Letter to Gene Weingarten: Aim Higher, Dude

A letter to Weingarten about his beautiful article in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, about a world-class violinist playing for half an hour unnoticed by the passersby at rush hour:

The violinist in the subway and your writing of it has changed my plans; I will be on my way to Beirut after all to make something heart-stoppingly beautiful. I was trying to get out of it because my car needs an emissions test and is in Los Angeles and I wanted to fly out and drive it back and my plans for writing about a marine biologist in Beirut were on ice. Not now. Thank you.

But I have to ask: I see your byline often in the Post. Seems like you have been there for years. Surely such a job is beneath you? When will you tackle and complete something you know you cannot do? I'd like to see you try. Something ageless, a meme, perhaps, could come of it, and the most beautiful story in the Post will suffer by association; what poem survives rank journalism? Think bigger, dude. You can do it.