The Jew in the Phish

Seats. Lights. Roar. This is what we wait for. Seats. Lights. Roar. This is what some of us live for. Seats. Lights. Roar.

We walk up the steps, empty pockets, raise arms to the heavens and are oh so happy to let strangers feel us up. Inside, people pour from every door, up every staircase and into every hall and byway of the venue. We’ve left Miami. We’ve left time and space. This is not hyperbole. This is not fluffed-up fandom. This is simple. To get to our seats, to watch the lights drop from bright to black, to add our chords to the roar, this is what we wait for.

Nat goes one way. Kabatznik another. Ben’s gone to his seats, the Harpers to theirs. All our various friends have fanned out across the aisles and floor. Now, I am alone and I am home. Tonight is Night 2 is December 29. My seat is in the 100s, Page-side. I find it and survey the surroundings. The lights are up. I’m ready. The lights go down, and with the darkness comes that holy eruption of collectively conscious sound.

In a matter of moments, the four friends of Phish are onstage and, after having consulted each other, Pow!, have opened the gates with one of, if not the oldest, still-played Phish song: “Golgi Apparatus.” If the title and lyrics of this song sound ripped (and then warped) from the pages of a middle-school biology textbook, well, that’s because they were. Trey and a posse of preteen cohorts wrote this tune when they were in eighth grade, and it debuted as a Phish song way back in ’86.

I’m reminded of Nat, who’s groovin’ somewhere out there in the crowd. I’m reminded of driving to Atlanta with my mom sometime in high school. She was headed there to hear a panel of neo-cons speak about war and Bush and the vast left-wing conspiracy. I went to hear what they had to say, and maybe to shake the place up a bit with some youthful descent during the Q&A. Also, Nat lived in Atlanta. Mom and I got to the hotel after dinner that night. A dozen missed calls later and “nat” was finally buzzing on my cell phone. I answer it. He’s driving home from a co-billed Allman Brothers Band/moe. show, he says. I tell him that I’m in Atlanta and that I want to chill. I ask what is plans are, ask can he pick me up? “Doo do do dun dun nuh nuh nuh nuh, dan neh nuh do nuh nuh nuh nuh,” he responds. “Nat, Nat. What’s goin’ on, man? I want to see you.” “Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh, dan neh nuh do nuh nuh nuh nuh,” he repeats. I can hear music in the background. I can hear that his singing aligns with the guitar of that music. I can hear that “Golgi Apparatus” is playing. “Haha. Dude, what’s up? What’s your deal?” I ask. “Nah nuh nuhn nuh, nah nuh nuhn nuh nuh, da nah nuh nuh nuhn nuh nuh nuh nuh nun nun nun nun nuh nah nuh nah,” he continues. I don’t respond. I wait. This is, in effect, an answer to the question that so many Phish haters ask: But where are all the whine whine whine words? I can’t sing along. This music suuuuucks. Nat keeps singing along with the guitar. I am not hanging up. I can sing right along with him, but I don’t. He sings along with the song ‘til the end. It ends. He stops singing. “Hey man. Sorry. What’s going on?” he asks. “I’m in Atlanta. Let’s chill, man.” “Alright. Cool. Where are you?”

Thus began another sleepless Atlanta adventure, and thus begins another rocking Miami Phishventure. “Under the light / Middle of the night / Couldn’t get it wrong.” “Golgi” is a short tight, raucous way to start a night of Phish, and the boys execute it perfectly. Seconds later, the quick, repetitive tonk tisk tonk tisk of Fishman’s high hat and the sparse bumping metronome of Mike’s bass signal the beginning of an even rawkier outing.

“The overhead view is of me in a maze / And you see what I’m hunting a few steps away / And I take a wrong turn and I’m on the wrong path / And the people all watching enjoy a good laugh.”

It’s early in the show, but we’ve already entered the “Maze.” And I don’t mind getting lost, in the least. Anywhere else, be it a club or party or whatever, dancing means moving just that much less than I want to. From fear of all the people watching and laughing on my behalf, real or imagined, I don’t ever really fully let loose. But not here. I flail and jump and twirl and rage just as hard as I please and thank you. Nothing is an embarrassing failure to this freaky horde—less maybe a flubbed lyric or solo from Trey. But this final ’09 take on “Maze” features nothing of the sort. Trey’s guitar work sears through every vestige of insecurity and apprehension and, if it wasn’t before, the party is now truly on.

Next up is “Driver,” a much-needed-by-my-muscles breather. Successful Phish shows are as much based around high-energy rock songs and exploratory jamming as they are around sets that flow well. If “Maze” had catapulted into another searing jam, that would’ve been one thing. But it didn’t. The song ended. There was a short break. And then the audience’s sweating energy found its cooldown in “Driver,” a formerly acoustic number — about that dude who lives inside your brain and tells you what to do and where to go — that is played with relative infrequency but has been reworked in recent years to feature Trey on electric guitar. “Driver” is a short, insightful song that acts as a direct challenge to anybody who thinks Phish only plays long, directionless jams with no-to-meaningless lyrics.

Glad to catch my breath after “Maze,” I am slightly let down but mostly amused that, after a long lull, the band chooses to play what it plays next.

“The Connection” is, according to Phish biographer Parke Puterbaugh, the “undisputed pinnacle” of Undermind, Phish’s last album before calling it quits in 2004. Puterbaugh qualifies that distinction: “A burnished gem, it is a song so simple, tuneful, and eloquent that you could swear it’s always been there.”

Out there in the mass of people, I know that Nat is laughing hysterically at this song choice. To Puterbaugh’s claim that this connection has been waiting in the wings of sonic perfection all along, Nat would later say, “Yes. In the form of every pop song that sucks.” And that is a sentiment I can’t echo with more effect because, in fact, Undermind features many higher high-points than this song—the title track, “Scents and Subtle Sounds,” “A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing,” to name a few. So I stand there and just laugh hysterically, too. Hey!, at least it’ll be over soon, I rationalize.

And it is. Seconds later, Page strikes a minor chord and then strikes a chord one step up and the American Airlines Arena is greeted by that lovable funky furry friend, “Wolfman’s Brother.” Let the dancing recommence. Trey and Mike lock in soon enough and while this isn’t exactly liquid funk a la 1997, it’s easy enough to get down and groove with this friendly monster. For a little while. The jam doesn’t break the 10-minute mark before the Wolfman’s Distant Cousin, “Ocelot,” makes an appearance and I know there’s ample time and that the night is young and that the run isn’t even half done. “Ocelot” is a feel-good romp in the middle of a feel-good first set. This jam, which also doesn’t break the 10-minute mark, is firmly rooted in the structure of the song. Phish clearly isn’t in a hurry. “Settle in, friends,” they seem to be playing/saying. But what comes next — sweet, blissful “Reba” — seems more a note-to-self about settling in than a message to the audience.

The Phish.net is one of the earliest Internet resources by and for Phish fans. It has an extensive FAQ section that virtually answers any question you could ever have about the band. But because fans create the content on this site, there’s a healthy dose of creative exegesis involved. A prime example of wild speculation is the page that asks (and answers), “They, Uh… Sing In Hebrew??” Yes, in fact, they do. And Hebrew is probably the most widely used foreign tongue in Phish music given the presence of “Aveinu Malkeinu” and “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” in set lists. But what’s this got to do with “Reba”? Well, there’s speculation that the name is Russian and there’s also speculation that it is Hebrew. The truth, most likely, is that “Reba” is just the name of the character in this song about concocting the finest amalgamation in the nation. It’s just a name, people! Stop attaching importance to every little letter. It’s just a name. They’re just letters. It’s just a song. Now, get down, motherfunkers.

But, of course, Phish fans can’t allow for anything to be so simple. So, in 1994, on the infamous RMP message board, someone made a loose (but tiiiiight) connection between “Reba” and Hebrew and the nature of Phish’s beloved musical exploration. In Hebrew, “Reba” (ריבה) means “jam.” As in, “I’d like some strawberry jam for this here toast.” “Jam,” in English, also means, “to freely improvise a passage of music as a group.” And that is just the sort of jamming that Phish does. But, of course, it doesn’t even stop there. “Reba” is a song about an epic concoction that is itself an epic concoction of zany lyrics, tight composition and loose improvisation that, as consistently as any other Phish tune, leads the band and its fans toward a connection to something beyond, something other, something higher. In other words, “Reba” is the perfect case study for our purposes. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s hear what SSDS-alum Mike, in a passage taken from Puterbaugh’s Phish: The Biography, has to say:

“To get so tight in a preplanned way makes the looseness juxtapose even more. I look at it that the written-out stuff is a sort of ritual, almost like a prayer session that gets my mind in gear for what’s to come. Sort of like a Hassidic Jew doing a bunch of prayers and moving until he starts to reach God. There’s like this leg work that has to be done, something where the prayers are already written.”

Phish’s composed-then-jammed songs — “Reba,” “You Enjoy Myself,” “Harry Hood” — are mere meditations that set the band and its fans on the path to temporary enlightenment. You can only climb the mountain if you follow the right signs and, once you’re up there, you only get to see God’s back, but even that back is composed of the purest loving light. This type of jamming is deveikut. It is cleaving to the divine. It is mind expansion. It is clinging to Jah Most High. It is psychedelic. It’s climbing toward Icculus. It is seeking a connection to whatever you want to call that ineffable source of all sources. It is IT. It is the first time I have seen Phish play this song, and I couldn’t be happier to be alive.

