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I recently came across an article in the Washington Post (reprinted in the Kansas City Star online): "Joshua Bell plays in D.C. rush hour crowd and goes virtually unnoticed".

Bell, a noted virtuoso, played some of the most provocative and profound music. Instead of the $1000 a minute which Bell normally commands as a performer and his recently won title as the Avery Fisher best classical musician in America prize, Bell received scant attention. Children represented the only consistent group of people who stopped to pay attention to the violinist. "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."

Of the thousands of people that shuffled through the station only about 40 seem to even recognize that he is there and even less remember his presence later when questioned. Only 1 person seemed to recognize Bell and only a handful stopped for more than a a few seconds to appreciate the music.

I was intrigued by this phenomenon. Thousands of people are receiving the same input, but the only group which can consistently stop to knowingly and appreciatively make use of this input is children. Even if we account for the fact that many people are busy and on their way to work, this effect cannot be fully explained. What about our society teaches children to ignore these inputs? We learn to appreciate music only within a certain context otherwise it is ignored. Essentially context matters.

But what important aspects of life and world are we missing when we divide up our lives into these arbitrary contextual portions? How does society dictate and inform these contexts, is there a process by which individuals can redefine these processes?