Glide

The Trick…

We knew this day would come. The end of the line. The completion of the journey. The conclusion of the Quest. Fitting that it would end on such a special night, in a year filled with similar evenings and, for me, on one song: “The Lizards.”

Facing down the task of trying to make sense of everything that has happened, to me, to my friends, to my mind, my body, my outlook, my awareness, my relationship to Phish, to art in general, is my central task now.

Whatever it is that happened this year, I’m sure its meanings will unfold, layer upon layer, over the coming next weeks and months. It’s likely that this experience will never stop teaching me though. Throwing myself so fully into something, with only the best expectations, with the truest sense of purpose; that was and shall always remain, to live, to feel, to be and exist purely, with as direct an experience to life itself as possible. Free from the irony and detachment that is as much a part of modern life as the cellphone and the status update. Free from the performative, free from the assumed, free from the constrictions we can’t help but ladle upon ourselves every single day. Free from the snark that has infested our culture. Free from the spectacle of confusion that separates us from the things that truly matter. Not sport and reality tv but human connection and personal meaning.

The things that get between ourselves and what we need, what we truly want and need to fulfill ourselves, to actualize, to solidify the deal we make with life, once we decide to keep living it. If we are truly to live fully, in such an intense way that we can face down the one thing we all truly share, mortality, the fact that we will one day cease to be, then the task always has to be honest, with ourselves, with those around us, with those we meet, and those we say goodbye to. To those we are suspicious of and those we trust indubitably. The only reason we fear death is because we suspect we aren’t truly living.

When you live purely, when you learn how to surrender to the flow, you are floored by the lessons that life has to teach you. And it isn’t this abstract thing called Life teaching you. It is you, it is yourself. It is your innermost spirit crawling out, as from an abyss, from the darkness and into the light. From constriction into freedom, from pain into wellness, from total abject solitariness into communion. From vulnerability towards strength. From suspicion to trust. From hate and towards love.

Each step out of the dark, out of the deep, out of the shell of flesh and tissue, of organ and breath, and into a new being, a new body, a new situation, a new environment with which to live, where the air is breathable and fresh and not at all stultifying. Where each intake is an acceptance and each exhalation a promise that leads to nothing more than the next breath, the thing can gives us the life. What we do with that life, with all those millions of breaths is the only thing that matters. What do we do. What do we do WITH ourselves. For ourselves, to ourselves. Who we are with, and where, and why.

Last night (12/31/13) wasn’t for me. I thought it was going to be, I had all sorts of hopes and expectations, plans and machinations. But in the end Phish did something for themselves, their way. It is no matter as I quickly realized that though the New Year’s Eve show wasn’t “mine,” I was lucky enough this year to get many nights that were for me. In places like Saratoga, Chicago, The Gorge, Tahoe, BGCA, Dicks, Worcester, Hartford and especially Glens Falls. THAT was my New Year’s show. Glens Falls was my everything. My epiphanies happened there, during the second set, as “Harry Hood” played. That was my show.

It’s ok that last night wasn’t for me. It was for so many others, and I love how happy everyone is right now. Everyone that I know, and even those I don’t know. I can tell, I can see, I can read the happiness.

I can hear the closing of a very vast circle. The end of the line. For many. I think the message is clear, it’s been spelled out for us, literally, metaphorically, musically, artistically.

Many years ago I came into contact with a band called Phish. Like most, I resisted this band with the strange name and even stranger music. I resisted the band that told jokes during shows, and talked to their fans as if they were old friends. The band with the drummer who wore a dress and a shy redhead with a squeaky voice as their front man. This band that held giant festivals all on their own. This band that was clearly so talented but wasn’t famous. This band that just didn’t make any sense. I resisted and recanted, I redacted. I saw shows and studied, as I do.

Obsessively, Talmudically, like a rabbi. Like a student. Like an apprentice and an intern. I listened to everything I could get my hands on. I listened to the music and then listened some more. And didn’t stop ever listening and soon this silly stupid amazing music just became genius. It became something else. And then just as I was catching on, they ended. It broke my heart.

To finally find that thing that you know you need, the thing that will be your salvation, the thing that will turn into a symbol and that will fasten you, like the binding belt, to your purpose and truth; It will hold you there, secure, firm, safe as life begins to accelerate and the pace of it threatens to desiccate all your plans and prognostications. And it’s gone. And you simply get over it, or fool yourself into thinking that you have.

