By now, you’re probably bored to death of reading painfully generic but somehow still pretentious think pieces about the trials and tribulations of life in the digital age. You know the ones. They always start with something like “In the age of algorithms, infinite entertainment and artificial intelligence, we find ourselves more connected than ever, and yet, alas, we seem to be more lonely and more miserable than we were before”, and then go on to proclaim, very vaguely, of course, the dire need to “fight for our humanity”.
As if you don’t know this already, as if you haven’t read some variation of this exact idea every morning for the past three years every time you’ve opened the Guardian on your way to work. As if you don’t think about it every time you realise you’ve spent the last 40 minutes watching reels. You know how badly the world’s biggest companies want to purchase your time, your attention, and your tolerance for inconvenience, and you know that, as of now, they are succeeding.
So, what should we do about all of this? Is there anything we can do about it at all? Should we pull out our hair and give into desperation? Should we grow it out and go live in the mountains as hermits? Well, don’t fret - sometimes “fighting for our humanity” is more straightforward than we might think.
The thing about us human beings is we have a weakness for things that are easy, and unfortunately, many times, the things that make us feel truly happy and fulfilled require a little bit of effort.
In one of our recent articles, we encouraged you to reclaim your right to be lazy, but this time we want you to try doing something a bit harder: embracing inconvenience, and we think that live music is the perfect place to start.
Extreme convenience is misleading. Delivery apps can sort dinner in two minutes, streaming platforms provide easy access to almost infinite amounts of music and entertainment, online shopping websites can get anything you want to your doorstep without having to do more than moving a finger to press “buy”. All these 21st century digital luxuries serve the attractive, but in reality quite nefarious, purpose of removing any sort of friction from your daily life, and yet they always feel duller, emptier, than the “real” thing - cooking a nice meal, going to the cinema or buying clothes from your local businesses.
Experiencing live music is probably one of the most inconvenient and annoying ways to have an absolutely brilliant time. You are in the middle of a very hot room with seemingly no ventilation, in a crowd of sweaty strangers who are shoving you and shouting in your ear. The guy in front of you is clearly a professional basketball player or at least related to one because he is 7ft tall. The woman to your right must be an amateur tap dancer since she has stepped on your big toe 14 times since the concert began. The cracking of your knees reminds you that you’re not a teenager anymore. You have been holding your jacket in your left arm for 45 minutes now, so you try and switch sides, but you accidentally knock over the tap dance enthusiast’s beer, and she has a go at you because she paid 12 quid for it. You elbow your way to the bar to get her another one and shout out your order three times to the bartender, who has a septum piercing and can’t seem to hear you even if you’re standing right there. You elbow your way back and give the beer to the woman. She smiles at you and doesn’t step on your foot again for the rest of the evening. The opening act was quite boring, but it’s fine because the band you came to see just came on stage. You get excited because it looks like they're about to play your favourite song. The guitarist doesn’t perform the solo and the singer skips the iconic high note of the chorus, but it’s fine, because at least the toilet is really dirty and it’s raining outside. At the door you run into the aspiring tap dancer. She thanks you again for the beer, and you ask her if she wants to get another one. You go to the bar next to the venue and talk about the gig. You both agree that it was fine, but that they’re a studio band, not a live band. You get home and put the concert ticket inside a notebook.
Real life has a penchant for turning our plans upside down. To disappoint us, to surprise us, to annoy us and to make us happier than we could have ever imagined. A gig is all this packed into a very intense, generally very sweaty, evening. Yes, going to a concert is more inconvenient, more difficult, more annoying and more expensive than streaming or watching a concert online, but it’s an experience that can change you, and can stay with you for years after you walk out the door.