There’s a new lighter in town and it’s called the cellphone. And that is not just a result of luckily less people smoking these days. If you go to a concert in 2008, it is quite likely that the person next to you, or in front of you, or to the side of you will be taking a picture, filming bad video, txting how great it is to be there, calling someone to leave an unlistenable live recording as as a voicemail or literally reading and responding to work emails. Why can’t we just focus on what is directly in front of us?

It almost seems as if there’s a need to broadcast yourself constantly, to maintain a digital pulse which an unlimited cellphone plan can deliver to you. If you’re not blogging or broadcasting to your friends it is almost as if you do not exist. At a recent Radiohead show, many people in the audience were indeed recording video or taking photos of what seemed like every second. Did they actually watch the show, or did the constant scurrying of capturing disallow them to enter that “trance” which a great performance can put you in… where you wish the moment would last forever. But of course that is perhaps the main reason for all the live digital scrapbooking; it is a way to prolong and share the magic.

Yet the synthetic renderings after the fact cannot make up for the sensation of listening to and watching a band you more than likely struggled to get tickets to perform in front of you, with a stage presence they worked so hard to do just right for in-the-flesh eyes and not low-resolution cameras.

A friend of mine had the fortune of running into Phil Selway, the drummer for Radiohead, a couple hours before the show at a Borders bookstore near the venue. Phil was there with his wife and kids and simply living. My friend simply wished him a good show and went about his business. In many ways, it was refreshing to just hear the fun little anecdote without the accompanying cell phone picture of Radiohead’s drummer looking annoyed as he’s taken away from time with his family.

I’m definitely guilty of sometimes capturing and communicating during shows, and largely it is for the communal aspect of wanting to share the experience with others after the fact or near real-time with a friend who could not sit near you.

How bothersome are the tiny screens of light to you when watching a show?