21/08/2024
It has been a fortnight since the cancellation of Taylor Swift’s Vienna Eras Tour dates due to a planned attack on the concert, of which I was meant to attend all three nights. Instead of happy memories of what was likely to be one of the greatest nights of my life, I’m left with memories of one of the worst weeks of my life: a lonely and depressing time filled with disappointment, sadness, and a sense of absolute horror and dread at the thought of what could have happened had these plans not been prevented. There are some beautiful moments of community and plenty of life lessons sprinkled in there that I’m sure will be more poignant in retrospect once the disappointment has faded but we’re not far enough removed from these events to appreciate those quite yet.
I am going to try and paint a picture of why this is so much more than just a cancelled concert for me and the 200,000 other people that were meant to attend this show. I don’t know if it serves any purpose other than making my social media a more realistic depiction of my life but alas I will write because I feel compelled to. I have never believed in social media being simply a highlight reel. This is the reality.
Let me take you back to June 2nd, 2023. Taylor Swift is performing the Eras Tour in Chicago for three nights. I don't have tickets so I spend all week entering contests on the radio, refreshing Ticketmaster waiting for a last minute drop of tickets, looking at resale Facebook groups but to no avail. I toy with the idea of taking out a loan to pay $700 for the cheapest resale ticket BEHIND the stage but decide quite rationally that that is ridiculous. I walk downtown to where the concerts are occurring as people are lined up for merch, dressed up in their most bejeweled outfits, friendship bracelets swarming their wrists and I cry.
At some point (I won’t pretend I remember when), I come up with a plan to get to a show. Taylor will be announcing international dates soon. Why don’t I just try to get a ticket for one of those shows, ANY of those shows and plan my yearly trip around that show? It’s the perfect plan! The dates are announced, I sign up for every single city and try to obtain codes to buy tickets. I am waitlisted on most of the cities except a few. The Vienna tickets were going on sale first so I choose to try to buy tickets there. My favorite movie is set in Vienna so maybe this was meant to be anyways. A month later, I am waking up at 3AM on July 11th, 2023 to buy the tickets. I am successful! I set a countdown for 394 days from then and begin to plan my entire year around the show.
Fast forward to next year when Taylor begins the European leg of the tour, her new album, which just so happens to be my favorite album she’s ever made, has an entire set added to the tour. I watch the new set and feel like everything worked out the way it was meant to be. I will be able to see my favorite album live! Hell yeah!
Fast forward through the summer to August 7th, 2024. My countdown has reached 1 day!!! I wake up nauseous and feeling lightheaded, genuinely wondering what to do if I pass out from excitement. The early merch stand opens today and my countdown has reached 1!! Holy mother of God we’ve made it to 1!!!!!! I make my way to the stadium to buy a tee shirt. I start to see Swifties and start to believe that this moment is actually happening. I arrive at the stadium and start bawling. The circle has been completed. I stood outside the stadium over a year ago and cried because I couldn’t go in, now I am crying because I will be going in. I take pictures at the merch truck, pick up my VIP box and buy my tee shirt surrounded by people as excited as me. I am filled to the brim with joyous anticipation and excitement. I post pictures of my excitement on my social media and send out a few text messages. The day is almost here!
I go to a picnic that a beautiful Viennese Swiftie planned out for us all to meet and trade friendship bracelets and feel a sense of community and joint excitement. I walk to the picnic and stand around awkwardly until a girl with a frog beanie on comes over to strike up conversation moments before my social anxiety convinces me to leave. Thank goodness for her bravery. We make bracelets together for a few hours, talk about our lives, about Taylor and have some adorable moments with other Swifties who come up to ask if we want to trade friendship bracelets with them. It is a sweet and wholesome afternoon. I leave feeling giddy, having no idea that I would be sobbing a few hours later as I check my phone and see that there has been an arrest on someone who planned an attack, followed shortly after by the cancellation of all three dates.
I enter into a state of shock that can only be rivaled by one other moment in my life.. The emotional whiplash takes me from a 20 out of 10 to a zero. I wander around my apartment for the first three days without a fully functioning brain teetering between disappointment and sadness that we really aren’t seeing the concert to gratitude and a ball of absolute dread in my gut at the thought of what could have happened had the show gone on and the attacks not been prevented.
The horrors of the latter part are self-explanatory so I won’t describe that but perhaps the meaning behind the Eras Tour is not obvious to those outside the fandom so that I will make an attempt at explaining because I simply need to get it out.
The reason that this moment is so much more than just a cancelled concert is because of what the Eras Tour and Taylor Swift’s music represents. For me (and millions of others), this tour is the perfect representation of pure joy and happiness and an escape from the realities of the horrendous things that occur in our world each day. It is a place of hope, joy, self-expression, creativity, dancing, smiling, hugging strangers, wonder and singing (or screaming) the lyrics to music that has been the soundtrack of our lives for 18 years. Whatever was going on in the world or my life, I have always had the Eras tour and Taylor's music to turn to for a reliable source of fun, entertainment, joy and escape.
In the blink of an eye, what was likely going to be the best night of 200,000 people’s lives was turned into sadness, each with their own story of their anticipation and journey to get tickets similar to what I’ve just described for myself, each with their own story of the moments spent with this music: crying during our darkest times and belting out songs in the car at our happiest times. The place which was our safe haven, our joy and happiness, our comfort from the horrors of the world now intricately tied to thoughts of violence and disappointment.
In the days after the cancelled shows, the city of Vienna and the businesses here sympathized with our sadness and tried to make it better. They offered free burgers, free entrance to museums, free coffee, free ice cream, free necklaces and played Taylor Swift’s music throughout the city for us. The fans, many of us tried to make the best of the situation and capture a sliver of what we would have had at the show. Crowds gathered on the streets and sang (screamed) the songs for 12 hours each day that the shows were supposed to happen. We gathered, we cried together, we hugged each other, we wore our outfits that we had planned for the show and shared our love for this music. It was a showing of community the likes of which I have never been a part of and I will take those memories with me. It meant something, to go out there and still celebrate afterwards. It meant something for me to be on the streets and see people going on despite feeling like crap and being alive singing and dancing as humanity has forever.
After a few days passed when everyone got on their planes and headed home all that was left in Vienna was glitter on the ground, a few friendship bracelets scattered throughout the city, some signs in chalk on the pavement, sparkles fallen from bedazzled outfits. In the end, we are left with a sadness that we will be asked to move on from quickly, with anxiety in our guts, and with a shadow over something that once only shone bright..
A week later, the next round of shows continued on in London and we watched as nearly half a million people lived out the dream that we were so close to having without a single acknowledgement or word from Taylor or her team. The world of the Eras Tour moved on and left us in its dust. We are a stain on an otherwise joyous and momentous occasion, the biggest tour that has ever existed. It appears we have already been forgotten and that is a tough pill to swallow.
I have continued to watch the shows and tried to enjoy but it has been a real test in empathy. Of course, it would not make me feel any better for an additional 500,000 people to also be saddened and disappointed and not have their shows but it was much harder to experience joy for them than before. We watched the shows go on and a music video be released, merch sold, surprise guests, long anticipated songs played, new outfits worn without any acknowledgement that we existed. I broke down in tears many times seeing others live what most of us never will. As the shows continued, it is getting a little bit easier to enjoy but there is a dampening over what once was pure happiness.
As my heart is beginning to heal, I pack my bags to take a bus to a new country tomorrow because life, just like the show, must go on.
