by Benjy Eisen

The road does crazy things to you and it makes every thing seem so much simpler, so much more complicated. It confuses things and mixes things up and it gives you no time to process any of it because you're busy experiencing it, go, go, go, run, run, run, DO, DO, DO, and yet you have so much time when you can do nothing but think because you're sitting in the back of a Volkswagen for hours and you let thoughts match up with scenery, or you read and talk shit with your companions. And so you do think and you do read and you do talk shit with your companions and you fall asleep past blurry landscapes as you head north on 35 to Minnesota.

I don't know much about Minnesota. I was never supposed to come here, but that's what the road will do to you. A week ago I thought I'd be home by now. I woke up a couple mornings ago in Oklahoma, thinking it was still Texas. A pharmaceutical experience and a pair of pants later, I was entering the Land of 10,000 Lakes, headed to the Twin Cities. Whose cities they were exactly, I couldn't yet say.

The "Surrender To The Flow" Fall Tour Edition said something about a neon chandelier in the Target Center lobby and that was about my only expectation for the evening.

When the '71 VW bus pulled into town, there was going to be more than just neon dreams, I thought. It was time to introduce myself to this strange land. Hello Minneapolis, you ain't never seen Benjy Eisen! "Here I am!" I yelled as I slid open the side-door and stepped into the concrete city parking lot. "And I ain't never leaving!" It was a line I picked up from a movie a couple years ago - a flick about a country singer who goes to Nashville with big dreams dripping like stardust from her eyes, only to find that this world is as cruel and harsh and problematic as we've all heard it is. It was a decent film, really, and I shouted out the line as though I meant it. Well, I did and I didn't. I meant the "Here I am!" part and I felt it was only fair for me to be right out in the open with it - I intended to take Minneapolis for the night, but I'd be leaving in the morning and the city, she knew it. Like a Cinderella of the Mid-West, Minneapolis showed me her delights anyway, wrapping me in her gentle arms, knowing that come daybreak it'd all be but a pumpkin-eyed vision of a Saturday night in October.

I roamed the lots that day like I had something to prove. And maybe I did. I had fun with the swing kids, ("I'll trade you my heady Knight Rider videotapes for a big fat sack of mercury." "What's mercury?" "You know, temperature fluid. The hotter it is, the higher it gets") and I did a dance of the follies with my sweet angels of Phish tour, exchanging a laugh or two with Deanne and Shoenacker, plans for the revolution with Clay of the UNO Warriors and a delicate embrace with Jessica that should've lasted centuries...if we hadn't been so busy, I would've bared my soul for her at that moment, going back to childhood and the time when I was horseplaying in the gym and caught a superball in my eye. I had to wear an eye patch for a week. I looked like a pirate. I was only five years old and missed the Easter Egg hunt. I would've told her all this and more. Or perhaps I would've sat perfectly still and silent and staring into her eyes until words dismissed themselves and beams of light connected us. Who knows how it would've ended up? We were in Minneapolis!!

Across the street from the Target Center was First Avenue - both the club and the street. Against the backdrop of Phish lot's colorful overflow was a line of black leather and latex clad manic panic gloomsters lined up outside the club. When I asked one of them what was going on, they said, "Sisters of Mercy".

"Ahh" I replied. I would've gone to see them too, had I not had a better band to check out that night. Still, I dug their silent sadness and the sleek tight latex of the girls in crimson red lipstick. For about forty-one seconds I reminisced about my life as a glam rocker, a gloomster really, and briefly considered making the conversion. But I had a ticket to look for and at 6:15 PM I had to jiboo already or else risk a shut-out.

"Well, if that happens, I could always catch The Sisters Of Mercy" I thought, and let out a wonderful and honest chuckle, a sigh really, and smiling headed back across the street to broken glass and the sight of Mike Gordon walking through the crowd amidst cheers. I handed him a "Jambands.com" sticker and skipped onwards, as I have done all my life, ever pushing into tomorrow.

The show that night was through the roof. Llama opened up, frantic and urgent-like. Wolfman's Brother followed. There was a Quinn The Eskimo, a Roggae, a Split Open and Melt...it was all so elegant and pulsating and ALIVE and it was only the first set!! The second set is what gets me. It's all about the Piper, an epic version really, and surrounded by a just-as-sweet Tweezer and YEM. (My heart bled during While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I wanted to rip my shirt off in excitement.)

I was convinced that it was a brilliant set. I still am.

After the show, MaryJo and I decided to switch up our rides again. Back in Texas we made a pact to finish out this tour together and although it was the music which brought me here, it was MaryJo who convinced me to stay. Isn't it true that you leave your parents' house all alone and frightened and you realize that the tears you cry are yours; the laughs you laugh are yours, the joys, the pains, the fears, the fulfillments - all yours. And you realize that you truly are alone, and you're okay with this, and you can be strong and you can be steady and you've got a fairly good handle on things most of the time, but every once in awhile it's still nice to have someone there in case you slip. Because here and there you miss a foothole, or the ground gets a little slippery, or you get tired and you lag behind a little and it's hard to see the path. Times like this, if you're alone, you will still make it. But in the treasure chest of life, one of the crown jewels is knowing that you have someone to say, "This way!" or "Whoops, I've got ya!" when you lose your balance for a second. Without MaryJo, I wouldn't have been in Minneapolis that night, and that is an unexpected surprise that I never would've guessed just 10 days earlier.

