Next concert, try not to bring your phone.

Fred Again came through my town recently. I think his music is great, and as shown by the crowds, so do plenty of others. One of his concerts at the Sydney Opera House, announced the morning of the show, saw 125,000 people trying to get tickets. Brilliant. 

He played at our local pub and while I wasn’t cool or quick enough to get a ticket, I did listen while standing on a park bench at the playground outside, my six-year-old son Finn on my shoulders. Lucky us. 

But what I also saw was a LOT of phones. Here is a photo taken from the Sydney show. 

Hey, I brought my phone out a few times too. But why? Did I take a video to share on social media the next day so my lizard brain could get an endorphin kick if others liked it? Probably. Will I look back on the video one day and reminisce - probably not, the quality of the footage wasn’t actually great #shot on iPhone. 

The photo above made me think back on the best musical experience of my life. 

Faithless. 

London. 

Twenty years ago. 

I didn’t take my phone. 

I’ve never felt such a connection with a band, crowd, or humanity. Here is what a Faithless show looked like then. 

As Maxi Jazz says in this clip, ‘if I live to be a million years old and do a million gigs, I’ll never forget that mate. That was brilliant.’ And no one needed a phone to remember it. Rest in Peace Maxi Jazz, I’ll never forget the time I was ‘in your church and I healed my hurt’.

As the great Alan Watts once said, ‘the future is a concept—it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be because time is always now. That’s one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.’

So the next concert I go to, if the ticketing process allows, I’m going to leave my phone at home. I’m not going to capture some awesome video or photos for Instagram. I’ll close my eyes like I used to, hold hands with Kaitlin, and soak up the music. I’ll try, just for a fleeting moment, to live in the now.