The “Reba” jam (Is that redundant?) starts softly enough, but Trey wastes no time and is soon pulling at my soul with his blissful lead. Then Red and Page lock onto each other, and the all systems are GO as Mike and Fish lay down the rumbling ground. Without a wasted note or cymbal splash on any band member’s part, the tightness and looseness juxtaposed perfectly, “Reba” culminates succinctly and with beautiful grace.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. A collective exhale of clap and cheer. But the set is not over yet. The band quickly drops into the rarely played, Mike-penned tune called “Access Me” off of Undermind. “And you don’t have to open up the secrets of your soul / But if that’s the place you want me I’d be glad to pay the toll.” Mike doesn’t talk very much, but he’s very profound. His song wraps up with a sentiment that is as much about personal relationships as it is about how I’d like to treat this community of friends and family and fans around me.

And then it all comes full circle. With the strumming of one beautiful chord, Mr. Trey Anastasio brings me back exactly six years, brings me back to the Rhombus, brings me back to an ancient, unknown time and place.

“Divided Sky” is the primordial chant of the Lizards of Gamehendge. It is, according to Trey’s telling, chanted ritually atop the Rhombus in the middle of a field: “Ahhhhhhhhhh! Divided Sky and the wind blows high! Divided sky and the wind blows high!” Off of Phish’s freshman effort Junta (its best, most inspired effort, in my opinion), “Divided Sky” is a composition of elation that moves from a silence to a whisper to a cheer to a soaring mountain of sound. There’s no jam here. This is pure composed bliss. Virtually wordless, it is a niggun.

Out in the crowd is Andrew Shaw, another beaming, passionate yid who, confronted with the task of extracting niggunim from Phish music, ended up creating an entire prayer service of epic Phishy proportions. He found endless inspiration. But it started with “Divided Sky.”  There’s a section of the Hallel service — a collection of six psalms that are recited on joyous occasions — that fits musically and intentionally with the various melodies of “Divided Sky.” Literally, it just fell into place. Take a listen:

Divided Psky

The challenge is to do a little searching and digging, but this pairing says, in part, this: “Min hametzar karati Yah, anani vamerchavyah,” which means, according to one translation, “From the narrow places I called out to God, who answers me with Divine expanded perspective, the expansiveness of the open field.”

But seriously? Seriously? This is a joke, a coincidence, a little bit of both and neither. Seriously.

Phish executes their beautiful composition with precision, and after a joyous set-closing “Cavern,” we’re one third of the way toward the culmination. One third of the way is close enough, so I’ll say it early and, God willing, often. Shannah tovah, chevre. Happy New Year, friends.

Bing. The gaudy gold splits open and I step back out into the lobby into the indoor-plant promenade and couch clusters and sparklingly lonely piano.

Bing. I realize this is the hotel where we stayed in 2003 after seeing Phish. I exit the hotel to go back to my car to grab the things I forgot.

Bing. I realize that my ticket to tonight’s show is still in the room, 27 floors up, and that this is the same hotel where we stayed six years ago on this same night. I call Ben and ask him to grab the ticket from the envelope in the inside pocket of my bag. “Make sure you grab the right one,” I tell him, but I know he won’t mess this up. Soon after I arrived and put my bags down, Ben laid the four-ticket set out on the bed, “just to look at them.”

Lined-up—28^th, 29^th, 30^th, 31^st—the tickets compose an AAArena-centric collage of the Miami skyline, complete with palm trees dipped and seagulls swerved. Ben’s the type of person who will have these tickets framed when he gets home. The gotta-catch-‘em-all philosophy. It’s why, after Live Phish 01 grew on us, Ben didn’t just move on to Live Phish 02. Instead, after we acquired the taste, he acquired the deluxe binder of  16 originally released shows (whose covers also line up, forming a black-and-white Pollock painting).

I grab notebook and pen from the Buick and return from the parking garage. Nat and Ben aren’t here. I sit near the elevators and wonder if I should ride one up. Nat and Ben. Ben and Nat. Nat and Ben? It’s unlikely duo. Ben doesn’t leave the house if there isn’t a little gator guarding his heart; for some reason Nat’s been wearing Fourth-of-July flag shirts since Old Navy started making them. Ben has known that he will go to law school and become a lawyer for as long as I have known him; Nat usually knows very little about anything beyond a few moments from now. Somehow, tonight will be the third time Nat and Ben have seen Phish together. Somehow, though he’s from Atlanta and pursues this band as fervently as the next guy, Nat and I have never been to a show together. When I went to Bonnaroo in ’03 with my Dad, all my friends were gathered yet again at camp. And while I lived in Israel in ’09, many of my friends, Nat and Ben included, were gathered at Bonnaroo to witness the first summer Phish in five years.

Collective memory has a way of making every milestone event seem better attended. I wasn’t at camp that summer, but stories about it are told with me, not to me. And though the only negative part about moving to Israel for five and a half months was the fact that I couldn’t be a first-hand witness to the unveiling of Phish 3.0, on some level, I don’t believe that I wasn’t there. It doesn’t make sense. How could I have missed that train? I went to Bonnaroo ’08 almost as an afterthought. Press passes got me there for free. All I had to do was make the drive, write the story. But Phish reunites and headlines ‘Roo with two nights of music and I’m stuck 4,000 miles away?

It won’t be long before my friends’ experiences mesh with my own and the memory of 2009 becomes a jumble of Joy and Israel and music festivals and religious festivals and also the beginning of seeing that everything becomes a lot less certain soon. There’s no camp for us anymore. Not even close. We’re spread out across the country, and we’ll be spread to the four corners soon enough. Maybe Nat and Ben weren’t the closest friends way back when and maybe today they still function on different brain plains, but here they are, together, emerging from an elevator in a fancy hotel in the warm winter of Miami and the world may soon turn downside in or upside out, but right now we have just one thing to do: get our asses to the show.

Out of the hotel compound, Nat, Ben and I head south on toward Biscayne Boulevard. On foot, 15 minutes pass between hotel and psychedelic hoedown pre-party. From laid-back amble to strung-tight hype, I move compulsively. The road turns right. Nervous—we hit Biscayne, walk under the Dolphin Expressway, see the arena ahead of us, hovering, and I resist the urge to plunge into a run—energy.

And with good reason, too: King Koopa is in the lot, and he is waiting. The man capable of both fireball anger and mile-wide smiles is waiting for us. Any longer and the fate of the Mushroom Kingdom may be in jeopardy. Or was that the fate of Gamehendge? Oh, Mario, maybe this metaphor doesn’t work here, but Ben “I Will Destroy You” Kabatznik definitely shouldn’t be left to his own devices.

Once a week, 10 years ago, my mom would drive me to our modern American synagogue so that I could sit in a room and chant ancient Hebrew texts in a medieval Jewish tune to our cantor, a man from South Africa. Previous proper planning didn’t prevent my piss-poor performance. I would sing one verse and then the second and then the third and then the—STOP! Before I could get to the fourth, I’d have to start over. Sing that word again. Not like that. Like this. Like this? No, like this. The hour would end. The nervous trembling would begin to ease. I would exit the room. Ben Whitman would be sitting outside with his mom. Ben and I were born three days apart and would become bar mitzvahs in nearly the same interval. It was his turn now to chant and chant and shake until he got it right. One of the last times I exited the cantor’s office, 10 years ago, almost exactly, I saw Ben and blurted that I’d be going to camp with him that summer. The excitement of that prospect out-trembled the torture of trope.

We became sons of the commandment. We were showered with gifts. We were still children. Months later, I went to camp. Ben was there, in the bunk across the hall. Thirteen-year-old Nat was there, too, in my bunk. And on the other side of the hill, in the double-decker, best-American-Jewry-can-buy bunk of all bunks was Kabatznik, an American-born Israeli-South African, a freakishly muscled hybrid, the brunt of many insecure jokes, but more often, just another kid in crowd.

It’s hard to say if he was present for the great Phish-Panic debate. I don’t think we talked much that summer. But the same forces that were then working on my psyche were working on his, though maybe not as quickly. This is a kid of smiles so big that he can’t keep in the drool. This is a kid who will threaten your life with words but never with action (unless you fuck with my shit one more fucking time, Fleet, you fucking asshole). This is a kid who broke the same tooth multiple summers trying to impress girls. And this is a kid who returned from the dentist down the hill in Clayton, Ga, with a new tooth saying, “Yo guys, I just came back from Dr. Funk. It was the shit.” Indeed. The phorce was getting stronger with this one.

The summer ended. The school year passed. More years expired. Road trip to South Florida. The Internet. The tensions of teenhood. High school ended. Where once I was a camper, now I was a counselor. Still, I was too young. A kid can’t control kids, especially not in the place where the kid became that kid, especially not when his other kid friends are there too, “working” and remaining kids. Nat was there, and then Nat was not there. And the bush was not consumed by the flames.

Kabatznik staffed camp with me that summer, too. He was no longer just a joke. He was a dear friend. Late one night at the top of a hill in the summer of 2006, after high school was over and before college had begun, we sat in his car and turned the volume up, forgot about responsibilities and remembered that we were still kids. It was “Simple” and still and serene and so so funky. We were just kids in the crowd. Though Phish was broken up, we were just beginning to take the stage.

The American Airlines Arena appears in the distance and hovers closer and closer until the three of us are still and staring up. We’re here. Oh giddy giddy God, we’re here.

The doors may be opening soon, but show time isn’t for another hour, at least. There’s a cop in a neon yellow jacket. There’s a crosswalk. There are more cops in yellow jackets and there are thousands of happy people in all manners of regalia swarming in a lot across the street. Kabatznik is in the swarm. He is waiting.