Friends are a treasure whose gold never ends and it's funny all the twists and turns our roads sometimes take.

Anyway, it was a fun ride being in that Volkswagen. I mean I figured you're not officially on Phish tour unless you've been in a VW Bus and you're also not officially on Phish tour unless you've hopped a few rides. "Well shit!" I grinned, "Let's make this official!"

A friend of ours offered us a ride in a red Bronco. That'd be perfect, I thought. Going from the Red Sterling to a red Volkswagen to a red Bronco; across the continent and back in three rides and all in red. I should work for a rodeo.

Spun out and stoopid, what went down next was a comedy of serendipity and circumstance. Still basking in the show's elegance, still high from the Piper and the red red worm, we glided across the Minneapolis municipal parking lots to the VW. Inside the bus was Eric, another rider Ryan had just picked up apparently and a friend of ours as well. Are you getting the picture yet? Everyone was a friend of ours - phamily is real and it just keeps growing. Anyway, we grabbed some of our stuff and headed out back on the streets to find the Bronco.

The Phish lots were pretty much cleared by then and it seemed as though a different kind of insanity had taken over. There were clusters of cops on every corner, standing in lines of four or five. There were suspicious looking characters across the street by some strip club. Large clumps of people were stampeding in every direction, most of them drunk and none of them belonging to the Phish pack. Indeed, it felt like ravenous packs of wolves were descending on those two or three blocks of the Minneapolis wild, when in fact it was probably just the standard Saturday night parade of drunken fools, crying lonely in the night as the coyote's howl. Intoxicated women, inebriated men, high school football stars, prom queens - toss in a bunch of shady motherfuckers and policemen, and you have the scene we found ourselves in. Insanity, I tell you! To them though we were probably the insane ones and that, kids, is the Cosmic Goof. I mean, they're just going about their usual Saturday night rah-rah bar-hoping brawl, and here a bunch of crazy-eyed, smelly, laughing ecstasy gypsies had landed on their turf, as if we had fallen out of the sky....or come from the mountains. THEY were scared of US!!??!!

Likewise, we didn't know what to do. I'm walking by some strip club that advertised "many beautiful girls and three ugly ones" holding a laptop, sleeping bag, pillow and a small black bag of toiletries and it's two am and I can't exactly see straight. I mean, I think I can, but I'm not sure. With pupils the size of automobiles I go up to a cop and ask him "Is this okay?" (What was I thinking?!?!?!) "I mean, sir, is this safe?"

"Just keep on moving and you'll be fine" was his reply. Or something like that. My head was spinning. I realized I hadn't eaten anything for a long time. I remember looking for a Sammy Smith's earlier and settling for Gaterade. Anything was fine. Thirst was real. I contemplated dropping everything and running naked-like into the hills. I laughed it off and said outloud, "That might not be the best idea right now, but it's fun to entertain." A cop heard me and turned around. I smiled. MaryJo and I ran back to the bus and put our stuff down. "We're back." we told Eric, who was still sitting there, alone in the back. "Here's our stuff. We're going with you guys tonight. Don't leave without us." He seemed confused. We *were* confused. We hobbled back to the other lots. Things were looking sketchier than ever. It was all a game. I felt like yelling "Cock-a-doodle doo!" loudly and for no good reason. I'm glad now that I didn't. We found Matty and he told us where the Bronco was. He pointed to it. We decided to go with him after all. We went back to the bus, grabbed our stuff and told Eric, "Ahh, we've changed our minds again." I felt like a sucka. Everything had a psychedelic glint to it. Everything seemed like chaos and confusion. My head was still spinning. I didn't know what would happen next. It was wonderful.

We met the two other kids in our new ride. One of them was putting drops of liquid on the hands of a hooker, and then puddled himself with it. I knew I was going to love this kid.

As we drove out of the lots, he pointed to a bar. "I puddled every one of 'em in there too." he said with satisfaction. I looked at MaryJo. We had made the perfect decision. Here was a new adventure. As we stopped at a corner, one of them leaned out the window and yelled to a man coming out of a bar, "Yo holmes, ya wanna get puddled?" We took off in the night. I wonder if homeboy knew what would've happened to his mind that night if he had just stuck out his hand. Something revolutionary I'm sure. We ended up at a Residence Inn, where MaryJo and I laughed at the brochures we found in the lobby while kids around us were pouring unthinkable amounts of West Coast Liquid onto themselves. The obscenity! There didn't even need to be any Kool Aid - I knew off that bat that these kids had all taken The Test...and passed. That night, I fell asleep imagining that I was falling through space. I had the most incredible dreams.