Concert Lights

Recently I went to a concert. Although it had been quite some time since the last time I have been to one, and more or less the feeling and the atmosphere were the same, there was something that really appeared so strange!

The “concert lights” illuminating the environment during ballad songs were so different. Smartphone mobile flash lights everywhere, with their led white light, moving in the air and seen only when the phones’ back were turned appropriately towards the right direction. That brightness was unfamiliar, some kind of frozen, like edges of optical fibers sending out their light.

I remember the warm light of lighters with their tiny flames being moved by the wind and the waving arms, seen like candles and at least for me contributing to the feeling of the music.

…And I wonder has the feeling itself change or is it only the mean, the tool that evolved? I am making the comparison because I have been there when lighters were used. The generation that is born with technology incorporated in their hands, eyes, ears, senses may not be able to compare the difference in the feeling.

… I remember my grandfather using the oil lamps at the festival of Santa Fotini or Fire (Aghia Fotia) when all participants were making the “wave” around the dancing floor in the middle of the yard of the church. Everybody was raising his/her lamp in the air and moving it around and down again. Well this is a fake memory…

… I see my grandfather leading the small caravan, returning from the festival with the oil lamp in one hand and the rope that is dragging the family donkey on the other one. My grandmother riding the donkey, smiling, looking around and counting their children from her observatory. My skinny mother at age of 12 running back and forth the pathway, her older sister lulling their younger brother in her arms and following the third sister that was lightening the way just behind the animal. Three of their cousins following frighten by a story of fairies that had madden the previous priest of the nearby village… and the night went on with the pale light of the oil lamps conquering the fears and guiding them back home. This is an imaginative memory.

At least we can imagine....