silience

From silent + brilliance. In a 2007 experiment, violen virtuoso Joshual Bell tried his hand at busking in a subway station, playing for nearly an hour on his priceless Stradivarius. In the end, only seven of a thousand passersby stopped to listen. No applause. He collected $32. But as Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten observed, "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." Pronounced "sil-ee-uhns."