What if one of the world's most famous violinists busked in the subway?

This will come as no surprise to you, but maybe it will be some comfort.

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.

Once a woman said to me, "This isn't art. Art is what I buy and hang in my living room."

Pathetic.