Two days, two very big days. One spent inside an enormous arena theatre, the other in the emergency room of a large Melbourne hospital. Unrelated events, and yet so similar.
Arena shows are as frightening as hospital emergency rooms. The last time I shared that much oxygen with so many other people was for The Wiggles. This time it was for Dolly Parton. Worth it, perhaps, maybe not. We were so far up the back all I could see was the sparkle of her rhinestones.
Is it all worth the stress of parking, I wonder. Or is it, for the sense of communal excitement, the chance to see an idol and to be told she loves us all even if she is far off in the distance and can see us no more than we can see her.
At an arena show, we are just a herd made up of other stressed humans, all with shared simultaneous needs. We are hot, we all need to go to the loo, quench our thirst and find our seats before she sings Jolene. We all have fear of missing out, queue anxiety, merchandise stress, and knees that buckle on arena stairs.
Most of us know the rules. How to find the end of the line, smile politely to others at the washbasin and stand aside to let others through – and yet not everyone plays nicely. The man next to me filmed, photographed and read emails the whole way through the show, his smart phone a beacon in the darkened arena, blinding us, spoiling the sad mountain songs. Eventually my companion asked him to stop, and he did. But why did it take so long, we wondered later, for us to ask him, or for him to realise what he was doing was ruining it for others. Every time his camera light went off in that dark arena, the elderly lady in front of us flinched. Surely he noticed?
It is dehumanising being with so many humans. Only in such large crowds are we reminded of how mere we are, how similar and ordinary and all a bit in need of something – to be cheered up by a beautiful voice, or reminded that some humans, like Dolly, can be more than us, more accomplished, or rich, or special. It can happen.
In hospital with my mother the very next day, I saw it again. Anxious people with needs to be met – different to those from the night before, of course. But vulnerable, and needing to be put back together.
One lady spoke about the people who won’t let her out of the house or speak to anyone, nasty people who watch her every move. When the CAT team came, she told them about the people and then asked please could they ring them, let them know where she is.
Another rolled on the floor in a hospital blanket. She told an old man in a wheelchair to go back to his own country. Mum said maybe they should pump her stomach, but I said I think she has problems much bigger than what can be fixed with a bandage or a script for antibiotics.
Young tradies limped in, someone was sick into a bucket, others needed Panadeine while they waited, and waited. The nurses smiled with kind faces and tapped on arms, the ambulance crews arrived and stood close, protecting their human cargo, and the doctors asked questions, looked on the computers and phoned through to the specialists to solve and fix each human puzzle.
And in the end they did. Well, they fixed my mum that day anyway. Stars, all of them, just as bright as Dolly and her rhinestones.