“Yea, I remember being really excited because I had seen the first show of the fall tour and then had been listening to subsequent shows and seeing how the sound was changing and improving over the course of the tour and so I was really excited to see what they can do,” he said. “Some people in the lot were talking about how the 28th was nothing to write home about, but that didn’t even phase me because I was just really excited to see them again.”

We nod to the cop, cross the street and join the swarm. Flashing blue lights. Flowing beautiful women. Cackling, hysterical men. Neon yellow jackets. The be-ticketed hands of scalpers. Twelve Tribes table. Coolers on wheels. Bubbles. Heads held high. High-held heads. Bumping, muffled bass. A street. The swarm. And there, amid it all in a Big Bird T-shirt too small to contain his Israeli bulk, beams Kabatznik, not just another kid in a crowd.

“Seeing you and Nat in the lot was also awesome because that was when I first realized that we were all actually finally at Phish together,” he said. “And even though we didn’t sit together for that show I felt amazing just knowing that you were in there somewhere and we were finally seeing the band that we had talked about and listened to for so long.”

We join the swarm. We hug tight. How good and how pleasant is it when brothers dwell in unity? It is so good and so pleasant. There is Anchor Porter. There is cheap beer. There is laughter and singing, hollering and some hissing. We get separated. Harper’s around. Harpers abound. We gallivant. We meet back up. Nu? We check our cell phones—Show Time—and set out to cross the street. Yalla. Let’s go. Let’s get on with it. Let’s GO!

“Wake up.” Huh. “It’s 11:30.” Consciousness hits. Eyes open. “I gotta kick you guys out.” Roll over. Out-of-focus dark-brown millimeters from my nose. “Got an appointment really soon. Come on guys.” Roll over. Rough carpet on my back. “Get up. It’s 11:40.” Keep rolling. Out-of-focus metal millimeters from my face. “Let’s go! Get up.” Shit. Sit up, shake, focus.

In front of me: one built-in desk with oversized computer monitor. To my immediate right: one posh leather chair, one table, many odds and many ends, strewn. To my immediate left: one pullout couch, pulled out. Beyond that: one new friend, sitting up, yawning. All around: the sounds of premature waking.

Starting with this long strip of carpeted floor, details from the previous night take their time returning to my memory. I slept here because it was the only space in the room in which I could not only fit but also unfurl myself entirely. Before the floor became my bed, Harper made his out of the front passenger seat in the Buick, where he sat waiting for our host to return from the club.

In the driver’s seat, I shuffle through the iPod, which is loaded with several Phish shows and a smattering of psychedelic folk, jazz and hip-hop. I avoid the Phish because I’m superstitious and because I need some balance. Harper wakes up every few songs to proclaim his love/disbelief/curiosity. I pick up the iPod, which is tethered to the main console by a chord that hangs from the mouth of the cassette deck like black, unslurped spaghetti, and tell him the name of the song, but he’s snoring before I can get the words out. I put the iPod down. I flip a switch on the console that reads “Map Light.” The song changes. Harper wakes up. I tell him the song name. Harper sleeps. I flip off the switch on the console that reads “Map Light.” A glint above me. In the rearview mirror, headlights growing big and blinding. Cahlin is back with Sarah and Ryan. Harper wakes up and falls asleep one last time before waking up again to get out of the car.

On the way in to the house, we pass through a living room that has a couch and some chairs on top of a shaggy rug. The couch is so bold, so red, so shiny that I’m afraid sitting might cause it to shatter. The couch is a tease, like a bowl of candy on the counter that, when you get close enough to grab, reveals itself to be a bowl of colorful glass blown to resemble plastic-wrapped confections. We pass by the faux candy comfort, go through the kitchen and enter Cahlin’s room. I locate a blanket, a bit of floor. Next thing I know, it’s nearly noon and we have to get the F up and out.

But such a plan-less person as I can’t complain. So I stand, grab fresh clothes from my pack, change, pack everything up and am following the others out the door not too long after. We decide to leave Harper’s Civic parked at Cahlin’s and pile into the Buick to go find some breakfast. It’s a quick trip ending in bagels and cream cheese, eggs, coffee. The meal is perfect, but all is still not right. With two set’s worth of sweat all over and a floor’s worth of sleep underneath, we really need a shower to set ourselves straight. Back to the Buick, back to the Miami streets. I start driving south on a main-seeming vein while the native South Floridians phone (ten) friends in search of an open home.

In the meantime, Ben calls me. He knows I probably have no place to sleep tonight and invites me to stay with him at a Marriot near the venue. “How much?” I ask him. “Don’t worry about it,” he tells me. “You sure?” I ask him. “Yea, bud. You want to stay or not?” he responds. “Ok, ok. Sure. Thanks, man.” “And if Carl or whoever needs a place to stay, that’s fine.” “Awesome. Thanks man.”

I look for a dollar store as we stop and go, stop and go. I want glow sticks and neon goggles and alien antennae. Anything. I’m in the mood. Tonight is Night Two. December 29^th. Exactly six years from this day I saw my second-ever Phish show in this same city at the very same arena. Ben’s mom scored tickets for us while chatting with a stranger on a ski lift in Colorado a couple weeks before the show. It worked out that I was on a family vacation in the Florida Keys at the end of December and my parents were able to drop me off at a hotel in Miami to stay with Ben and his mother on the day of the show. It worked out in the other ways, too. Ben had contacted our old camp friend, Sherman, the one who claimed to be Mike Gordon’s cousin. I doubted the validity of that claim until the moment a teller at the American Airlines Arena will-call window handed Ben an envelope filled with complimentary tickets to that and the following night’s show. Shock and awe. Sherman had pulled through big time. We walked from will call to the lot, got rid of some extras, saw the sights and entered the arena all by ourselves.

We’d come a long way. I was 15 the preceding summer and had listened to and researched the music of live jam bands on the Internet for a couple years by that point. But Jacksonville didn’t have the liveliest music scene then, and the shows I desired to see invariably happened way out at Jacksonville Beach late at night. Starting with a Widespread Panic show in Tallahassee in April 2003, I entered a crash course in the world of live music. The Panic show was my first large-scale exposure to the Jam in its natural element. I couldn’t go to camp that summer for various reasons, but a parental compromise was reached soon after Neil Young & Crazy Horse were announced as headliners of the second-annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. My dad was convinced, we bought the tickets and soon enough it was a Thursday evening in early June and we were on the highway heading toward Tennessee. Bonnaroo or bust. We arrived in Manchester early the following morning. It took us six hours to drive the final mile into Mecca, but, traffic clusterfuck or not, the long wait was worth it. That Father’s Day weekend, Dad and I saw so many people make so much music. We were introduced to new sounds, to innovative songwriters, to the forefathers. Yonder Mountain String Band. Kaki King. The Slip. Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. The Allman Brothers Band. Nickle Creek. Medeski, Martin & Wood. Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals. moe. Galactic. Mike Gordon and Leo Kottke. The Dead. And on and ever on. In a matter of days, the world had transformed into an endlessly expansive playground of original music. I saw old legends perform and new legends made. It was eye opening. It was mind opening. It was life opening.

One month later—because of another clause in the great No Camp Compromise—I got to experience live Phish for the first time. Phish had returned from a two-year hiatus the previous New Year’s and seeing that summer show in Atlanta was the actualization of a dream. Still, Ben and I were only able to go with a babysitter, Ben’s older cousin. Phish wasn’t ours yet. “Yea, that ‘Wilson’ was special, man, I haven’t seen them open with that in all my 120 shows,” I overheard a guy comment during set break. The band, its phans and its history still seemed Other. This feeling was not uncommon. Even in the late 80s, folks who stumbled into Phish shows were confronted with precisely executed music involving ongoing storytelling and improvisation played on a tiny stage in front of wildly enthusiastic fans. John Paulska, who would go on to work as Phish’s manager for the better part of two decades, described his first impressions of the band in Phish: The Biography, written by journalist Parke Puterbaugh:

“There was nothing casual about what was going on there,” Paluska said. “People were really into it, and I felt like probably a lot of people felt over the years when they went to their first Phish show, which was that there was a lot of already established understanding that I didn’t know anything about.”

To us, that ‘03 Atlanta show was a revolutionary milestone. I jumped higher off that lawn than I had ever jumped before when Trey signaled the opening riff of “You Enjoy Myself.” We’d arrived, but to the majority of the other phans in attendance that night I’m willing to guess the show—and maybe even that “YEM”—felt like just another Phishy moment in time. No revolution about it.

Then, Miami NYE ’03 was announced. Ben and I failed to get tickets initially but ended with twice as many as necessary at the last moment. In the highest balcony of the arena, the first set of that show was joyous. But it still felt removed—too far away, too Other. At set break, we managed to sneak into a lower level on Page’s side of the stage. Seating was out of the question here. The aisles were overrun with every imaginable breed of Phishhead. I remember a lone security guard treading in this sea with a smile on her face. Or maybe I smiled for her. And then a “Divided Sky” late in the second set sent me leaping to the rafters, almost as high as that Atlantan “YEM.” A song that is short on words but long on love, “Divided Sky” has some of the deepest roots of any Phish song. Off of Phish’s first real album, Junta, this song is 10-plus minutes of praiseful, compositional bliss. “Divided sky and the wind blows high!/Divided sky and the wind blows high!” Trey and Mike call and respond early in the tune. The chant is a ritual from Gamehendge, Trey’s senior thesis/mythical wonderland. In better times, before an evil man named Wilson arrived, the Lizards—those hapless people who inhabit Gamehendge—sung this song to the heavens from atop a giant black rhombus in the middle of a field in the middle of a forest. Fairytale nonsense, to be sure. In any case, “Divided Sky” is a grand piece of music that showcases the compositional and technical mastery of its composer and its players. Its peaks mirrored my soul that night. The set finished up with a Zeppelin cover. Two encores later, all I could think about was how and when I would see this band—my band—again.

