Ben, Quality is in the individual viewing the performance, not in the performance.
Micah -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ben Golden Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 1:32 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [MD] Joshua Bell piece in the Washington Post I briefly used this forum about a year ago, but eventually left for reasons I'm not going to go into here. I recently came across an interesting piece in the Washington Post, where they had renowned violin soloist Joshua Bell play in a subway station in DC and observed people's reactions. With a couple exceptions, no one paid him any attention. The piece is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401 721.html As I read the article I couldn't help but run some MOQ analysis. What's interesting is that Pirsig seemed highly non-elitist with regard to observations of quality. He relied upon individuals, rather than experts, to determine what had high quality. Thus there seems a clear contradiction; Bell is considered a top-notch performer, yet individuals don't detect the high quality of his performance. I'd offer the following questions: 1) Does the high quality of Bell's performance come from the social value of his celebrity? That is, are his listeners enjoying his performance not because it sounds any different from a worse performer, but because experts have given him social credibility? 2) Does the quality of classical music come from a dated social value, which says that it's high art? Did people at some point decide that classical music was high quality without reference, for various reasons, to other types of music, such as jazz, techno, or Cuban folk music? Ben Golden _________________________________________________________________ Interest Rates Fall Again! $430,000 Mortgage for $1,399/mo - Calculate new payment http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-18679&moid=7581 moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
