Side note: I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long :( School has really been picking up and its not going to let up any time soon…..
I was so excited because I had had such a terrible day earlier. I had a stressful English test (the summative English IO for any IB students out there…), and I think I had gotten so stressed out from that that I fully fainted in the class after that… So what I’m trying to say is that I was super excited for the concert.
Unfortunately, unlike for ethel, I was not allowed to skip school (which fair), and obviously my dad has absolutely no sense of urgency whatsoever so we didn’t leave the house till like 5:30 (mind you doors opened at 6:30). We got to the line about 10 minutes after doors opened and to say the least, yeah the line was long. We ended up scanning our tickets at around 7:15-20, and the merch was super quick.
It's important to note now that once I had gotten merch, we went to go find our places. I took a picture of this and posted it to my Instagram story. This is important because a friend whom I met at the Ethel concert was there too, and she... was 5 rows from the front. So after posting my story, she comments on it, saying something along the lines of ‘Hey, do you want to find me?’ Determined as I was, I tried my best to make my way to the front. I get about 5 rows behind her when the opener comes on. This kind of sucks, though, because the girls next to me were actively kneeing me in the back to stop me from moving forward. For the rest of the opener, I’m standing there (with my dad right behind me) just like 5 rows away from my friend.
I think I should mention this now, that if you can’t already tell, I am an INCREDIBLY anxious person. Stress & Anxiety should just become my name already. So throughout the entire opener, I’m panicking to myself thinking: “Oh my god, you’re going to be one of those people saying ‘oh sorry i’ve got a friend all the way at the front so i’m just going to cut in front of you’” So throughout the entire of the opener, I’m stressing myself out so much which is NOT healthy considering I think I fainted earlier that day because of stress… I made a plan, though, that I’d wait until the opener was over and then make a break for it. Especially since I was about 90% sure I could see her.
So, lo and behold, the opener finishes. I call her. I tell her to turn around, and we see each other. I then turn back to my dad, tell him he can go wherever he likes, and make the trek past 5 rows of people to reach her. It was not easy by any means. I had enough dirty looks to make enough dirty martinis for the entire country. After a short discourse with the group of people directly behind her, I FINALLY MAKE IT!!!
I literally almost cry with relief. This relief is very short lived as i begin to become utterly overwhelmed with the guilt of pushing past almost an entire crowd of people to make it to the front.
As for the concert itself, it was absolutely amazing. Lorde is just such a good performer. I was totally enraptured the entire time. My favourite song to hear live was probably Green Light, Perfect Places, Team, or Ribs. Obviously because of how close I was, everyone around was DIE HARD fans, so naturally everyone was jumping and singing and dancing, which just made it all better. I ended up with so much confetti (Totally not complaining, especially since I can give some to someone who didn’t manage to get any). I love the AFAS Live venue because its really multifunctional. Unlike the TivoliVredenburg, the stage isn’t literally 3m tall, and unlike the Ziggo Dome, you can actually see the artist. The AFAS also gives you a lot of versatility. If you wanted to stand, you can stand, and if you wanted to sit, you had lots of options.
I loved lorde as a performer. I would 100% go see her on tour again, and I’m sad that I haven’t discovered her before. I know I wasn’t the most die hard fan, but I still enjoyed her concert immensely and I hope that makes up for it.
As for my take on cutting the queue: As always, I have mixed opinions. When I told my dad about why I was worried, he didn’t understand why I felt bad at all. The way he sees it, you’re not entitled to any spot in the room at all, and its totally within reason to move around. He also mentioned, which I 100% agree with is: if we stop everyone from moving around under the fear that there are a certain number of people taking the piss and lying about meeting up with a friend, we ultimately create an environment where everyone is alone and by themselves.
I honestly felt really bad about cutting to the front. It felt almost comical how I went around telling everyone that ‘I had to find my friend conveniently 4 rows from the front’. As for those girls who kneed me in the back, I would’ve understood if we were super close to the stage, but we weren’t…
I think as a whole, I don’t agree with it, but I respect the people who queued up super early to get barricade. I think if you’re that determined to get a good spot that you’re willing to sit in the freezing cold and rain in the middle of November, all props to you, and someone who couldn’t bother to show early shouldn’t be able to just barge to the front. That being said, I think there’s just a mass loss of public trust here. One should be able to trust that everyone around you is respectful enough to not push others out of the way who were rightfully there a lot earlier. I also think that there’s a loss of trust in actually needing to find your friend. It felt comical, but I actually wanted to find my friend, but since its a lie that so many people tell all the time, people don’t know what to believe. Its really hard to come up with a solution, because you shouldn’t just not let that person go, because what if they did actually have a friend they needed to find? As a minor myself, I feel incredibly unsafe being in such a huge crowd without anyone who I know. What if those girls had stopped me and I had been there alone? And as the opposite, its not like people should freely be allowed to cut to the front because they couldn’t be assed to show up early like everyone else.
Anyways, that was my canon concert event I guess. In the end, all was well, I just felt like such a dick at the time, and I stressed out so much about what the people around me were thinking. I think the only think that helps is that I am absolutely tiny (height-wise (not width-wise…)). This means that people are a lot more willing to let me pass, because I’m all of 6 inches tall and most people can just see over me.
Its getting quite late here so I’m going to go to sleep <3 As always, take care of yourself, drink some water, have a snack, and be nice to yourself. Till next time!
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