How do you do it? How do you approach the final performances of the band you love, knowing that one by one, there's less moments all of you are going to be in the same room doing this together? That now on this tour instead of pluses, each show is also a subtraction of sorts. The math gets crazy but the point is this: the countdown is on. Back to zero. Back to naught. Pre and Post Phish. Where were you when you found them or they you? What happened? Wherewhathowhynext?
I grew into my life, into the digital world, into friendships more vast and magical then I could have ever hoped for. That it was my oldest friends, my preschool elementary high school friends that first handed me a ticket on Oct. 23, 1996 as a graduation or late birthday or something present is powerful for me. A web of amazement has threaded and ensared my life as a result of my love for that band and the friends I have made along the way. The sensations of those concerts are rare in regular life, but common among people who are always aiming for that perfect state of musical transcendence. It bled into life, into choices, into what I found valuable and powerful and true. It was a living force, a fountain of music and lights that every so often, a few days whenever I could get there, I could go and listen and laugh and give whatever ounce of joy and spirit I had to the mad amazing music being played at the universe. On many nights we aimed far above the massive beams and curved shadows of the roof above. Straight through the canopy of stars sometimes, when the notes crystallized correctly. The Vortex of Perfection. The Light Show of Impossibility. The Mothership has Landed on Your Face Maneuver.
But what intricate notework are they going to create once the first of them are tapped struck fingered into the Brooklyn night, playing the beginning of the end of what really should never have been anyway? Might they just begin the deconstruction of everything they created? Song mashs, long waited for battles, combinations, hilarity? Joy? A celebration of something passing? Which sounds like a wake which aren't usually much fun but maybe if together we get to kill every single song, then maybe it will feel a little better.
I don't know how to go about this I guess. It was so easy to be in the moment of the music, of the show, every time, because I never really worried about not having Phish. I counted Phish as a stalwart against age. A companion for life. If they could keep on playing, then I'd keep coming to see them do it again, and always in a subtle new way. Always true to life and music and the next show somewhere down the line. I didn't worry about Phish. I thought the hiatus was the best thing in the world for them. I thought they might need another break after the Vegas shows, a year or two doing side stuff and life stuff. But that what they had achieved at IT and in Miami and at countless other shows it proved to me that yes indeed, for the love of God, Phish most certainly did still have it and dished it out in spades like no other band playing today. Certainly it was different than years past, but I think change is good and whatever they would change into next would be just as interesting and fun. I guess half right means also half wrong. It's going to be interesting, but Fun definitely took a blow when Phish laid down it's instruments.
It was always the anchor that could bring so many people together, physically there to see what the fuck was going to happen. Where hands were slapped five loudly. Where friendships and crushes formed and reform on the road in the arena or tucked way back in the grass. There was life being lived wild and free on the nights when we all got to go down through the lots and into the show together. All of us filtered through each other, recombinated into seats inside waiting for them to take the stage and change the night into something brand new. There are always phases: to a night, to a relationship, to a moon a river a family a dream. To life. To bands I guess, too. Name the years all you want for what they did and didn't do where they played and didn't play. What you saw, what sucked, what tore your mind from your skull and put it in the rafters. What shows you missed. What shows they did. When it almost didn't work. When it couldn't help but be right. When you fell in love as they played. When a song of theirs surprised you in the car. Count them all. Compare them. Test them for stretchiness. The only things that matter are that you were there, and now it's over.
So how do you go about it? How do you reconcile the joy of history against the reality of what's not to come. I didn't know there was a gas tank and suddenly it's on empty. I hoped for more Beastiness and less Beatle in my Phish. I wanted long, slow, Phish phuges for my later years. I wanted geezer Page on keys. I wanted Trey wrinkled. Fishman shorter. Mike, I'm sure, would look exactly the same. I wanted 2 focused tours every five years. Every ten. No shows, even, but I guess I just wanted to know that they would always be Phish. That they realized Phish was larger even than them, and that it didn't really completely belong to them anymore. Obviously I was delusional because it turns out Phish actually belongs to just the four of them, each of them, completely. We have no say. I just didn't want to hear them say that's it. And now we have to go celebrate everything amazing that they and we have done, and then we all have to go home happy that we got to do it at all. After which it will never happen again.
I'm not there yet. I'm getting there. I think seeing them live is exactly what I need to do, but I'm certain parts of it are not going to be easy. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it but I hope I can give it everything I've got just like every other show I've been too. The life of Phish was a long jammed song with many phases, many changes. And just like the last notes of Reba, of Antelope, of Lizards, of Melt Mule Zaruthsra, of all of them, just like with the post-encore lights, I'm damn freaking sad to hear see know it's over.
But I have to ask, just like any other night, what's next? What should we do next? That, at least IS up to us. And I'm certain lots of you have some really good ideas. You always do. Which is another main reason I hang around, beyond the music and joy. It's the good ideas that keep life interesting and interconnected and full of hope. Even though they're not playing together anymore, that doesn't mean we have to stop, too.