But all was not right in the world of Phish. Just months after the four-night run in Miami, a message was posted on the official Phish website. It was from Trey. Phish was through, he said. They wanted to go out on a high note and it was time for everyone else to get on with their lives. I wrote a little poem that day:

It’s all over folks
There’s nothing left to see
Pack up all your adventures
And go back to your family
It was great while it lasted
But now that time is passed
We were all in this together
Now it’s time take a bath

Simple, sad and on another level, down and bitter. Maybe most Phishheads had grown up. Maybe they’d formed families and maybe they had responsibilities that were more important than this. But for me, for Ben, for our other friends currently stepping through the door, the adventure had just begun. “If we’re all in this together,” I thought, “y’all are gonna have to speed through to the punch line of this shitty joke and start the grooves back up again because I’ve got some youthful energy to expend and years of missed magnificence to make up.”

Simple, sad, dark, bitter. And muddy. Coventry, the name and location of the group’s final performance and festival, was a disaster. People traveled thousands of miles to see the show. But biblical rains inundated Vermont in the days leading up to the finale. The festival site was more soup than solid. Cars couldn’t drive in anymore. Amid a traffic jam that backed up dozens of miles, Mike Gordon announced over the festival’s radio station that everyone should turn around. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do. Just pack up and get out of here. We’ll refund you. We’re really sorry. Go home where it’s dry, where it’s warm, where you won’t have to witness what’s about to happen.

But many people just pulled to the side of the rode and walked the five, 10, 20 miles into the grounds. Despite such dedication, every fan who made it was left to shudder in the puddles and the muck as Phish delivered one of the worst, sloppiest performances of a 20-year career. This is how it ends? The unimpeded bliss of a Phish festival has devolved into this muddy mess? Had Trey really become Wilson?

That was a sad, dark, bitter time to be a wide-eyed fan of this band. But here I am, in 2009, bleary-eyed, grateful. Sadness can sit in the waiting room, darkness can banish itself to a dungeon somewhere. This is the year of Light. This is six years later, and we’ve all stepped back through the door.

Miami blurs by. The light turns red. We stop. I look around for a dollar store. The light turns green. Miami blurs by. Sarah gets a call. A friend, whose house is down the road, has some good news. Her mom is home and wouldn’t mind it at all if we rolled through to shower.

Living in Florida—where everybody and their Jewish mother goes to retire, where communal cross-pollination is the rule, not the exception— can take the fun and excitement out of finding unexpected connections. Usually. Soon as we get to talking at Sarah’s friend’s house, one such connection is found. The friend’s mother has been a United Synagogue Youth director for years. I’m excited to meet this women, excited to be welcomed into her home so warmly, so unconditionally, so unquestioningly.  I’ve probably met her before—at a Southeast regional convention, perhaps, or possibly at International Convention, “IC,” the Bonnaroo of all Jewish youth-group gatherings. I went to that convention in the winter of 2005, in my senior year of high school. It was a weeklong event in Philadelphia, PA. We did more that week than I care (or can remember) to list. But one day I remember because they put us on a bus to the city of King of Prussia to do volunteer work at Somesuch Non-Profit. I can’t remember what we did or why or how because all I could think about that day was the Rhombus. If I had my own car and no schedule and no adult supervision, I would be out combing the streets and hills of this city looking for it. It would be down a road, past Wilson’s Leather Shop, up a hill, when you think you’ve made it, keep going. “You’ll know when you’re there,” Trey directed an audience in December 1995. No doubt, a handful of heads have heeded the call over the years and made the pilgrimage to King of Prussia. But could the origin of so many names and circumstances in The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday really be that simple? How seriously did the creator consider his creation? Maybe I felt a pit in my stomach that day because I subconsciously knew we’d been misled. The Rhombus wasn’t, isn’t, in King of Prussia. It couldn’t be that simple. The search could go on. The convention could go on. Whatever good deed we were doing could continue. The journey to that mysterious field in that hidden forest would have to wait for another day. I’m struck that there are people, places and things that will come into your life when you least expect and most need them and that often they will have been standing around nearby all along. The Rhombus isn’t in King of Prussia. According to Puterbaugh’s biographical account, it’s in Princeton, New Jersey, where Trey grew up. But when I was there, in Princeton, a year and a half after feeling a sinking-stomach feeling in Philly, I didn’t know this. Micah and Jason were there. We’d driven all through the previous night and day from Gainesville, Fla in Micah’s Prius. Freshman year’d just ended. I’d just finished reading Dharma Bums. I was primed and ready for the road. Our final destination was Providence, Rohde Island—we’d talked to Nat, a friend living and learning there, a few weeks prior but couldn’t get in touch with him from the highway and weren’t sure where, how or if he was—but we made a stop at Princeton’s campus to visit brilliant little Hallie and to watch the enchanted trees there turn wondrous colors. Princeton was beautiful, but the road beckoned and the Rhombus would have to wait another day.

This day, in Miami, Nat calls. He’s nearly here. I tell him he can stay with Ben and me and he asks which hotel and I tell him and that’s that. I’m struck that every turn off of every road, no matter if you’re out there a thousand miles from home, holds something or someone special. There’s always a lesson to learn, a heart-filled favor to receive or give. Or just more trees. You can ride down a road a thousand times before you notice that spectacular oak tree or this side street’s hilarious and irrelevant name. And you will pass and meet and re-meet the people you don’t know but need somewhere down the line. Try. Don’t try. Just be open to the possibility and the road will wind around for the thousandth time and out there, before you, below you and above you, will be the same old world bathed in a holy new light. Or maybe there will just be a hot shower and dry towels when you need them most. Also, a lot of laughter and conversation. And speaking of cars, a couple hours of have passed and we need to get back on the road. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We pull out of the fenced and gated front, and turn back the way we came. We follow the lines going north. We find pizza. We eat pizza. We get beer. We locate Cahlin’s house. We grab stuff. We find that it’s high time to get to where we’re going. Nat’s already at the hotel. Ben’s on the phone and ready ready ready, so we go go go. Drive, drive, drive. Stop. Drive, stop, drive. Stop, drive, stop. Drive. Stop, stop, stop. We’re here. Stop. Let us out here. The light is green. Here. Stop. Screeeeuh. See you. Later. Bye. Thwak.

Go, turn, go. The Marriot’s ahead. One way, this way, that way. The Marriot’s behind. This way, this way, this way. I see the on ramp to the parking garage, spiral round and round and round, find a spot, swing in. Stop. Door opens screeeeeuh. Door shuts thwak. Cacheengpop goes the trunk. Stuff, so much stuff. Clunk goes the trunk. Where do I go? Turn. Third floor. No elevator, no entrance, just stairs, no up. Where do I go? Down down down. Around around around. See the sliding glass. See the lobby, the lounge, the mirrored halls. See the elevator. Go up up up up up—20s—up up. Out, turn, walk. Stop. Knock, knock, knock. Kachunk, woosh opens the door. And there, Sir White and Saint Nat, and behind them the bay and the lights and Miami from so high, and welcome, dear friend, welcome, to the new, raging night. Let us go.

Outside of my section, the halls are already filled with heads. I find the stairs and head down to the lowest level. On my way to find Harper and his ilk, I pass Brad, one of Ben’s Phish-virgin friends. He’s buying a $7 beer. I ask him what he thought of the first set, but he doesn’t say much outside of “Great!” and “Awesome!” I know that he’s unsure of what just happened in there and the familiarity of an over-priced domestic draft is the only thing that can clear his mind and provide some context. I leave Brad in line and find the doors that lead to a sort of porch. The place is packed with cigarette smokers, exhausted revelers and others like me looking for friends.

I squeeze through the packs of people and come to the other end of the porch without finding anyone I know. After one more trip around the crowd, I run into Doogans who leads me to Sarah and Ryan and eventually Harper. Harper’s friend Adam—a guy I first met freshman year when he came to visit and ran into again while living in Israel—is there, and then, in the span of 30 minutes, two or three pockets of Jewish kids, all people he met in Israel but didn’t know were coming to these shows, run into our group on the porch.

These types of meetings should seem coincidental or unlikely, but I’ve actually come to expect them. Today, I’m the friend of a friend meeting friends of friends of friends. Tomorrow, I’ll be introducing my old friends to friends of other friends. I bought solo tickets to this run of shows in Miami without a moment of hesitation because I knew hordes of familiar Heebs would be at the show, no matter the amount of pre-planning. But what made this a reality of the Phish experience for American Jews?

In the summer of 2003, I was heartbroken that I couldn’t attend camp with my friends. Just about the only thing that lifted my spirits that summer was the knowledge that I’d be seeing the Phab Four live in concert in Atlanta, Ga. I went to that show with Ben and Ben’s older cousin (we were 15 at the time and Ben’s 19-year-old relative, himself a moe.ron, was our parent-approved chaperone). At the show, I remember running into people from Camp Ramah left and right. Barry from Alabama was there, smoking a cigarette and telling us a story about breaking in to someone’s house and almost getting arrested. After not seeing this guy for more than a year, his tendency to tell the tallest of tales had only increased. Lizzy, also from ‘Bama, was twirling around the grounds, too. And then there was the group of familiar faces lounging behind us on the Lakewood lawn. I wasn’t friends with anyone in this group. They were older. I recognized most of them as counselors from Ramah. Bearers of the Phish torch, these guys had Phish shows written into their camp contracts—or so one of them told me in Jerusalem while I crashed on his couch during a month of homelessness six years later.

