- Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
I'm guilty of this as well in the era of the iPhone, but Maura Johnston has a thoughtful blog post on the Village Voice's music blog discussing why we should spend less time documenting the time we're having at concerts and more time actually experiencing the entertainment. Maybe this is my own faulty nostalgic memory, but it seems like people find all kinds of ways to avoid actually listening to music at shows these days, whether it's through trying to capture poorly lit video with the screen in the air or playing obsessively tweeting during the set:
3. It makes you think more about documenting your experience in real time than actually having that experience.Obviously documenting shows is something that I have to do most of the time for professional reasons, so this hits a bit close to home. But come on! You're all experiencing something that might never happen again! Take a break from analyzing it in real time or framing the perfect shot or trying to tell everyone that you're having the best time and just settle into the songs. (The people who you want to broadcast your night to will be there when it's all over.) I have this problem with parties, too, actually—I've found that my enjoyment of an outing is inversely proportional to the number of posed shots people take during said outing.