When I’m on tour, the last thing I want to do is go to someone else’s concert. I feel sonically and emotionally overloaded, and the live experience is simply too intense. However, I’ve had a couple of months’ break from touring, life has settled down, and, to my surprise, I’ve had the urge to go and see live music. Over the past couple of months I’ve attended many gigs — incredible evenings, all of them — including Bob Dylan, Swans, Radiohead, Cameron Winter, and Dirty Three.
At the Radiohead concert at the O2, I was sitting among 20,000 people. Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such a large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room: people dancing, screaming, crying, hugging each other, throwing themselves around. I was struck by the realisation of just how powerful live music is — that a group of individuals can come together and concoct a sound unique to them, and that people can connect with that distinctive vision as if it were their own experience. I could feel its moral quality, how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.
I engage in various spiritual activities — I swim in a lake, go to church, walk in nature, meditate — but none offer the transcendent opportunity of a live concert. It is a form of human activity that radiates goodness, working its way through the crowd and into the world as a reparative, cosmic force, improving matters, keeping the devil at bay. I believe Radiohead’s audience was responding not only to the music, which was astonishing, but also to the courage of the performers — the sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls. Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled.
“I could feel its moral quality, how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.”
There is an unholy voice that every self-aware artist encounters at some point in their lives. The voice that whispers, “Am I good enough?” or, “Do I deserve to be here?” or, “What if people hate me?” — the voice that can ultimately lead to a state of paralysis. Yet, whether singer, artist, or otherwise, these are the demons we all must face. Whenever we take a risk in life, or do something that might set us apart, or draw the judgement of others, these crippling voices provoke a form of “stage fright” — a fear of existence, a fear of life itself. But, if you can summon the resolve to overcome these inner voices, you can conquer anything, and the world will lie trembling at your feet.
This is what the vast crowd at the O2 recognised: a band engaging in a remarkable act of ordinary courage, a distinctly human form of heroism — the audacity to stand before the world and declare, “This is what we think. This is what we feel. This is who we are.” Perhaps understanding that we all fight battles within ourselves can help us feel less alone and encourage us to step onto that stage. I hope so.
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This piece was originally published on The Red Hand Files.
