Every moment counts, so turn off the camera

WHEN you go to a concert/ art show/football match (insert cultural event of your choice), do you (a) remain in the moment or (b) film the moment?

Be honest. It’s probably (b), isn’t it? My apologies if it’s (a) and you are one of those rare people who doesn’t upload everything as it is happening to you. Because these days we are all more likely to be (b).

Kate Bush last did live shows 35 years ago, before iPhones and tablets. She has asked people not to film her new concerts on their mobiles, so that she and the audience “can share the experience together.” We are so hooked on documenting every moment that the moment no longer exists. A hot air balloon guy on the radio has described how his clients, hundreds of feet above the Earth, in total silence and with a 360-degree view of the countryside below, insist on filming it all and uploading it on Facebook while still mid-balloon ride.

Small children do this — they don’t film themselves in hot air balloons, but they need the gaze of another, a parent, usually, to validate what they are doing at any given moment. ‘Look at me, look at me!’ We are meant to grow out of this, but, thanks to the glut of recording devices, we are all photo-journalists now, we are all citizen filmmakers, we are all documenting everything all the time. Is this Orwell’s ‘big brother’ come to life, except we are willingly ‘big brother’ to ourselves and each other? ‘Look at me, look at me!’ At least the look-at-me thing is just straightforward, unreconstructed narcissism. What makes no sense is watching your favourite band/artist/team through something Jarvis Cocker describes as “the size of a cigarette box.” At a small, sweaty Brian Jonestown Massacre gig recently (hardly a household name, I know), the audience behaved the same as if they were at a Beyonce concert: a flickering sea of cameras and tablets thrust moronically aloft, obscuring the view of the people behind them, and oblivious to the futility of their actions. What do you get if you film a gig on your phone? Some grainy rubbish on YouTube. That’s it.

It’s even happening at football matches. You might be yelping with tension, too rigid to nibble your half-time pie, and some drongo next to you is filming the game. In London, the National Gallery has caved in to the use of smart-phones, so now, instead of looking at the work, people will be snapping it. What for? We have our very own gigabytes of memory already installed in a super-sophisticated device — it’s called the brain. Why not use it to record events? As Beyonce said to a fan: “I’m right in your face, baby. You gotta seize this moment. Put that damn camera down!”