"As an experiment, The Washington Post asked a concert violinist--wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a baseball cap--to stand near a trash can at rush hour in the subway and play Bach on a Stradivarius. Partita No. 2 in D Minor called out to commuters like an ocean to waves, sang to the station about why we should bother to live.
A thousand people streamed by. Seven of them paused for a minute or so and thirty-two dollars floated into the open violin case. A cafe' hostess who drifted over to the open door each time she was free said later that Bach gave her peace, and all the children, all of them, waded into the music as if it were water, listening until they had to be rescued by parents who had somewhere else to go."
David Lee Garrison, Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007.
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