An Art to Life’s Distractions

Standing somewhere smushed between the fourth and fifth rows of a Hozier concert screaming about “bugs and the dirt,” Phoebe Bock finally felt the impact of live music and was happy to share it with her chosen friends. She describes the experience and why it was a highlight of her summer in Dublin.

My journey to Ireland started in the summer of 2023 before my junior year of college. I dreamed of seeing my greatest historical obsession in person, the Northern Irish Troubles, and visiting the places I researched extensively for my undergraduate capstone proposal. What I found was an overflowing pride and joy for culture which I am so grateful to have been let into with my friends - an experience I will embrace in my last year of college and beyond.

Growing up in a small town outside of Portland, Oregon, little passed through the area. My first concert experience was in 2016; my then-best friend and I made the threehour drive in heavy traffic to Seattle, Washington, to see Shawn Mendes live at a small venue that accommodated less than 5,000 people. To my eighth-grade self, this concert was everything. It wasn’t until after my sophomore year of college that I would go to my next concerts, the same summer I applied to study abroad in Ireland. This time it was Taylor Swift, followed by Ed Sheeran a month later; both unforgettable experiences, but I had not yet escaped the Pacific Northwest.

Driving to the airport to start my two-month-long internship program in GCN on the right foot (with a 15-hour plane ride and my suitcase lost) I made fast friends with people who had also happened to have frantically bought a Hozier ticket on their way to the airport. My friends meticulously thrifted their outfits at local Dublin shops and we extensively conversed about the setlist, naming songs that we would be devastated if he didn’t play. For an outfit, I went with my tried and true overalls paired with a white flower strap shirt and a defective hair bow.

While my friend fed me Oreos, we hopped off the number 16 bus to queue at Marlay Park. Unfortunately, we split up because three of us had unknowingly bought Golden Circle tickets, but we updated the other two throughout the show. Security sacrificed the lid to my water bottle so as we rushed to the stage I carefully avoided spilling water on myself, but couldn’t avoid the rain that started to drizzle.

What better way to get to know someone than swaying side-by-side to some of the most emotional and heartwrenching songs ever written? I am known by my college friends for putting on gentler, melancholic playlists, so, of course, I was excited when Hozier sang this list of three songs back to back: ‘Francesca’, ‘Like Real People Do’, and ‘I, Carrion (Icarian)’. Perfectly bookended by ‘Angel Of Small Death & The Codeine Scene’ and ‘De Selby (Part 2)’, the crowd was jumping, screaming, and singing along to every single word.

This felt like the real thing: standing at a concert with new friends singing our favourite songs as we danced in the rain.

As the screen background changed to show pictures of Giant’s Causeway, which we all visited the previous week during our program’s trip to Northern Ireland, everyone heard as he strummed the first few notes. He definitely sang the first verse to my section after a scream originating near my group of friends.

The messaging in his music is something I obsess about with my best friend at college during our nightly study sessions in the library, and hearing him deliver a powerful speech reminded me of my original intent for starting my trip to Ireland: my interest in historical motivations and systems of power. I have learned not only from my internship, friends, and the city but also from my everyday encounters.

He spoke to the crowd: “I think when people see the experience of their neighbours, their loved ones, and they say ‘I see what you’re going through, I see what your experience must be like. It might be different from my experience but I want you to live happy and welcome and safe in this society as I do.’”

Hozier’s concert felt immediate and personal, filling in a missing piece, a true connection to a place somewhere in the world other than home. While I hold immense pride in my home state of Oregon, an entire world exists outside of it. Over the past year and a half, I have felt a burning desire to change something about myself. Learning that your life can change instantly, in just one sentence, has taught me to take that step and do whatever crazy idea I have on a whim. So why not go to Ireland and see Hozier perform live?