Part of the secret of Phish fandom being somewhat synonymous with American Jewry lies with that group of twentysomethings on a grassy hillside. Phish began in the American Northeast, and though they’ve played for audiences from sea to shining sea and as far away as the island of Japan, they will always remain a Northeastern band. There are a lot of Yids in the Northeast, and so too there are a lot of Jewish summer camps. Camp Ramah Darom was founded in 1997. Until that year, Conservative Jewish families in the Southeast shipped their kids off to Ramah camps in Massachusetts, the Poconos or elsewhere. It was not uncommon for a counselor at one of these camps to be a Phishhead. In fact, it was probable. And the people who inevitably ran Ramah Darom came from this background. There’s nothing special about my experience at this camp in this time. Analogous experiences have been repeated for decades. And the Northeast connection has been noted before. The torch is still passed on—L’dor v’dor—from generation to generation. But in America, where the majority of Jews lean toward the secular side of religious involvement, new Jewish traditions are passed on through new Jewish communities—like this one centered on Phish.

As set break inches to a close, I decide to join Doogans and sit in a different section of the venue for the second set. We pick the perfect pre-set moment, and I manage to make it through security without the proper ticket. Doogans leads me to his seat in the 118 section, which is Page-side but, given the size of this audience, not quite rage-side. Soon as we settle in, the lights go down and Phish returns to the stage for Part B of Night 1. The first set had clearly been a warm up. Would the second set continue in this vein, or were the boys ready to really throw down?

“Yes!” comes the answer, as the opening riff of “Mike’s Song” rings out from the speakers. I immediately turn to Doogans. “You’re definitely gonna get your ‘Weekapaug’ now,” I tell him. “How do you know?” he asks. “Trust me,” I say.

“Mike’s Song” is, according to the Phish Companion, a “groove of transcendentally elephantine proportions” that is about as old as the band itself. In fact, it was Mike Gordon’s first contribution to the repertoire. Though it has morphed over the years, “Mike’s Song” can still be relied upon for a couple of things: the snarling-est guitar work from Trey and an inevitable pairing with Doogan’s favorite, “Weekapaug Groove.” These two songs and a variable musical interlude collectively compose “Mike’s Groove,” a fan favorite that has become pretty formulaic in these latest years of Phish. This version of “Mike’s” lacks exploration but is still sharp and gnarly. Lasting fewer than 10 minutes—short compared to many “Mike’s” of lore—the song comes to a familiar ending before the band quickly transitions to the new-school jam vehicle “Light.”

Of all the songs on Phish’s 2009 release Joy, “Light” has been explored the most in this year. While fans have waited for “Stealing Time for the Faulty Plan” to finally bust open and for Trey to abandon his long-winded “Time Turns Elastic,” “Light” has become the Joyful anthem of Phish 3.0:

“It a takes a few moments of whirling around / Before your feet finally leave the ground / And fending off fears and hearing the call / And finally waiting for nothing at all / And the light is growing brighter now / And the light is growing brighter now.”

It’s a song about forgetting the past and the future and living in the moment, living in the light—a great philosophy for the new health-oriented Phish. Page plays some phaser synth effects that lift the jam off into space. Then, Trey subtly takes control with some dissonant leads, and 10 minutes into “Light,” the jamming has an otherworldly feel. The band members are clearly listening with open ears, as the jam is both tight and loose at the same time. Koruda is also plugged in. His lights at this point are multi-layered and, as always, synced to the sound. Mike weaves some well-placed and groovy lines into Trey’s rhythmic flashes but, tending toward compactness in perfect 2009 style, “Light” slows down a couple minutes later and lands in “I Am Hydrogen,” the traditional “Mike’s Groove” interlude that was written by Phish lyricist Tom Marshall and friend Marc Daubert in the early ‘80s. “Hydrogen” is short, sweet and just a wind up to Doogan’s delight. Led by Mike’s popping bass, the band kicks into “Weekapaug Groove” with lots of danceable energy. But this segment of the set runs just over six minutes—not long by historical standards. Maybe this compact “Mike’s Groove” should me wondering when we’ll really get to let loose and share in the groove, but can I really complain? I’ve just heard my first ever Mike’s Anything. Write it down. Cross it off the list. I’ll groove regardless of length.

Up next is “Alaska,” a fun rock song that’s reminiscent of “Tennessee Jed,” quintessential Grateful Dead Americana, but isn’t something to write home about. Trey’s solo is on point and the band builds the song to a head captivatingly. Still, like parts of the first set, I’m left thanking Kuroda’s lights that this song is out of the way.

And then the group digs into another Joy track, “Backwards Down the Number Line.” Like the rest of that album, “BDTNL” (as I wrote it in the Moleskine) is an anthem of renewed life, happiness and friendship. “All my friends come / Backwards down the number line.” The jam is bright and tight, but it’s also pure Type I. “The only rule is it begins / Happy happy oh my friend.” I wonder about my friends. I wonder why they are spending so much time and money to travel to see these shows. Traveling to see this band again. I wonder why I care, why we care, if this jam unfolds uniquely or formulaically.

Another part of the secret of Jewish-Phish synonymousness is love of, or even genetic propensity toward, analysis. Mike and Trey have both described how a no-analyzing rule was instituted in the latter half of the ‘90s to combat micromanagement. Mike has said that this over-analysis is a feature that speaks to Jews. He’s a product of the same middle- to upper-middle-class lifestyle that my friends and I grew up in. He went to Solomon Schechter Day School in Massachusetts. I went to Solomon Schechter in Jacksonville. So what?

Well, American popular culture is just a large bucket of white paint—public schools here value you standardization and percentiles, MTV is both a rite of passage and a vapid sham and fast food is our nutrition-less national pride. The American Dream is getting on a fast track to prosperity. It’s never looking back at what flies off of you and lands in the roadside ditches. Thoughtful religious practice doesn’t fit very well into this box. But Jews remain Jews. And though we’ve succeeded and assimilated more in America than ever before in our history, there are certain deep-seeded drives from which we can’t speed away. Community and connection are some of those things. Nuanced debate is another. Phish provides all of this. So when a jam is just a jam and not something more, I want to know why. I want to shake Trey and Mike and Page and Fish until they open their eyes and let go. I want to dance a new dance, not step backward.

“BDTNL” ends and two seconds of organ signal the beginning of a tune that is as old as “Mike’s Song” and brings the widest smile to my face. “Makisupa Policeman” is an original Phish reggae tune from the early ‘80s that was feature on Live Phish 01. It’s based around two chords and a few lyrics that are changed up at most shows. “Hey Makisupa Policeman, policeman came to my house,” the group sings several times. Then, “Woke up this morning,” Trey sings as always, but with the next line, Makisupa’s silly, ever-changing narrative continues anew: “did just what I like, spent a whole two minutes listening to nobody but Mike.” The spot light drops onto Cactus and he begins a low-end bass line. As he builds the line, Trey chimes in with a chant: “Mike! Mike! Mike!” The audience takes their cue and the whole arena eggs Mike on. And then the rest of the group lays into their parts. Mike turns on the Lovetone effect and his bass takes on a thick, warbling sound. “Policeman! Policeman! Policeman!” The story ends. Trey begins looping little lines. Page gets into the synth again. Mike is thick as ever and his lines are still front and center. The group is progressing toward something, I hope. Trey reaches out toward space. Mike builds and builds. And then back to the usual reggae rhythm. “Hey Makisupa Policeman,” everyone sings. “Policeman came to Mike’s house.” And without hesitation the group begins to play vocally play on this theme over a syncopated soundscape that soon segues into a beloved Phish classic.

“Harry Hood” begins with a reggae rhythm that is complimentary to “Makisupa” but soon—after the obligatory “Harry! (Hood!) Harry! (Hood!) Where do you go when the lights go out?” section—becomes all its own. Soon the band enters the composed section of “Hood” and though the only lyrics are an infrequent “Thank you, Mr. Miner,” I can sing along to the entire thing. Six minutes in, Phish has already reached the jam segment. The improvisation starts from a quiet, contemplative place. Mike is leading as much as Trey here. Fishman is holding it down on the high hat while Page drops tiny sonic pebbles that slowly ripple out through Kuroda’s blue light pool. The band doesn’t get louder, but they do begin to coalesce. Trey and Page trickle together while Mike returns to the bottom of his bass. Everything starts from the center. Trey returns to a familiar line, a it’s clear that this is where things will start to build. But there’s no rush. Each band member takes his time. It’s all pretties and possibilities and potentials and before I realize it, the lights have signaled to the Mothership once again and we’ve all been beamed out into the cosmos.

Collectively, we land on the surface of “Contact,” another classic Phish tune that was penned by Mike and whose lyrics are equally laughable and clever. The song begins with a solo run up the bass, a line that is then echoed by Trey and finally filled in by Fish and Page. “The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road,” Mike sings to us several times. “The car is thing on the road that takes you back to your abode,” our lesson continues. “The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road,” Mike sings. And he concludes: “Bummed is what your are when you go out to your car and it’s been towed.” And the band breaks it down into some funky, bass-led grooving. Page splashes in with laser beam lines, and then Drop!, the spotlight’s back on Mike, who serenades us (and his car) with more solo bass and singing:

“I woke up one morning and realized I love you. / It’s not your headlights in front, your tailpipe or the skylight above you. / It’s the way you cling to the road when the wind tries to shove you. / I’d never go driving away and come back home without you.”

Just like the recorded version of “Contact” on Junta, Mike treats everybody to some short and sweet bass flirtation. This AAA-worthy love song comes to an end as the entire AAA audience follows the band’s lead, creating an endless sea of arms waving back and forth, back and forth as the refrain is sung one final time.