Last night, Phish put down their improvisational toolkit (“Light” notwithstanding) and they just played their music. As little ornamentation as possible. In the round. They played in the center of Madison Square Garden. They bifurcated the crowd. They reoriented the power of the concert, and they put themselves directly in front of us. And they played those special songs that have captured an innumerable nation. The songs.

It’s always been about the music that four men could create, could compose, craft, tweak, improve and then go onstage and fuck up a thousand different ways. They knew all along that they weren’t controlling anything, and they had to confront that as well. But it was just the music, the best of the best, only Phish. The music ARE the covers. It’s all there, every note of every song in every single Phish song comes from elsewhere. It comes from the vast flow of words and rhymes, of notes and beats and collections of emotional dynamics that music carries down the great river of life. The river that eventually brooks and separates us from the other particles, that eventually runs into an embankment, somewhere far away that we can’t quite see yet, and it just stops.

Years ago, in a dorm room in New Orleans, a friend played a pretty song for me about an aging night, and I heard someone I hadn’t met tell me to “Surrender to the Flow.” and I had the temerity to believe him.

Back then, I was so weak, I was nearly dead. I was alone and an amalgamation of pain and lies and disbelief. I was scared. And I was embarrassed that such a simple message, such a clear articulation of a very counter-cultural belief would resonate with me. Even as stupid and immature as I was then. I come from a place where the very idea of surrendering ANYTHING at all is a form of treason. We must never surrender, we must fight and rage and control and direct and contour every single thing about our lives. These are the values that I was raised within. Family, community, city, country, culture.

In a word, it is about CONTROL. Which is why Surrender is such a powerful concept. To truly surrender to ourselves is the most noble task we can ever really set ourselves. To ask and continue asking the most difficult questions about our lives. About what we do and how we go about doing them. Are we living in accordance with our nature? Are we giving ourselves the things we truly need or just the things we believe we do, the things we are tricked into needing, the things that fill up supposed holes in our life.

Every human being has an essentialness, a purpose and a role. They fit within this giant jigsaw puzzle that we’ve been forced to play by the Architect. Call it G-d, call it the universe, call it randomness and chaos, call it star dust landing on a just-warm-enough planet, call it accident and chance. Call it the body, the breath, call it peace and call it love. Call it the fact that right now we have the sun to warm us, to give us light. And call it the knowledge we have that one day that star will go out and darkness will return.

A little over a year ago I gave myself a very great challenge. I said I would go on the road with a silly band with a stupid name. I said I would go to every show I could. I said I would write about the art, about the travel, about the people and the places. I would write about the conflict and the resolutions. I would live my life, fully, against Phish as the backdrop. Every night at 8:14 the lights would go down and since I like meatballs I had better get ready.

Whatever is happening in our lives, in our minds, in the space behind our eyes, where this special thing called consciousness resides, at 8:14 the lights are gonna drop and you have to be there. You have to be present. It’s all gonna happen. Getting and staying present, and breathing with the band and into the music, moving the body and stilling the mind, this is the method for me.

This year. This year has been everything. There is not a single facet of my life, of my mind, of my body, my future and my past, my heart and my soul that has not been touched, changed by this experience with Phish. Most importantly it is my art. My craft. My power lies here, in this document, on this computer, my fingers, like theirs, the instrument of my creation, the place where I come to confront myself. The only other place outside of the show where such a thing can happen. Where I can sit down with myself, and layer after layer, unravel of artifice and falsehood, the lies and self-delusion, the illusion of control that we all maintain, where I can rip that down and just write, purely, honestly. Where every single sentence and thought has to be true or else it gets deleted. Where my essentialness, where my purpose lies. This is where I belong, right here.

I brought all my pathologies into Phish with me. My need for approval, my desire for community, my longing, my flawed body, my flawed mind, my imperfections. And I worked them out right here, for everyone to see.

Last night I had one overwhelming feeling. This was about music. Their music. Phish. Not anyone else. Set after set, song after song, they played what is MOST theirs. What they have owned. This is after all what we all fell in love. Not the drugs, not the dancing, not the travel or adventure. The people and the places, the drama and the infighting and the pain and fuckups, the mistakes and the successes. This is what we fall in love with.

The music. The beauty and majesty of it. The glory that it touches. The sadness that it reveals and the vulnerability it portrays. The references. The way it allocates space, and time, and feeling and tones and collections of notes that seem to resonate deep within us. Not seem. THEY DO. They recall something ancient and knowing and comforting. The music that plays as we drift downstream, bobbing, while the shadows glide below. We glide along and the music is there. Their music, Phish’s music. It’s all we ever wanted. It’s all we ever loved.

Why would we ever want anything more?

Except someone to share it with.