the Bell experiment, I also saw the movie (on DVD) “Music of the Heart,” a dramatization (featuring Meryl Streep) of the true story of Roberta Guaspari’s creation and struggle to maintain a thriving music program in Harlem in the face of school administrators whose budget priorities failed to appreciate the importance of an “extra” program in music education. (Incidentally, Joshua Bell also appears in the movie, along with Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, and a host of other famous fiddlers.)

The synchronicity lies here: Children appreciated the music—whether offered by Bell or Guaspari—while most of the adults didn’t. How is it that grade school children who thrill to Bell and the violin grow up to become adults too focused on work to notice the beauty in their midst? (Indeed, many of those who passed through the station had classical music training; some were even violin players.)

I don’t want to get sidetracked in questions of relativistic aesthetics and western cultural hegemony. Yes, it’s true that people often enjoy a specific aesthetic even more when they have been educated to appreciate it more knowledgeably. That’s part of the premise of music education for children. But I don’t think, as one chatter proclaimed, that “no one can expect people who have no education in the subject to be able to pick out even a genius like Joshua Bell . . . . Beauty speaks only to those who know the language, no matter what the medium.”

I happen to believe that beauty is a universal language that God created all human beings to appreciate; it is, as it were a “native tongue” we are all born with. So the question is why so many adults overlook or tune out the beauty they appreciate as children. What happens to us as we ‘mature’ that makes us include music—and beauty more generally—among those “childish things” that we “put away” as we move into the “real world” of adulthood? Why is beauty considered expendable, but pushing paper and making money is not? Why have these two been pitted against each other, as if we face a forced choice: either “making a living” or having room in our lives for real beauty. It’s as if someone proposed that we choose between eating and sleeping. But it can’t be one or the other. To be whole we need both.

Many of the most poignant commenters on the Bell piece spoke of how distorted their priorities had become as adults—how much time they spend doing things they don’t enjoy, things that aren’t intrinsically rewarding or maybe even worth doing in the first place—things they do “just to pay the rent.” Weingarten reports that over a hundred people wrote to say that they cried when they read the article. What does it say about our society that such unlovely things bear such high economic rewards—that the price of material success often means the slow, tortuous suffocation of the soul?

Why are people who manipulate credit markets more valued than those who tend the sick or the elderly? Why is quantity more important than quality and value equated with ‘productivity’? Why are people asked to work beyond the point of exhaustion? I’m sure Michaelangelo could have generated a lot more paintings in his life if he hadn’t done such difficult ones—like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Do we criticize him for failing to “be all that he could be” or “do all that he could do”—or do we appreciate the exquisite beauty of those things he did manage to accomplish? Is Carmina Burana any less thrilling because Carl Orff was a “one-hit wonder”? We seem to spend so much time as humans doing that we have no time left as humans being.

Why is spying on fellow citizens and foreigners more rewarded in this country than tending and teaching the next generation of Americans? Why are buildings now designed primarily for utility, not beauty—as if we are forced to choose between the two? Think of the beautiful heritage left us by the WPA: Where are the stone masons and wood carvers and other craftsmen who took pride in making works of architectural beauty designed to last a lifetime and more—not structures destined to meet the wrecking ball in the next wave of ‘gentrification’? How many people today live in houses more than a generation old—much less many centuries old, as in Europe and elsewhere?

Money—and the ability to generate more of it—seems to be the sole measure of value in our society. Many have lost touch with the long western heritage of valuing lasting beauty. Yes, there are patrons of the arts and humanities who fight valiantly so save programs like Guaspari’s. But these are often rearguard actions whose long-term viability is only as good as the net from the next fund-raiser. There is little organized, ongoing support for beauty built into the cultural infrastructure—the way there is, for example, for war and other military expenditures.

The contemporary fascination with youth and sex is no substitute for a mature appreciation of enduring beauty that appeals to more than the libido. And if we are losing hold on true beauty—or, rather, if beauty is losing its hold on us—then what does this bode for the other transcendentals: truth and goodness? Is it any wonder our culture is losing hold on them as well?

The American theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) taught that the human ability to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation is a form of worship; that in our conscious apprehension of God’s creation and our conscious admiration and gratitude for its beauty, the universe becomes conscious of itself and its goodness—which, of course, derives from the goodness of its Creator.

On Sunday, I sat next to a newborn child in the choir loft of my church (her mother sings in the choir with me). She is not yet three weeks old. She was awake and alert, but never once made a peep, despite the rather loud pipe organ right behind us. Her mother held her while we sang a psalm, hymns, and an anthem. Those who say people must be trained to appreciate musical beauty simply haven’t watched children closely enough. Knowing her mother, I’m sure this child will receive musical education to help her appreciate music even more. But that child already loves it—she was born loving it; in fact, she loved it even in the womb. She responds to it as a heliotrope to light, because that’s the way God made us. May she and all children retain this great gift as they travel the road to adulthood. And may those adults who have forsaken it find it again—and cherish it.