The opening riff of “Character Zero” comes right out of the end of “Contact” and it signals the final song of this set. “Zero” has been a go-to show closer since it was debuted in 1996, and though it has been jammed out in the past, I don’t expect that to happen here. Sure enough, this “Zero” is a straightforward shred-fest for Trey.

The band leaves the stage, returns a minute later and quickly drops into “First Tube,” an explosive, Farmhouse-era jam vehicle that took the roof off of Madison Square Garden when it ended the first set of the last night of a three-night run there a few weeks ago. Maybe the energy is a bit off in the American Airlines Arena tonight. The crowd doesn’t erupt for it this time. But I love this tune. It’s the first Phish song I ever learned to play on guitar. I can play that eerie riff over and over and over in my sleep. And the jam section is, to me, a concentrated stream of pure bliss. Though I try, my limbs can’t twist, jerk or flail fast enough.

The lights go up. My voice is already nearly gone from all the screaming. Walking up the steps, into the halls and out of the arena surrounded by Phans, all I am is a big, breathless smile. In the Lot across the street—all smiles. Driving around downtown Miami looking for something to do, I’m smiling. The $20 cover for an aftershow—not so smiley. Harper, Doogans and I decided to go grab something to eat, while Sarah and Cahlin and others bite the bullet and pay the bills to get in. We find a McDonald’s. I don’t want to eat there. I don’t eat non-kosher meat, and a Filet-o-Fish is not a Philet-o-Phish, no matter how you wrap it. Not in the mood. Doogans and I walk across the street to grab some pizza and walk back to eat it under the golden arches with Harper. About this time, Harper gets a text message from his sister. Turns out the MVP of tonight’s show, Mike Gordon, is at the club we just left. So what? I’ve got pizza. I’ve got two sets of Phish behind me. I’ve got three more days to chill with Mike and his friends ahead. I’m all smiles.

It is the summer of ’69, and I am homeless in Jerusalem. For 19 shekels, less than 5 dollars, I can take a bus to Tel Aviv. I can hitchhike south to the communes in the desert for free, or I can get in a car with scarved mystics and travel north to the mountains of Tzfat.

Instead of doing these things, I sit in the Y Coffee Bar on Nisim Bachar in Nachlaot. It is cramped and overpriced, but the people here speak Hebrew. For four and a half months, I lived in a basement apartment on HaYarkon, which is one block from this place. Sager, my roommate, left at the end of May to go back to the states and work at Camp Ramah. Back in January when we signed the lease, leaving the month of June open had seemed a great way to force myself to get out and travel. But here I am, sitting a block away from my former apartment. To one side of this coffee shop, a couple doors down, is a hole in the wall where I can do laundry. On the other side of the shop, a few doors up, is a thrift store called Trumpledore. I bought some bellbottoms there once. There’s a typewriter in the window that has Hebrew-lettered keys. It costs 35 sheks, less than 10 dollars. I don’t know how I’ll carry the thing around, so I just stare every time I walk by, which is often because I have nothing to do, being homeless and all.

I sit in the Y Coffee Bar and drink a café hafooch, which can be translated to mean “upside-down coffee.” A man with a big, curly mass of hair on his head walks in the door and sits down. I sit and drink my upside-down coffee, which is really just a latte, and periodically look up at this guy. He orders a hafooch and periodically looks up at me. I look at him and assume he’s Israeli. He sees me look at him. He stares back and says, “You listen to Phish, don’t you?” I freeze. I look down at my shirt. Nope, I’m not wearing any Phish regalia. How did he know that? “Yea. How did you know that?” I ask. “I can just tell,” he says.

A lot of Jews are familiar with the term “Jewish Geography.” You are at a party and a friend introduces you to someone named Rachel Wasser who is visiting from Maryland. “Oh! Maryland! Do you know Jonathan Zeigler?” you ask excitedly. Rachel stares back into the recesses of her mind for a moment. “Oh, yea! Jon Zeigler! He was in my Chemistry lab. He’s in AEPi, right?” “No, I don’t think so.” “Oh, right. That was Jon Seagel. No, no, I don’t know any Jon Zeiglers.” “Oh. OK. Let’s try again. What about Michelle Waldman?” you ask, a bit less expectantly. “Ah! Michelle! I love Michelle.” A dozen OMGs later, and though you only barely know this Michelle Waldman, you’re now practically BFFLs with Rachel Wasser.

Jewish geography is a game that developed out of the smallness and insularity of the American Jewish community. But in the epicenter of the Jewish state, 6,000 miles from the nearest Phish show, I’m not playing Jewish geography. This is something similar. This is Phish geography. A guy walks into a coffee shop, sees me, and something—an aura, maybe—tips him off. He knows I listen to Phish and that I’m heavily invested. There is no hesitation. He asks, but the asking is more of a formality than anything else. We talk for a little while, trade favorite songs and shows. I tell my new phriend about a street party happening that night, finish my hafooch and say goodbye. It’s a quick exchange, but it makes an impression on me.

Walking around town that day, I wonder what tipped him off. It is the summer of ’69. I’m homeless in Jerusalem. Is it because I carry a big backpack? Is it because I have a beard and shaggy hair? Is it because I wear Naots? No. These are all superficial signs. Every third Israeli on the street looks like this. It must be a feeling. Rachel Wasser might never have been formally introduced to me, but I still would have felt that she was Jewish. This guy in the coffee shop might never have called me out, but he knew we had something in common. Jews sometimes call themselves members of the tribe. Well, phans are a tribe within that tribe.

The night before this encounter, I go out to a bar with some other members of the tribe. I plan on sleeping at a friend’s tiny apartment off a tiny back alley, Hatsor Street, in Nachlaot. My friend works a few different jobs. Sometimes she tends bar, sometimes she waits tables at a fancy pasta restaurant. The night gets away from me. I walk back to her apartment at 3 a.m. I knock on the door. No answer. I look around for a key. Not there. I don’t want to call because it’s 3 in the morning and my friend will need to wake up soon and she is Israeli and Israeli women can be terrifying.

I walk back up the tiny alley of Hatsor and out onto a more main road, Bezalel. What are my options? Few. There is a limited number of people I wouldn’t mind bothering at this hour. Most them have left Israel already. I get a brilliant idea. Why not sleep in the park? I mean, I’ve been telling everyone that I’m spending this month homeless, why not live up to my word?

Ever tried to sleep on a metal park bench? Or on a patch of grass with the sprinklers spraying and a murder of crows creeping all around? Or on the side of a prickly-bush hill? It didn’t matter where I lay. It was damn cold and awkward and painful and they don’t turn the lights off in parks at night.

Delirious, I walked through the park, back into Nachalot and, in a quiet square across the street from Shuk Machne Yehuda, an open-air market, I waited and waited and waited.

It takes a long time for the sun to rise. I assume the market will open early. I’d had some early classes that semester at Hebrew University, but no matter how early I got up to run to through the market to the bus stop, Machane Yehuda was always ready and raging. Now, it takes a long time for the sun to rise. And once the sun rises, it takes a really long time for the market to yawn awake. So I wait some more. Finally, a newsstand opens. I grab the Haaretz English edition, and I wait some more. Shops begin to open. Falafel begins to fry. People begin to yell. The place is transforming. I’m 6,000 miles from the nearest Phish show, but Shakedown Street is coming alive before my eyes.

In the Shuk in Jerusalem you can get anything. And if someone tells you they can’t find this appliance or that fruit or some such person, tell them they haven’t looked hard enough. There are nuts, vegetables, fruits, coffees, teas, tonics, pastries, cheeses, eggs, fish, meats, beers, wines and sweets. You can buy plates and bowls and pots and pans. You can find rugs and shower curtains and linen pants. You can give money to a dozen beggars in 10 square feet. You can hear people speaking in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Yiddish, Russian, Amharic, French, German, Yeshivish.

The Shuk is the chaos before creation. Or maybe it’s the chaos of creation. You have to push people aside if you want to get anywhere. You have to hold your head up, or you’ll get ripped off. Yet, everything and everyone flows, and you can find anything your heart desires.

Six months later, I’m extracting myself from a car in the parking garage of the American Airlines Arena. The first thing my new friends and old friends and I want to do is get to Phish’s Shuk, to Shakedown Street, to the Lot.

There’s a parking lot scene at every Phish show. For this run of shows, the parking lot is opposite the arena on the other side of Biscayne Boulevard, a major road in downtown Miami. The lot is where the party begins and ends. Phisheads and gawkers alike congregate before the doors open and the lights go down. You can get anything in the lot: Tickets, bootleg Phish shirts, show posters, stickers, hand-made skirts and hats, pieces and papers, vegan burritos and heady quesadillas, garlic grilled cheese and French-bread pizza, chai tea, beers and smoothies, ganja goo balls, brownies, cookies, rice crispy treats, NO2, L, E and the rest of the alphabet pharmacy.

The place to go is Shakedown Street. This is the main drag where the vendors set up. Vendors are seasoned veterans. Their vans and RVs are often plastered with stickers from tours of lore. It always seemed to me that these people started following the Grateful Dead, and in 1995, when Jerry Garcia died and the Dead disbanded, they just up and moved their business to Phish tour because it was the easiest possible transition. They seem to have 20 or 30 years on the average Phish concertgoer. Hence, every parking lot outside of every arena-sized jamband show is named after a Grateful Dead song.

