Food For Thought: This is a plea to stop experiencing festivals through the lens of your iPhone
Whilst watching aftermovies, I can’t help but notice the absurd amount of phone lights that are captured in the shot. People are constantly using their phones at festivals; whether it be to get the ‘drop’ of a track featured in your Snapchat story or build up ample footage from endshows, I just can’t help but feel depressed when I see this reverberate during aftermovie footage.
Why would one do this? The show is in their face, but somehow they feel the need to put a barrier between their body and all the awesomeness… Why? It sometimes feels as these people have a complete obsession with not missing a single moment of a festival. As if they do not trust their body, they seem to rely completely on their hardware to capture everything. Consequently, it becomes a pity that some pay an impressive amount of cash to ‘experience’ a festival through their lenses and their mobile-screen.
This is a plea, a supplication, to re-think filming with your mobile at festivals. Start use your body, again, as tool to absorb all of the awesome elements as only this will allow us to capture moments in their purest form…
In amongst the obsession to capture every single moment, for me, lays a form of anxiety to miss out on or to forget something. If the body didn’t capture or memorise a moment, the footage allows a person to replay that very same moment so one didn’t miss it in the first place. However, this thought is an imaginary, if not a false one. A person will never be able to relive the exact same moment twice. One can watch the footage and experience a feeling, however, this feeling is not original. It is not pure. It is a conjuring trick played by our mind to ease our anxiety of missing or forgetting anything.
Filming disables us to become caught up in the moment. The devices in our hands act as a barricade for our senses. In this sense it becomes impossible to experience a party in its fullest. Let me clarify myself. When humans began using shoes to walk, they stopped noticing the fluctuating surface of the earth. Shoes disable us to feel with our feet the changing surface while we move. In the very same way, a mobile functions as a disturbance – a barrier – for our senses to capture all the signals in their purest form.
This brings me back to the statement I made in the introduction: We should start using the body as tool to absorb all awesomeness. The human body is designed to capture every moment through five (some claim even more – and with drugs we probably do) different senses. Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and tasting festivals, enables us to become a complete embodiment of the experience. We do not need a mobile phone to capture moments. Opening ourselves up to all these senses allows our body to experience reality far brighter, clearer, and far more intense than any camera footage will allow us to.
By this time – if you’ve reached this far – you might wonder why I care. Well, at first I felt slight pity for those who don’t experience a festival to its fullest potential. Secondly, and I think I can speak for many on this one, it’s highly frustrating when you’re going absolutely mental whilst the surrounding punters are standing like zombies with mobiles in their hand. It feels as though you’re dancing your way through a field of mines, trying to be careful not to smash a phone out of somebody’s hands. Moreover, it kills the mood for everyone that does try to enjoy a festival to the fullest.
Ever arrived somewhere completely cooked whilst everyone there was still sober? Well… Then you definitely know… so stop using all these technological devices like anxious babies and start opening yourself to the majestic experiences festival can generate. It’s time to get off your mobile phone and soak up the pure festival vibes!
1 Comment
One other thing about these phoneholics is that they might get caught texting with their friends for stretches of time during a really cool set. Why would you want to spam your Whatsapp / Facegroup group full of “omfg this set ruuuulz” if you don’t even want to take any part in the set? If my friend would go to a gig sure I would ask about how it was etc, but I wouldnt need a detailed rant about it as it was happening live.