BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
On Friday 13 March, the Australian government announced a ban on all “non-essential” mass gatherings of more than 500 people.
In the hours that followed, my newsfeed was flooded with industry-damaging updates, some posts of which include:
That same evening, I attended the Tasmania leg of Tim Minchin’s national tour Back — undoubtedly one of the final mass gatherings in Australia before the restriction officially hits on Monday.
Ahead of his event, Minchin himself had posted on social media that the rest of his tour would most likely be postponed. For all of us in attendance, that made this night in Hobart a uniquely special one.
There were only a handful of empty seats at the Tasman Room in Wrest Point; one of the biggest live performance venues in Hobart. The fact that audience members still attended during a declared pandemic (of coronavirus — and, arguably, panic) gives us hope that people’s hearts can still be in the right place. With only four cases of coronavirus confirmed in Tasmania at the time of the concert (with none transmitted locally via human interaction within the state), people had made the decision to get out there and have a good time, supporting the arts without fear.
The decision to cancel or postpone live arts events is nevertheless a responsible one on behalf of organisers. That doesn’t change the fact that this is likely to cause the arts industry to collapse (though, you can be creative in finding small ways to help its survival, as I’ve written about in this post). But beyond the industry itself, when I attended this performance I was never more soberly aware of the value that live music plays in all of our lives — not just arts practitioners, but audiences, too.
Minchin’s event was filled with old and new songs, and it was also peppered with the occasional light coronavirus joke (usually in the form of a musical punchline). Beyond this, though, he gave lengthy and energised talks to his audience about topics ranging from cognitive bias and hypocrisy through to social progressives and hate. Between songs, he highlighted — with his trademark cynical grin — the dangers of getting stuck in our own minds rather than opening them to accepting the world around us for what it really is and, importantly, treating others with empathy and compassion. It takes a rare artist indeed to combine hilarious dark comedy with heartwarming sentimentality, and this is a combination Minchin is known (and loved) for achieving with great success.
It’s also a combination that has the power to cut right through the fog of anxiety in our newsfeeds and brains. And it’s a combination that we won’t be able to experience again in person for the foreseeable future.
As I left the concert — having spent hours laughing, listening, thinking, and applauding with hundreds of other people around me — I was also left with a profound sense of sadness for the loss of this experience. We already know how valuable live music is — we don’t need a pandemic to tell us that. Still, it was an odd and deeply unsettling experience to set my eyes on a room filled with people in my community, huddled together to experience one of the most powerful mediums of hope and unity — music — during this pandemic. Because I knew that when we all left the room empty and cold, it would be a very, very long time before we all come together again.
Isolation, at a time when we most need to be strong for each other, is truly about to begin. And when it finally ends (who knows when that will be?), I sincerely hope there are events like this that we can return to.
As Minchin told his Hobart concertgoers in light of his likely postponed tour dates, he’d be spending the weekend drinking. I raise my glass to him, as we all go down with this ship together.
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A week earlier, at the Perth show, Tim was making light of it by rubbing his hands over his band member’s faces. Exponential growth sneaks up on you… look at how much has changed since then.