By Josh Gardner, who needs at least three screens running to feel alive
NOT everything is on the internet. Some content, like plays and non-league football games, only happen once and then they’re gone forever. That’s criminal.
To fight this dystopian future where stuff happens that can’t be Googled I record all the gigs I go to on my phone. For posterity, by which I mean my Instagram story.
If you’ve not heard of a gig, they’re like live versions of Coachella. Except you can only listen to one artist, you have no control over what they play, and the sound quality is lo-fi through the air instead of earbuds. They’re kind of terrible actually.
And people there – old dudes – get pissed off with phones, of all things? Saying shit like ‘try living in the moment, shithead’, or ‘put your f**king phone away you’re ruining it for everyone else.’ And that’s just the performers.
Their verbal abuse makes it sound so easy. Could I really put my phone in my pocket and watch a gig with my eyes? I don’t even know if they’re capable of 1080p. Hours of watching YouTube in my bed in the dark has f**ked them up.
I approached it like a shit prank dressed up as a social experiment. Beginning by warning my friends I wouldn’t be posting for 90 minutes but wasn’t dead, I went to a gig by an act that hasn’t even blown up on TikTok.
They started playing. I couldn’t pinch and zoom. It was good, but I was incapable of telling anyone. Panicking, I instinctively began to take pictures by jabbing the air. My hands, freed from their technological master, were flustered.
Slowly, without a phone, they began to relax out of their claw-like natural grip they’ve been in for ten years. With nothing better to do my arms idly flapped at my side like fleshy windsocks. It was traumatising. Is this living in the moment? It’s hell.
All around me, the gig was being filmed. Faces lit up with joy as they captured an event as it was meant to be, firing off crowd selfies. I could feel my synapses shutting down as I went into device withdrawal.
Sweating, gasping, I fumbled for my phone and pointed it at the band. I’d only missed 90 seconds of the opening song, which steadied my nerves. Thank God I came to my senses and could document it for my 500 followers.
What band was it? Not sure. I’ll Google it later.
