Crowds, crowds, crowds.
Crowds descending into a brightly lit stage. People walking, laughing, chanting.
Ten thousand or more, twenty, forty thousand, shouting, moist and stinking, spoiling the sweet scent of a midsummer evening.
Fast-food booths filling the air with cheap Indian scents. Hamburgers and French fries. Truckloads of beer to swallow it all, rivers of beer, fresh and yellow in frosted plastic cups and then, they have to pee. Queuing for the toilets they check their friends’ statuses in the blue glow of their cellphone screens, take a picture, make a short movie, later they will film the entire gig, not watching it, not even listening to it, the gig doesn’t matter at all, what really matters are the selfies and the clips, their own staging, their own acting, so they smile into the lens at a favorable angle, with the band as a backdrop. Every image shared instantly and sent out to the world.
Life recorded and remastered.
Manicured smiles and botoxed memories.
In the meantime, the band keeps playing.
The crowd keeps filming.
Le Petit Monde de Nicolas Esse 