Thoughts on my Experience at Phoebe Bridgers’ The Lost Tour

On October 7, I saw Phoebe Bridgers at TD Garden in Boston. Getting in started the way getting into any event in America starts now. First the security check. Then the digital ticket scan. Then a third stop I'd never been through before: a table where someone took my phone, slid it into a neoprene pouch, locked it, and handed it back to me.

Bridgers asked for the whole tour to be phone-free. Phones go into a Yondr pouch at the door. There are a few spots outside the performance space where someone will unlock it if you need it. Inside, where the music is, there are no phones.

The pouch hung on a strap at my side for the rest of the night. I didn't reach for it. I didn't want to. Leaving it alone took no discipline, because there was nothing to resist. I wasn't scanning the gaps between songs for something quick to fill them with. I loved not being beholden to it.

Putting your own phone away at a normal show only gets you so far, though, because the person in front of you is still holding theirs up. That's the part the pouch fixed. An arena full of people, and nobody filming the stage over somebody else's head, nobody's screen glowing in the dark, nobody half-watching the show and half-watching the recording of it. Everyone in the room was just in the room. It was fucking beautiful. It's the closest I think I'll ever get to the way concerts were before phones took over every moment. And people went to concerts without phones for most of the history of concerts. Most of us lived. It was okay.

What I felt in there was something closer to presence and absorption at once: fully in the moment, and fully taken by it. The lights and visuals were stunning, and the show seemed to depend on the dark. I don't think the effects would have been as vivid with a few thousand screens and flashlights pointed back at the stage or audience. During "Lost Weekend," a huge orb hanging above the stage broke the room open with shaped lights and lasers, and the whole arena felt like it was vibrating rainbows. It's hard to describe. I'm fairly sure a photo or a video wouldn't have done it justice.

And still, somewhere in there, I wanted one. Not to post it. Just to have something to remember the show by, proof I'd been inside that light. It's a strange thing to want in the middle of the moment you're trying to keep. The wanting didn't ruin anything.

The next day I went looking online and found what other people had brought home instead. Sketches and notes from notebooks they'd carried into the venue. Paintings. Drawings. Animations. 3D recreations of the stage. Nobody had footage, so people made things. A video records what a lens saw. A drawing records what a person noticed, and what each person noticed was a little different: the colors they held onto, the moment they chose, the part of the stage that stayed with them. It's all one night, seen by thousands of people, and none of their versions match exactly. Mine isn't posted or recorded anywhere. It feels like mine.

None of this works the same for everybody. Some people need to be reachable — a babysitter, a ride, a parent, a health condition — and the phone areas outside the performance space exist for exactly that. Some fans would say a memory you can't replay is a loss, not a gift, and I understand the argument even though I don't agree with it.

On the way out, a security worker unlocked my pouch with some kind of tool, which took a pretty hard smack with the palm of her hand. Honestly, she could have kept my phone for all I care. Walking out, it was weird to see the lobby light up with screens, everyone's head tipping back down. My first thought was to wonder what they'd been missing so badly. At least we didn’t miss the show.