I mentioned people believing in the big bang but nothing extraordinary in between.
I do.
My dreams are reoccurring about two famous people. One being Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. In 1993 in London, I was vacationing with my family. I had my baby son with me. I went to bed stressed one night as my Mother and I got into or should I say she verbally attacked me for something I had no part of. they say crisis can open channels during dreams. I’m not sure what that meant, anyway, I Went to bed and had this LUCID dream of Eddie Vedder in a bar. Someone was harassing him. The police came and took him away. I wondered why it felt so intense when I woke up. I was in the upper corner of the bar watching the dream happen. Astral projection perhaps?
It woke up something and I started following their music because the dream felt like a message dream. Cut to 2 months later I’m in the car with my husband reading a People Magazine and suddenly see an article that Ed had been arrested in New Orleans for spitting on a bartender. It happened the week I had been in London. So did I see it live in my sleep? Did I dream it the day before it happened? I’m not sure. I was blown away by the blissful feeling like why am I connected to this man I don’t know? My Grandmother gave me the magazine randomly. What if she had never given me the mag? But she did. The dream never left me so when I read about the incident two months later, I was blown away. I told my husband what I just read and about the dream and his response was. Oh. (nothing) That’s ok. IT’s my own trip.
Since then, this was in 93, I’ve kept a dream journal for decades. I proceeded over the next 20 years to have lucid dreams of Eddie Vedder. I keep them all written down because even if the dream was 15 years ago, when I re read it, I can remember how it made me feel. Every dam one of the dreams was about him protecting me like a father. All angelic. To close, much later on I lived in his neighborhood by chance…..the synchronicities with him got even bigger when that happened.
I’m sitting on the lawn at Deer Creek Music Center ready to experience my first Phish concert. Three years ago, I saw the Grateful Dead. At that time, there were fans of all types: families, yuppies and Heads. Today. Deer Creek’s lawn is blanketed with a surreal version of that crowd, only younger. I don’t think I see anyone over 30.
I feel old – and I have to pee really bad! Do I go to the bathroom now or wait until the show starts?
My bladder wins the battle. My companion, John, grabs my arm in a panic, “You can’t leave now! They could start any minute!” He shakes his head as I pull away, venturing through the crowd to the women’s bathroom. There’s a long line of about 60 “Phunky Bitches.” As I wait, I hear the crowd let out a roar of welcome. Phish has walked on stage. Just my luck. With the first chord, the women in the line fling themselves from the queue. Wide eyed hippies, all of them cheering, speed past me as if running from a fire. Cool! Sitting on the porcelain throne, I realize I’m now the only one in here.
Walking back to the lawn, my eyes and ears have been stimulated. I stop just outside pavilion, and witness a giant pulsating crowd of people, dancing to a funny little tune called “Bathtub Gin.” The crowd appear to be a giant organism – no individuals, just a mass of movement. The mass is jumping, whirling, a gyration in unison. Here’s the most amazing part: The only way I can find John is to dance my way back. If I didn’t, I’d look out of place.
The walkway that separates the lawn from the pavilion is no longer a sidewalk. It’s an anaconda of bouncing humanity, snaking it’s way to and fro. People have big smiles and spin like dervishes. I begin to laugh out loud from sheer nervousness – afraid I have lost John in the mob. As if guided by some magnificent force from above, miraculously I find our spot, although it’s not a spot at all, just another small place to dance.
A Phish newsgroup posting uses the following analogy:
“Phish is the water hose, we are the flowers.”
They were right, I had to dance. I think of lemmings – but in a warm and fuzzy way. I spot pixie-like girls twirling in circles. After three hours the most incredible light show and musical insanity, the show is over. The experience was unforgettable, but I wasn’t too sure of the improvised and sometimes disjointed jams that constitute the band’s unique sound. This is a genre of music I can appreciate, but not necessarily enjoy on the home stereo. We left with the thousands of fans. There is a point at the exit at the end that narrows down to small funnel and so it takes quite awhile to get to the last gate. I get a bit panicky as I don’t like tight crowds. Then someone begins to “moo” like a cow. Everyone else joins in. Now, this is funny! and my anxiety goes away. Hundreds of fans would stay behind for fellowship and grilled cheese and goo balls. Many will walk the cornfield lined country road back to their campgrounds. Local residents with big spaces, offer there property to these nomads. The ones that travel from show to show. I felt a twinge of isolation inside. Part of me wanted to stay.
I wanted to know what goes on at those campgrounds after the show. What is it these people understand that I don’t? Maybe if I ate nothing but homemade hippie food for days I would be enlightened too?
Summer of ’98
Just like a reoccurring cold sore or a Jehovah’s Witness at your front door, this band keeps popping into my life. I’m a hard core Pearl Jam fan. The memories of seeing them at Deer Creek were close to my heart and I never could find someone that loved them as much as I did. Phish doesn’t get much radio play in Indiana – or anywhere else for that matter. Why do I hear of them so often? It’s those dam Phish missionaries – people who find Phish and want you to find them as well.
