Techsting

I think the girl sitting next to me last night at Rosenkavalier didn't come back after the first act because she didn't like it: or maybe because she couldn't follow it, not having stumped up the fiver for the programme and libretto. 

But I suppose it might have been because a dozen bars into the overture, she was still reading her day's texts on her iPhone and I tapped her on the shoulder and made "switch that fucking thing off like you're told!" gestures. Maybe she took me for a potentially throat-cutting Phantom of the (Albert Hall) Opera?

I've become increasingly exasperated at the reluctance of too many people to separate themselves from their emails, texts, sexts, pix of uncute babies or even less cute kittens. There is only a tiny, minuscule, chance in real life that anything that is going to destroy your world is going to happen in the sixty seconds between the conductor appearing at the back door of the stage and lifting his baton at the front of it.

"But it's off!" she said to me, angrily; which kind of compounded the offence.  That's not the point. Switched to silent or not, what effectively is a bright torchlight glaring in the corner of your eye—let alone stray babies or kittens—does not help to concentrate the mind on the music. Perhaps the beginning of the overture was a bit clumsy; I can't tell you; it might have been me not being able to listen to it properly for quite a few bars.

The announcement at the beginning of every Prom concert used to be amusingly emphatic in a 'Mind the Gap' kind of way: "Please switch off your mobile phones." It's now almost apologetic, and too early. And probably not loud enough to get through the earbuds. People are still getting to their seats, still busy reading their emails, texts, worrying about the last missed call.

There is very little in life that means you really cannot be without your iPhone, even for as much as an hour and a quarter until the interval (and most Prom Concerts get to an interval well before that). And if there is—the imminent demise of a rich legacy-bearing relative, say—perhaps you should have stayed away? Or be at the bedside, showing you really care?
   
Your mind won't be on the concert if you're thinking about all the texts emails and cute kittens instead of all that really conspires to make real life so much more beautiful and full and generally worth living that's music. 

I'm not sorry for you.

I bloody well despise you for your pitifully incomplete life.

So if you sit next to me at a Prom, or at the Coliseum or Covent Garden—be warned. I shall be—not boorish or vulgar, or even rude but— pointed about you switching the damn thing off. Completely. Silent. Inoperative. Blank. Black-screened. Dead. Norwegian Blue. Pining for the fjords. Not just quiescent.