In fact, according to my del.icio.us bookmark, one year ago exactly, I read an article by Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post about an experiment where they put Joshua Bell -- one of the most celebrated living violinists -- outside a Washington metro station, in jeans and a ball cap, ostensibly playing for money. There is a related video showing the 45 minutes or so he played, the hundreds of people who walked by him, the dozen or so who stopped to listen. They interviewed Bell after it happened, they interviewed some of the people who stopped, interviewed the one person who actually recognized him.

This article moved me to tears in several places. Weingarten hosts a weekly chat that I usually read, and after the article was published, he said he had heard that some people cried when they read it but he didn't know why, and he asked people who cried to write to him and explain why, so I did, and said this, in part:

I was certainly moved by Bell's humility. We are so constantly bombarded with talentless people who act entitled to their fame that it's extraordinary to read about someone who deserves to have every living person know his name laughing that he could make a decent living playing in a Metro station.

I'm sad that so many people rush through their daily lives oblivious to someone creating a thing of unspeakable beauty just a few feet away from them, likely because they have "outgrown" a belief in the possibility that things of unspeakable beauty might happen at a Metro station.

And lastly, even though I do know who Bell is and have been a fan of his for years, I think there was a part of me that felt terrified that on any given day, I might have rushed right by him myself, lost in my own selfish concerns, and I suppose that is making me mourn 35 years of things I don't even know I've missed.

(He wrote back and said "Consider yourself kissed," which, given that I have a tiny bit of a crush on him despite the fact that he is in his 50's and married and I only have a vague idea of what he looks like, was so awesome, I can't even tell you.)

The article stayed with me like nothing else I've ever read, and what I wrote to the author doesn't even begin to convey the impact it had on me emotionally. I sent it around to almost everyone I know, but no one seemed to have a similar reaction, which started to make me feel like I was maybe having some kind of melodramatic episode. I got over that feeling, because different things affect different people, and went about my life, which has, in fact, been changed because of that story.

All of this by way of saying: Weingarten just won the Pulitzer Prize for that very article.