I had been working with John at the local planetarium and he played their music their music for almost every evening opening to our laser shows. I had kinda had enough. He left and I took over his job to manage and perform laser shows to rock music for the public. Prior to each show, I played walk-in music while the crowd was being seated. For once this music was my own choice and depending on the show, sometimes I played Pearl Jam. I had heard enough of Phish intros. It was here, under the constellation of Aries, that I met yet another Phish missionary. A new laserist I hired. I knew he was a Phish Head before he told me by the macrame choker he wore to an interview. Charlie mentioned he was a Phish fan and wanted the job, but also wanted time off for summer to go on Phish tour. That was a funny thing to say in an interview to someone who needed a laserist right away, against my better judgment, I hired him and worked out the schedule so he could tour as well.
I got to know Charlie. Some people collect baseball cards; Charlie collects ticket stubs of music concerts of all kinds. There are literally hundreds. His collection is neatly preserved in plastic the same way an original Babe Ruth card would be. I understood this because Phish’s tickets are works of art. (Pearl Jam’s are as well. Blatant combative competition thought just now.)
One day while waiting for the matinee crowd with children in the group enter the planetarium, Charlie is in charge of the show. I believe it was a Motown show for all ages. He was allowed to pick his own entry music for the families to enjoy while they waited for the show. I’m not really listening because I’m outside the entrance to the planetarium taking tickets. Suddenly, a woman dressed like she just came from a junior league charity luncheon rudely comes up to me and demands: “Could you please turn that music off inside the planetarium; it’s making my husband very nervous!” My attention focuses on the sounds reverberating from the top of the dome. It sounds like Frank Zappa wired on a double espresso while reading “Dr. Suess!
I run inside and ask Charlie; “what the hell are you playing?” Holy shit! It was LSD inspired fragmented Phish that frankly, was just not appropriate for the crowd full of kids. Thaat song ended and then another came on. It was awkward to the show to stop it at this point. We were lucky the song that came on was called ‘Weigh” which is very childlike and fun.
I’d like to cut your head off so I could weigh it, what do ya say? Five pounds, six, pounds, seven pounds
Kids begin to laugh. So I agree to let him continue.
I’d like to go to your house and gather all your razors and pick all the little prickly hairs so I can weigh them, what do ya say? Five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds I’d like to gather all your friends and squish them all into a small swimming pool so I can weigh them, what do ya say? Five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds Why weigh on a sunny day? So much to do so why, why weigh? On a sunny day, why wei-igh-hey? Why weigh, why weigh? I’d like to hear my options, so I can weigh them, what do ya say? Five pounds, six pounds, seven pounds Why weigh on a sunny day? So much to do, so why, why weigh? On a sunny day, why wei-gh-hey?
I remember hearing Phish for the first time when I was married years before. We had gone to a friend of a friend’s home. Cute couple who owned a tie dye screen printing company. They put on the album “Rift” by Phish. The first Phish song I had ever heard was “Fast Enough” which isn’t fast or fragmented like the future Phish I was to experience. I later bought that CD not knowing that in time they would evolve into a digital psychedelic wall of sound. There was even one track on the CD that was merely the sound of some guy sleeping! 🙂
Fast forward to the planetarium days, I ask Charlie later not to play such deep and tripped out tunes for a conservation Children’s Museum group. The night time shows with adults only would have been a better setting for mind blowing. He kinda gave me a look as if I didn’t understand. I shot one back basically like this “hey, I’m the boss, so I get the last word.” I did however feel my love/hate relationship could be compared to one scene from the film “Amadeus”
too many notes indeed.
Summer Of ’99
Again, sigh, I find myself stuck in traffic in a shuttle van packed with about 70 phish fans and Charlie. Waaaa! I wanted to be going to a Pearl Jam show. How the hell did I get here again? I got claustrophobic. I felt like I was going up the hill on a roller coaster and about ready to die. I had not been feeling well when I boarded the shuttle for three reasons; I had a heavy workload, I had had the flu earlier in the week and I took _ _ _! …….. Against my better judgment. So getting into that van was already a nightmare. Panic set in and I thought I would never make it through the night.
Many fans walk the 20 minute journey from the camp site to the venue. I was not going to walk in this heat. So here I was on the bus and it took an hour! Outside it was 95 degrees with 100% humidity. Inside the but it was about 150 degrees. I try to distract myself by listening to others talk. Long conversations about set lists dominate the chatter. A cacophony of another language to my ears.
We arrive and our group gathers on the lawn: Two laserists, my old friend John, Charlie and his old friend and me. When the music starts Charlie flashes a cheesy Cheshire cat grin. The place is on fire and so am I. Just before the set break, Charlie and his friend go up front. I opt to stay where I am. The second set begins. Soon, I start to over-heat so I sit down. Wrong idea. There is no air on the ground because everyone is standing and packed tightly around me. All I can smell is hippy body order. I stand up again, and that doesn’t help either.
Then it happens. I see myself in space looking down from a ship of some kind. Other beings are with me and they are looking through some microscope at Earth. They zoom into the spot where I stand that is now pulsating with color. One being says to the other “what is that strange array of lights and why are all those cells dancing around it?” Holy crap! Where was I? At that moment I felt as tiny as a atom. I was back on Earthy a minuscule piece of nothing. I didn’t like that vision. I was feeling fragmented and segmented like broken glass. This was no mushroom salad I can tell you that.