Vendors arrive at the lot early. They set up their various tables and grills behind their cars and across from another row of vans and vendors. These people sell the shirts and the skirts and the garlic grilled cheese. They’ve got signs and lights and everything is boiled down to a science. Then there are the people selling beer and burritos out of coolers. They sort of fill in the gaps between vans and yell things like, “Heady brews! Three dollars! Heady brews! Two for five!” Stand near one of these dudes for long enough and, with the show approaching, he’ll start to rhyme: “What the fuck? It’s only a buck!”

There’s a writhing mass of people in between all these vendors. It’s a mixture of young beaming fans enamored with the scene, casual concert goers called custies, curious onlookers, people who just got swept up in the tide and drug dealers. You don’t even have to ask for the drugs. It’s impossible to walk more than three steps without hearing someone whisper in your ear, “Molly,” “doses,” “chocolates” or any number of drug nicknames. Keep walking and the whispering stops for another few steps. But if he’s piqued your interest, all you have to do is stop, look the guy in the eye and your wish is his command. The river of people just flows on around you.

People spill out of every orifice of Shakedown Street. The outskirts are where you can buy more beer or posters or buy and sell tickets. All of this happens, while a horde of police look on. It’s quite flagrant, but the police can’t realistically arrest every offender in the lot. Outside of a handful of undercover cops, they just do their best to contain the masses.

This is the scene that we’re all eager to experience before the show starts.  Ryan and Eric, the guy we picked up in Boynton, head to the lot as soon as we get out of the car. Harper and Cahlin take a bit longer to get their acts together. Another friend parks his car near us. His name is Matt Doenges, but most people call him some variation of Doogan. He’s from Wellington, too. Harper introduced me to him freshman year, but I really met Doogans before I met Harper. Actually, he was the first person I ever met in college. We were in the same freshman orientation. One of us was wearing a Phish shirt. We started talking Phish geography and then got to Jewish geography. He’d missed the boat and never had a chance to see Phish during the post-hiatus years. So this is Doogans’ first Phish show, and he’s stoked, to say the least.

Eventually, everyone’s articles are in order, and we exit the parking garage. As we walk alongside the venue, a verse from “Roses Are Free,” a song by Ween that Phish covers, rings out. We look up toward the source of the music. There’s a big screen on the front of the arena with a clip from the Phish DVD called “IT” that chronicles the band’s 2003 summer festival of the same name. The clip is being played on a loop like the “Roses Are Free” verse, but the two don’t match. In fact, nothing matches. Here we are in downtown Miami outside of an arena that normally hosts NBA games, and Phish is blaring over the speakers and flashing on the screen. But the mismatch fits. This whole endeavor is about expecting the unexpected, after all.

I ask Doogans what song he most wants to hear Phish play. “Weekapaug,” he replies. I assure him that we’ll get to share in that groove. We walk on, past the venue, and cross Biscayne Boulevard toward the parking lot. Group cohesion is more of an ideal than a possibility at this point. People stream by in every direction and everything catches my eyes. Everyone is smiling. Everyone is happy.

We get to the edge of the lot and I can actually feel the energy of the place all around me. I want to dive in, but we don’t have a lot of time. Showtime approaches. I’m hungry. I want a burrito. Harper, Doogan and I work our way onto Shakedown Street. Doesn’t take long to get distracted. There’s some carrot cake that looks extra special. And then some girls walk by. They look familiar. Before I can place their faces, Harper and Doogan are screaming salutations and introducing me. Shira and Sarah, friends from Camp Coleman.

But I’ve already figured it out. I’ve met these girls before. Three months ago, the Mike Gordon Band came to Jacksonville Beach. It was September 18^th, a Friday.

When Mike made the announcement, the show’s date made me do a double take. September 18th. September 18th. What else was happening on September 18th? The answer soon came to me: Rosh Hashanah. The Jewish New Year.

Rosh Hashanah is one of those holidays that even the most secular, disconnected American Jews celebrate. Or acknowledge. My background is more traditional than that, so I couldn’t just ignore this reality. In a way, it seemed perfect. I would be coming home to Jacksonville anyway for some quality family time. It seemed I could have my cake and eat it, too (Thank God Mike wasn’t playing Jax on Yom Kippur. There would be no cake and no eating then.) So I found out the family dinner plans for Friday night, I found another Jewish friend from Jacksonville who wanted to hit the show and we bought our tickets.

The night of the show, after dinner, I decided I had to make a sign to bring to the show. It was the New Year and, though his touring schedule implied otherwise, I knew Mike had an innate connection to the holiday. I used some Sharpies and some cardboard to make a sign that read “Shanah Tovah” in Hebrew and included an apple and a shofar. Only the semi-learned Jews in the crowd, Mike included, would be able to read and understand that the sign said, “Happy New Year.”

Sign in hand, I drove to my friend’s house to pick him up. His family had just finished their own Rosh Hashanah dinner. They were interested in the sign I’d made. Before we left, my friend’s mother had an idea. Apples and honey. The traditional pairing for a sweet new year. She wanted us to bring some to Mike. She filled a Ziploc with apples, and then poured in the honey and that was that.

We drove 30 minutes to the Freebird Live at the beach, picked up our tickets at will call and made it through the security, sweets and sign in tow. We found some space close to the stage, and as soon as Mike appeared, I held up my sign to him. He peered out, read the Hebrew words and grabbed the sign from my hands. Mike then held the sign up and out for all to see and the place went nuts. There was a large Jewish contingent at the Freebird, it seemed.

Then Mike and his band played a song or two. I still had this offering of apples and honey, so during the next song break, I held up the Ziploc and made it clear that I wanted Mike to take it. He leaned in, strained his eyes and eventually grabbed the bag. Looking closely, he saw exactly what was inside. He understood.

“Apples and honey, for sweet new year!” Mike said into the microphone while holding up the bag. Now, the place really went crazy.

A glowing faerie of a girl, about my age, danced up to me and said, “Did you tell your parents that you were coming to Jacksonville for Rosh Hashanah services, too?!”

That girl was this girl in the lot, Sarah. She had been with someone at the Mike Gordon show. It was the other girl, Shira. I reintroduce myself, and the circles just keep intertwining.

The girls get pulled away in the tide. They’re selling some baked goods of their own. We float around the lot, get caught up, broken apart and thrown back together a few times over. We find some goo balls bobbing around in there somewhere. The clock is ticking. We start drifting toward the edges of the lot. As it gets closer to show time, the masses become more and more alive. Every so often, some primordial war cry will ring out and the lot will erupt in collective excitement. There is only one official crosswalk between the lot and the venue, so even though Biscayne Boulevard is busy, people keep tempting fate and making a run for it.

Harper remembers this vividly: “We’re tryin’ to walk from across from the lot to the American Airlines Arena and there’s like this six-lane highway and nobody knew when to go, when not to go. And you can see 150 people trying to decide what to do, and this is within the span of three seconds. And all of the sudden some little kid just runs and goes, ‘Power in numbers!’ and everyone starts yelling ‘Power in numbers!’ and running across the street.”

The river is raging, spilling over its banks. Power in numbers. Waves are crashing everywhere. This is it. Power in numbers. We surrender to the flow and careen toward the source.

When I finally do make it out of the darkness onto a street with lights and with signs for schools and Starbucks, it’s the first time in my life that South Florida’s sterile suburban predictability is a relief.

Jog. Military Trail. The names of the roads set off some murky memories. This here is Ye Old Wellington, a sort of upper-middle class Floridian village, a high-end 21^st century shtetl. Keep driving south and I’ll hit other villages: West Palms, Boca Ratons and Plantations.

The parking lot of the strip mall where I meet up with Harper feels familiar, too. In high school, there was this epic winter break road trip that my parents should have never let me go on. A dozen or so Jewish-summer-camp friends from all over Florida and the American South made appearances.  We spent a lot of time in parking lots. And this parking lot in Wellington, I just know I know it.

Harper walks me to a table outside of a Jo Jo’s Bar ‘n’ Grill or the Wellington Ale House or something along those beer-buckety lines. We sit with a couple guys there. I recognize one of them from Gainesville. The other one has a Spanish accent. Everyone talks a lot about nothing until the conversation turns to a topic that for years I have dreamed about and that now, I realize, might no longer be a dream: Miami. Four-Night Run. New Year’s Eve. Phish.

The conversation makes this inevitable turn, and I get an inevitable phone call. It’s Zach Hindin. Or just Hindin. Or the Cat formerly known as Fat. He’s the Wellington connection. I recognized the parking lot because Hindin’s house—and consequently that parking lot—was our home base during that mad winter break road rally. And now he’s calling because I’m in Wellington and he’s one of those friends who, with lots of passive patience and very little planning, I will see throughout my life. I tell him about Jo Jo’s and within minutes he’s there. He’s not Fat Cat anymore. He’s slim and relatively clean-cut, wearing some simple linen for a shirt. After some time at George Washington University, he’s more like Mr. Cat.  Or Zen Master Cat.

A few years before, you’d be able to pick this guy out of crowd—assuming it wasn’t the crowd at an Allman Brothers Band concert. Back then, Hindin was large, tye-dyed, unkempt and brutally, bitingly honest. But the thoughtful, simple, contemplative side of him won out at some point. Or maybe he grew up. In any case, when he shows up at the restaurant he seems so kind and collected that I stop and think about my own appearance and attitude. I wonder if I should care more about my hair (it’s getting long) or my telltale beard. His speech makes me want to slow down and plan my own. I tell him that I drove in for the upcoming Phish shows and ask him if he’s going. He says he can’t make it this time because he’s heading to the Virgin Islands the following day to play guitar in a reggae band for a handful of gigs.

I have this vague list in my head of friends from far and wide who are supposedly meeting me in Miami, and Hindin could easily have been on that list, could easily have answered yes. A few weeks before, I got a message from him on Facebook. He had been at a Phish show in Charlottesville, Va., the last show of the 2009 fall tour, and wanted to know if I was there. He thought he saw me on stage. He thought I was the Naked Guy.

