My favorite band played an incredible show in Atlanta last night. Stuff like that matters to me greatly, somehow, on lazy Saturday mornings when I can wake up and grab the headphones and an iced coffee, lay low on the couch and watch the clouds drift across the window in the polyrhythmic dance of an early first-set “Ghost” jam.
My dog is sleeping nearby.
What’s the point?
Phish’s music represents, to me, a visionary experience. It’s a mural painted across decades of creative improvisation and serendipitous musical evolution. It’s always happening, much like one end of the painting (depicting, say, a four-headed hydra coiling around the summit of Mt. Vesuvius) exists simultaneously with the other end of the painting (which may, let’s imagine, depict a farmer harvesting hemp in central Asia). It’s always happening, and I carry that visionary experience, that knowledge, into my daily life. The joy of last night’s “Ghost” jam is felt while I drive down I-77, while I purchase green peppers from a local market, while I sleep and while I walk the hills of Salt Run Trail with Forrest.
To reap what’s been sown: That’s the inevitable promise/curse of life. What you make of that is up to you. Visionary experiences — like music or like a long walk in the woods with a dog, like a sharp blade through a fresh pepper — are there for the reaping, as well. Why not partake in the finest, most ego-shattering joys of this brief trip?
There is a place on the mountain nearby
Deep in a cave, but it’s up rather high
There in the darkness are safely concealed
All of the dreams that you never revealed
And if you go there
and after you do
All of these dreams
would be yours to pursue
The rest of your lifetime
devoid of a care
If you keep your eyes open
you may find yourself there
Such is the promise
such is the curse
You could just live your life
better or worse
Knowing the cache of dreams
up on that hill
Beckons and sways
but won’t bend to your will
You might find a river
under a mountain
That feeds a remote subterranean fountain
Drink from this taste
just a hint of a dream
That somehow leaked into
the underground stream
Sandy 