These is where Phish scares the hell outta me. The music is too extreme. It’s not Pearl Jam. This would not be happening if it were Eddie Vedder up there being angry and crooning out ballads that CAME TO AN END. I would be a kite flying happily above the crowd vibrating with baritone or dancing my ass off. Something funny happened inside my mind. I said to myself “Where’s my Eddie when I need him?” I looked around riducuiously and saw him. Not him obviously but a vision of him and he said “it’s ok.”
Phish keeps going. God will this song every end. No air. No water. No place to sit. This is not what I expected. An internal dialog of terror and judgment begins. I’m a single mom. I don’t belong here. Who are these people? I’m too old to be doing this. I began to look at all these young people in disdain. This was not a Grateful Dead crowd.. There were no hippy moms holding babies in slings. Everyone was exactly the same age and wearing exactly the same thing. This was not Woodstock either. No one was bathing in the river naked to cool off. I thought “all these people need rehab.” There was nothing I could do about any of it and I felt completely isolated and kinda started to pray to God or those beings or whatever to get me outta there. I’m losing it! My skin is clammy and I feel nauseous. One of my laserists puts her arm around me and says “are you OK?” I say nothing. She knows. Eddie? lol… We rock back and forth. My head is going to burst and the music is getting louder and LouDeR and LOUDER! For God’s sake!?
Then…as if some prayer were heard, Phish does what they always do. They play a ballad. I listen to the lyrics and I start to float away from fear.
Need I mention the song I refer to is 6 minutes and 55 seconds on the album. Since they never stop and go right into one song, thus that video was over 20 minutes long. You get my drift.
I am laughing inside from complete disbelief. God does listen to what I say and she has a sense of humor! My panic washes away. The song is like a cool bath. The band members are up to something and the fans know it! I got it. I look up to see all my friends standing around me, smiling. They had been there the whole time watching over me. John sits down next to me and says “I told you they were like God.”
With my regained strength. We leave the show. The crowd is quiet. Deadly silent after all those notes. Almost uncomfortably silent. I say to my friend, “dam, now it’s too quiet and my ears are ringing.” It’s dark and crowded and I know it’s gonna take awhile to get out of this herd of cows who moo again at just the right time. As we walk through what was once a the dancing anaconda, now it’s just a huge line to leave. Exit music is playing. I don’t know what it was, maybe the Dead. Like magic, a young girl dances in front of me with a green glow stick in her hand. I watch her, mesmerized, and wonder if I have found a guide because I was now enlightened by something. The girl with the green glow stick twirls her way through the crowd like a flashing persistence of vision map as if you’re in your car and hit every green light. She waves her glow stick through the crowd like Tinkerbell.
Effortlessly I follow her.
Phishin At The Creek
by
Deborah Machon
Written for Nuvo Newsweekly, issue: July 6-13, 2000
July 9, 2014
Disclaimer: Searching through my “Hopeless Chest” I find a souvenir of my life. My first published story I hardly ever read because I knew it sucked. The artwork is offline and the colors have yellowed a bit. This story was the only cover story I ever did in my life and was lucky Nuvo even let me write it after presenting the idea, since I was not a writer on staff. It took me weeks to write and had to be really cleaned up by editors. There was also things I wanted to say that I could not due to word count requirements and lets face it, I over describe stuff and repeat myself, repeat myself.
So here, almost 16 years later I think, fuck it. I will just re write the story the way I would have written it and take out the narcissistic need to promote a certain person in it who I once loved, who later kept over 25 bundles of 50 each of this issue, so he could someday sell them on Ebay to Phish fans. He hauled them all the way out to Seattle and kept them in basement. I got tired of his hoarding AND thinking he was going to sell my papers and my story. I was the distribution manager for awhile and he only got those because I gave them to him. So years and years later in Seattle, he went to see some Nascar race out of town. I was pissed at him so while he was gone, I took everyone of the bundles to be recycled. *Except for the numerous ones we used to kill our lawn in Seattle to create a garden. It’s easy really and not chemically harmful. You take newspaper. Cover the area of grass you want to kill with many layers of papers. So we used this story as the ground for a garden. Then you cover the whole area with tons of mulch. Voila! A few weeks later, you have fertile soil to plant living things like stick trees from The Arbor Day Foundation.
I did give Charlie two copies to save and two for myself. It’s always good to let go of the past.
What’s this got to do with the story. Nothing, but I’m in charge this time and I can be whoever I want to be. Even if I’m just some cell dancing in the light.
That’s the kinda writing Nuvo never cared about nor has anyone else, yet.
p.s. I don’t care about typos and incorrect grammer and neither did Kerouac. That’s not my job. I’m lucky I had the attention span or interest to retype this ancient attempt at trying to express myself starting at 6:30 am. Three hours of work. And people don’t understand why some writers make a shit load of money. It’s hard work to sit in a freaking chair for hours and constantly edit yourself and focus on nothing else. I’m exhausted.
Science Goes On - A Blind Date With God 
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