During the second set of that show, just as the band began playing “Yamar,” a classic Phish cover of the island tune by The Mustangs, a fan ran on stage. He was naked. On YouTube, you can watch a video of this happening. He gets up there and runs straight for Trey Anastasio, Phish’s guitar player and primary songwriter, and gives the man a hug. Any other guitar player in any other band would have stopped playing, backed away nervously and motioned for security to come on stage to throw the perp out. But Trey just smiles and pats the guy on the back. Now, Naked Guy pauses for the tiniest of moments. It’s like he never planned out what to do after getting up there and hugging his hero and now he’s standing in front of thousands of people without clothes and he’s got to do something. Seeing that security is coming for him, Naked Guy releases the embrace and begins doing figure 8s around the band members and their equipment. Mike Gordon just keeps plucking away at his bass and Jon Fishman never stops the beat. Naked Guy ducks and dodges to the soundtrack of a disjointed “Yamar” and for a minute there it seems he’s gonna get away with it, but then several large men lunge on him at the same instant and Naked Guy’s time is up. As he’s being dragged away, Trey says, “Let’s hear if for the Naked Guy! That took a lot of balls,” and then the band instantly drops back into “Yamar.” Later on in the evening, during the final song of the second set, “Run Like an Antelope,” Anastasio adlibs some new lyrics: “You’ve got to run like a Naked Guy, out of control!”

The Internet the next day is, as they say, abuzz. A video of Naked Guy is on every Phish blog out there, and most commentators are echoing Trey’s praise. I get a message on Facebook that day: “Fleet, be honest. Were you the naked guy at Charlottesville last night? I could’ve sworn that was you.” It’s Hindin. I’m not sure how to answer him. I wasn’t the Naked Guy and I wasn’t physically at that show. But I wasn’t not there, either.

The Internet blurs the line between actual experiences and vicarious ones. Fewer than 20,000 people in the whole world were physically at that show in Charlottesville, yet tens of thousands more experienced the show in a dozen different ways, often in real time. I was one of them. Throughout the 2009 Fall Tour, I would spend my nights refreshing Phish’s site to keep codified track of the unfolding set, and I would keep my eyes on Twitter for the commentary. Mornings were for downloading the show and reading reviews of it. I would spend my afternoons listening to the show. I was on tour, only virtually.  It became a ritual, a routine. The Daily Phish.

Sean Gibbon followed Phish around in the late 90s and wrote a book about the experience. The account, Run Like an Antelope: On the Road with Phish, briefly addresses the idea of Phish as ritual:

“We don’t really have any ritualized celebrations in America. The holidays, yeah, but the holidays mean football games on Thanksgiving and the malls at Christmas. We don’t have any rituals. We don’t celebrate the coming of spring. We don’t celebrate the harvest moon. When was the last time you celebrated anything? I mean, when was the last time you let your hair down and howled at the moon on a clear autumn night. Humans have been doing this sort of thing for centuries, as a way to celebrate life, the joy of it…Phish shows are becoming an American ritual. People turn out year after year to hear the same band play the same songs at the same time of year. And it is precisely this continuity, the ritual of it, that in a way brings a magic to the show, makes the fan feel like he is part of the event. The shows provide a timeline, a kind of calendar to divide up the year.”

When Gibbon wrote this, Phish hadn’t yet played The Show at Big Cypress, I hadn’t even heard of Phish and the Internet hadn’t become quite the revolutionary social-networking tool that it is today. When Hindin wrote on my Facebook wall, asking if I was the Naked Guy, I didn’t know how to respond because I truly felt the Naked Guy was the epitome of a Phish fan, that I was him, that he was me and that we were all one big virtual, communal Naked Guy together. From my house in Gainesville, Fla., I sincerely felt that I was part of the tour-closing event in Charlottesville. And in a few weeks, I knew, the lights would go down and my roar would be buried in a thousand other roars streamed the world over.

I wrote Hindin back: “That, somehow, was not me. But I will be the naked guy at NYE in Miami. Rest assured, dear friend.”

It is night on Sugarland Highway in the middle of Florida. I can’t see it, but Lake Okeechobee is lapping at my left. There are no streetlights, and it is black all around my Buick Century. A few dark minutes pass and I see a pair of pinpoint lights ahead and then other pairs appear and I start to feel that maybe I have friends out here, but then a few more minutes are gone and those sparkling eyes have become bursting beams that blind past and bring everything back to that heavy black.

I smoke a cigarette even though I don’t smoke cigarettes. I check my iPod even though I know the song won’t be finished for another 15 minutes and I hate stopping songs before they finish. I look and wait and look and worry about it, but I certainly don’t stop at the next gas station even though I need gas. I just keep driving, and even though everything gets black again, somehow somewhere I know that down the road the air will be clear, the sky will be light and I won’t be alone.

Two hours earlier, I had dropped Sager off with his parents at a gas station near the Tampa International Airport. Fresh off a plane from Austin, they were now heading down to Sarasota for their annual Florida family gathering. This is the first time I’ve met Sager’s parents, and, though it only lasts minutes, it’s a meeting that adds a couple more pieces to the puzzle of who he is.

Almost a year earlier, in our basement apartment in Nachlaot, an old and mystical neighborhood in Jerusalem, Sager told me he gets his sense of humor from his mother, a woman whose presence seemed to tower over me with booming warmth at the gas station where she immediately hugged me tight and told me to pass the love along to Carl, one of the guys I would be meeting down the road.

From his father, a professor at the University of Texas and Great Clips franchise owner, Sager said he gets an ability to talk and talk and talk and talk. But I don’t experience this. When I meet him, the old prof is quietly chomping at a Snickers Ice Cream Bar that he bought inside. He shakes my hand, gets into the passenger side of his rental car and that’s that.

Back on Sugarland Highway, every few minutes I pass a bright yellow diamond with a big black tractor on it. It’s sort of jarring. I know this sign, but I don’t expect to see it on this road because everything I know about South Florida tells me that the sign should’ve rusted from irrelevance and been taken down long ago.

My Buick is cutting through the blackness and a sense of doubt is cutting through me again. It started soon after I dropped Sager off. Getting to Tampa had been easy enough. The day before we’d taken back roads to get from my parent’s home in Jacksonville to my house in Gainesville. It’s a trip I’ve made a thousand times, coming home for holidays, doctor’s appointments and the dire laundry run. And Gainesville to Tampa is more or less a straight shot along I-75. No problems there.

But now, Sager is gone and I stare at a map, searching for the best route. Staying on the highway will take me out of the way, almost all the way to Orlando just so that I can cut back down south. The back roads are more direct, so, even though it’s nearing night and I’ve never been on them before, I opt to stay off the highway and soon enough I’m passing these tractor signs and wondering in the dark if maybe I’ve headed north by mistake.

Florida is folded on the steering wheel so that I can only see her mid-section. Pass a town on the road. Check Florida for the facts. It always seems to match, but the doubt still manages to creep in to my consciousness. Pass another tractor. It’s dark again. I’m doubtful again. I barely know where I’m going. This is South Florida, right? I’d called Harper late the night before from Gainesville. Sure, I could stay with him, he had said. We’d caravan down together. But South Florida doesn’t have tractors and it doesn’t have an endless blanket of sparkling stars for a sky. Does it? Check the map again. It all lines up. I call Harper to confirm. “Tractors? Lake Okeechobee? Where the hell are you, man?” I tell him the name of the next town. “Yea, that’s somewhere I sort of recognize that but why oh why the hell are you there?” he laughs and asks. His laugh emboldens my doubt and it just seems to get darker all around me.

Put out that cigarette. Pull in for gas. Wait to shut the car off until the song finishes. Shut the car off. Get coffee. Get doubtful. Get darker. Get back on the road. Forget tractors. Remember another sign from dozens of miles back. “Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation –>” It’s like a beacon in my brain. South Florida must be somewhere near me, Miami somewhere beyond that. And the light must be growing somewhere out there, too.

Ten years before the sign for Big Cypress, before the Jerusalem apartment, before I knew Sager existed, before I could really worry about darkness and tractors and expectations, I was 12 and the world was freaking out about mass technological failure. The TV and other trusted sources of information were claiming that some numbers would soon roll over and thereby destroy everything we’d ever worked toward, and that to me sounded like nothing to hyperventilate over, but what did I know, anyway?

So on New Year’s Eve 1999, as the ball dropped and as my parents did things that I do now but didn’t do then like drink and worry about mass technological failure, I snuck up to a balcony with some other kids where we pulled strings on a dozen confetti poppers so that multicolored strings shot out over our parents’ heads and got caught in the fan spinning above them, and we thought that was the funniest thing ever. Of course, the fans kept spinning and the lights didn’t suddenly go out. It was just the end of one year and the beginning of another.

And while most Americans—hypochondriacs, all of them—were realizing they had imagined the whole Y2K fever, somewhere out in South Florida where there is still swamp and it doesn’t feel like South Florida feels in 21^st century, the largest millennium-eve gathering was going down. Out on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, Phish, an improvisational rock quartet from Vermont, was playing the greatest concert of its career, a marathon midnight-to-sunrise performance that many Phishheads call simply “The Show.”

They say that every Jew was at Mount Sinai when God and Moses gave the Torah. Well, I have a corollary to that midrash: Every Phishhead was at Big Cypress when Phish gave that Show of all Shows.

What follows is the tale of mine and many other souls finding a way, consciously or otherwise, back to that South Florida swamp and back to that mystical mountain.