Last night I got out of the house after a very busy 3 days and a big proposal meeting yesterday afternoon. Gassed and wanting to just curl up in a ball and sleep, my wife prodded me to take an open invite from a close friend to accompany him at this small intimate music experience.
The experience was a Candlelight Concert and it did not disappoint. I had been served many many ads (whoever their marketing team is sure knows how to show up in a feed - good job by you marketing team) across platforms and my friend sent me an invite saying:
I finally caved to these ads and bought some tickets to the Vivaldi 4 Seasons one on Wednesday night - you want to come with me?
I didn’t even get back to him until Wednesday afternoon after my meeting - but I was in.
We arrived at the venue, this beautiful old art deco theater near downtown SLC, with pretty skeptical views on what we were in store for. Sometimes these global experience things that get promo’d all over social media suck and are just big money grabs with great marketing and prioritize social engagement online rather than a great in-person experience.
To our surprise it turned out to be… AWESOME. SUPERB. EXCELLENT.
There was a good crowd and the venue was set up beautifully and carried well the intimate romantic room vibe. This is the type of place you’d want to hear great music in, especially classical string instruments.
As the quartet walked out and introduced themselves, our skepticism was ready to break, but still holding strong. Then they put their bows up in the air, deep silence fell over the room until you could feel the friction from the horsehair move across the strings that first time.
I use the word “feel” because the experience is much more than “hearing” the sound. You can actually feel the vibrations, it’s a 3-D sonic experience.
The skepticism fell instantly. We were in for a treat.
I had forgotten what great classical music live feels like. It’s GREAT.
Even better than the music, to me, is watching humans with world class skills expertly play these almost barbaric ancient instruments of wood and metal and horse hair. The way these 4 artists played - so expressively and artistically - was mesmerizing. It put both of us into a near trance like state.
After each movement we’d turn and look at each other, wide eyed, filled with glee, and just say
“holy shit that was amazing.”
We did that move like 7 times.
The thing I quickly realized was that we were losing the war to algorithms. How did we let facebook and instgram and tiktok and twitter/x steal our time away from things like live classical music performed by elites humans?
Let me be very clear here, the experience I had last night was 100X better than anything I could experience on my phone or computer.
It’s not even close. It’s just better, by a lot.
And if we think about how much it “costs” to be sucked into the doomscroll and algorithms for hours every day, we could all afford to spend $20-40 a couple times a week to go experience something better in real life.
As I come more and more to the realization that I’m fully in control and that I can choose how to truly spend my time and live my life, these decisions become much easier to make and prioritize.
My strong belief is that we collectively realize this with the continued take-off of AI. That experiencing what humans can do will be cherished and prioritized again. We are unique and incredible intelligent beings and we should cherish that as a species. If you aren’t thinking that as you read these words, I think you owe yourself the time to think about that.
With love and deep appreciation,
Andrew