Stuck in a Moment

Days have come and gone since I was fortunate enough to get what undoubtedly were the last remaining concert tickets to Mumford & Sons at the Air Canada Centre, which is one of Toronto's biggest arenas and the home of our major hockey team. I think it seats roughly 20 000 people, and it was a delightful surprise to me (and perhaps to the Mums themselves) that they managed a sell-out in a really short time.

The music is soulful, Celtic, played with traditional instruments and then layered with stirring harmonies; the lyrics are often poignant, dark, and sometimes clever, and dare I say surprisingly deep and thoughtful from the hands of such relative youngsters. That I like them isn't remarkable, because I have been a fan of Celtic music for most of my adult life, whether served up with a twist (U2, Big Country) or in the more down-home styles reminiscent of the Chieftains. What does make me scratch my head a little is that the crowd was largely of the college and late high school variety, and that they have latched onto this band is not obvious to me.

That said, the entire show was magnificent, one big ceilidh in true Cape Breton style, all sing-along and body stomps. There were dangling patio lights that one would throw over the yard's laundry line for a summer party, a simple stage designed to focus on the music rather than the spectacle behind it. I loved the bareness of it all, the appeal of just seeing musicians alternately pounding and caressing their instruments as they moved from quiet, solemn moments to thundering choruses. It worked for me, and I went home just madly in love with this fabulous group of young artists.

What was secondary and yet quite interesting was the fact that I was in a great age minority at this concert, a position I have really never been in so obviously except for an unfortunate night in 1987 when I had to chaperone the two young sisters (9 and 13) of my then-husband. The older girl had the audacity to warn me that because I was "older" (at 25!), I might need earplugs to mitigate the loud sound of The New Kids on the Block. She never did recover from the wrath of this Who fan, and certainly never mentioned my age or her ill-chosen remarks ever again. On Tuesday, it was a show I was attending willingly, eagerly, and yet I couldn't help but wonder what has happened to the concert experience in the last 25 years. The proliferation of cellphones was jarring, with everyone around us texting, tweeting, and taking endless photos around us- not of the band, but of themselves with the band as a mere backdrop to the excessive, almost obsessive need to catalogue every breathing moment of their lives. My husband, who wasn't quite as passionate about the band as I was, happily joined in with the electronic set, relaying what was happening on Twitter between and during songs. That 50 tweets appeared in under 2 minutes from people in the audience is a real testament to the fact that this generation has lost the ability to just live in the moment and enjoy it. Everything has become a communal experience, but in the most obnoxious manner. No longer content to just participate and listen, people now feel the need to let everyone know immediately what they are feeling, seeing, or hearing. They don't take the time to filter, digest, or even reflect on what they are in the middle of, but more critically, they miss precisely what they are relaying by the action of passing it on. The level of distraction is rather elevated, but I suspect they don't even realize this is happening because it's the new normal. iWeep.

As someone who majored in Mass Communications in 1989, the scene was quite fascinating. We're moved forward so much in so little time that I truly think the current crop of tech users haven't really thought about what all the changes mean to them, and how they are affected by them. I know from 20 years of teaching that children (in the last 5 years or so) seem to rely on those close to them to react when they watch a film, or a play, and it's often strange to watch them watching each other to measure what their reaction to a scene should be. They are truly incapable of sitting quietly and experiencing the viewing privately, because it has become a moment to explain and react to as a group. This is the result of home videos, and the failure to separate what is truly a public space, and what is a private one. Likewise, at a concert, they are anxious to "share" so that they can all confirm that they're witnessing the event correctly. It is the most intriguing phenomenon to observe, mainly because I have so little opportunities to do so.



Where are we going from here? No idea, except that I am not sure I can keep myself from being diverted from the stage to all the little hands pressing characters into their smartphones. I would love to go back to the days where all the lights did not compete with those in the audience, and where the most you'd see in the dark was a Bic lighter dancing along to a ballad. Bono very recently expressed his frustration at seeing endless fans obsessing with their cellphones in the front rows of one of his shows. "Live in the moment, for God's sake!" he shouted to the offending parties. Indeed, Bono, that's what we need to learn to do again. But how? That's the question.