everything else: put your hands up
dear internet,
on valentine’s day eight years ago i saw the band stars in concert. it was my second time seeing them live—my first ever second time seeing a band perform—and i was with the same group of friends as the first time around, and somehow we were in the front row. it was standing-only, and i remember all of us in that front row in disbelief, and i remember taking so many videos because they were singing songs i’d listened to on my iPod for years and i couldn’t believe i was here and this was happening, and i remember one of the lead singers of the band leaning towards us with a gesture that clearly said, put your phones down, put your hands up.
last month i saw waxahatchee in concert, also for the second time—my second ever second time—although the first time was an acoustic solo show and this would be the full band. i spent the hours between doors open and the show’s start feeling very nervous, because of an unfamiliar venue in a different city, dark room, red lighting, sticky floors, and a crowd that seemed to be entirely male and over 50—one of the first people i saw was a man in a bob dylan shirt that looked older than i am. as we waited for the show to start a man next to me was reading the new york times on his phone. by the time the opener was on, i had found my footing: i knew how we were all going to behave. from my place in the crowd i’d only really see the band in glimpses, and i would learn all about the audience, the couple with their arms around each other through a love song, the girl who knew all the words to the newest album, the collective intake of breath from those of us who knew when she was going to sing the name of the band. i knew we were all going to have our phones out only for little snatches of time, and that on the train back home i would sit in a compartment smelling of stale beer and watch shaky videos of twenty seconds of all my favourite songs. i knew i was going to put my hands up.
i’ve been thinking about it for days, and i thought about it again when looking at conversations about this party charli xcx just had, which some people called a “return of the era of indie sleaze,” and others pointed out was only a kind of hyperreal enactment of it. when i think of the stars concert now, i feel some shame—i should have put my phone down!—and also i think of how different it was: how back then we were all tired of being told to throw our hands up in the air, and we hadn’t yet experienced a live performance as entirely mediated through a sea of other people’s screens. i think of my extreme self-consciousness, and of how it can only dissipate when i am in a crowd of people and we’re all pointing in the same direction, watching something that unites us all in our love of it.
the thing is, in my opinion, that a real renaissance of the culture of ten years ago would be to return to a time when the device which captured these moments wasn’t the device that let you instantly share them to friends and strangers. i spend a lot of time considering my own urge to record via photograph, and my dependence on my horrible phone, and the effort it takes, sometimes, to be fully present in a moment, and i can’t help but feel like these things were easier before, when i didn’t know how to pose for a photo, and we gathered in a dorm room to look at pictures off one person’s digital camera from last night, and nobody was filming strangers for content with the same nonchalance. i guess this is a very long letter with no point except to make me sound exactly my age: it’s just that it’s weird that we all have to live like this now, and nice to briefly forget about it for a while, and stand sweaty in a windowless room and feel as if all that mattered was when the opening chords to “fire” played and someone in the crowd said, loud with joy, ”oh my god,” and katie crutchfield smiled, and i smiled, and then we all sang along.
love,
t