Silver Slivers

83 Highland Avenue
Northport, New York

Time fails, everything else succeeds... timelessness and the Zen art of remaining cool as a goddamn cucumber in a traffic jam... silver slivers prick my ears, arms, and nose... the lack of movement as a way of traveling between planets... no destination, no expectations, no motivations, more... squirrels, squirrels, squirrels...

Time isn't holding up. Delirium set in a long time ago -- somewhere between Hartford and the Sit-Down Diner in Danbury where we stopped for a late dinner after the show. Everything since then has been something of a linear mess where no one moment has any importance over the next or last and things that happened minutes ago seem like hours, while the band just left the stage after the encore. People always say that a show reminded them of Phish from a certain year, like it was a flashback. What if the show in the past was a glimpse into the future? I'm at my parents' house right now - my house - listening to "the Siket Disc" in the living room as the sun comes up and lights the sky a gorgeous purple. History has melted and, for now, there are just events.

Traffic jams and distances have become inconsequential. I don't think of the distances between cities in miles, I think of them in hours -- as in how long it'll take to get from one place to another. It's a skewed way to look at things. Hartford, it seems, is about six hours away from Tarrytown. At least, that's how long it took yesterday, so the two hour commute seemed like nothing today. Besides, every moment spent in a car lately - and there've been a lot - is just another entrance into a weird kind of timeless space where everything is nebulous; not entirely unlike that point of ambiguous beauty Phish occasionally reaches with songs where the structures disappear and a very specific kind of music comes into play. What would it be like to live one's life permanently in that space, I wonder?

I once had a perfect experience walking through downtown Oberlin. It was sometime in the mid-spring of this year and it was drizzling lightly. The rain was barely perceptible and felt like no more than tiny strands of silver rubbing against my arms every now and again. I had to go to town to run some errands and the rain wasn't nearly enough to stop me from walking. On the way there, I put on Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" on my discman. As I walked, I discovered that the light rain had been just enough to unlock any and all scents encased in the newly blooming flowers. Every single one of my senses erupted into a glorious consciousness for the duration of the walk. I was at a complete and tranquil peace with everything. For a brief moment, I knew what it felt like to be enlightened -- which isn't the same thing as being enlightened, mind you. Everything - the music, the rain, the smells - existed in a continuous flow.

I've just about reached a certain point with Phish where everything - good or ill - seems to enter into a similar kind of flow. It all makes sense, whether or not it's worthy music. On one hand, some notion of objectivity seems to be melting away. On the other hand, Phish's music makes more sense to me now than it ever has before: specifically, the spaces that are contained within it that the band slips in and out of unconsciously. The first set tonight, the second night of the band's two-night stand at the Hartford Meadows, wasn't anything special. At the same time, everything about it worked in a very keen way. There was something about that breathed, even if it wasn't great (or even good) music, per se.

Neither of the two big jams in the set - Wolfman's Brother and Split Open and Melt - really clicked in the ways they have in the past. The Melt, it seemed, had trouble attaining that level of liquid groove that has made it so beautiful lately. There were moments when the band the slipped out of the 9/8 cycle that keeps them usually locked into it, but they kept slipping back in -- alternating between structure and beauty, and pushing the boundary between the two. Little things in the set made sense: Trey comping the rhythm part for the traditional bluegrass song New River Train during the solo break in Poor Heart, for example... or the way Trey, Mike, and Page interpret the melody of Dirt differently as it shifts from voice to voice.

The second set fared much better, working to construct an internal logic. The opening trio of tunes, all from "Farmhouse", worked well together. There've been four Gotta Jibboos so far on this tour and I'm still not convinced I'll get sick of the song. The jam, when done right, is perfect, and has done well in conveying an important lesson embodied in the last few years' worth of Phish's music: a piece of music doesn't necessarily have to go anywhere to be pretty. Once there, Jibboo stayed pretty locked in to the same flowing kind of ambiance where it becomes something egoless: free of both the egos of the musicians as well as the ego of the song structure. It exists without forcing itself on anything, let alone time.

First Tube is something of an anomaly in the family of songs it belongs to (Sand, Jibboo, Ghost, etc.). There is a point A and a point B inherent in the tune; it has an ending that is different from just returning to the head of the song. There is a danger in a song that works like this, with tension and release: it relies on a very precise kind of energy that Phish happens to be very good at manipulating right now. But they probably won't be forever, especially in light of Trey's recent comments about the band's direction. If First Tube is going to survive and be vital, the groove in the middle will somehow have to become a portal to the same kind of space provided by Jibboo -- that ambiguous beauty. It's not too far off from it, and each passing version seems to be moving closer as the middle moves closer and closer to a trancey drone. It's not there yet, though. Now, it's just a race against time.

The first jam out of Mike's Song was, unfortunately, pretty lame. It was a failed experiment in the same way that the Raleigh Scent Of A Mule was -- extended soloing by Trey on the same octave pedal that he's been using for his feedback hijinx at the end of nearly every show this summer. It's a noble effort. Trey clearly has something in mind for this pedal, some kind of sound in his head. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be translating it properly quite yet, though I look forward to the time when he does. After the jam dropped into the big F chord (where they sometimes begin Simple), the improvisation - briefly - entered into a very uncluttered area, which sounds like it could've easily entered My Left Toe.

When the band doesn't have a clue as to where they're going, that is the kind of music they seem to play. It turned up a few times tonight: in the noise following Bug, in the brief jam in between Mike's and Swept Away, and again between Steep and I am Hydrogen. It's a beautiful kind of music and, judging by the way the band carelessly dashes it off, it's also a very automatic kind of music. I only wish the band would give into this instinct a little bit more and let one of those jams take them somewhere. They're end-of-song noise-fests have begun to evolve little by little from Trey-induced flailing to the border of a new land of sparkling Sonic Youth-like white noise.

The energy level in Weekapaug Groove was kind of squirrely, darting everywhere. It acted as a mid-ground which tied together the sparse funk of the Mike's jam, the ambiance of Jibboo, and the energy of First Tube and the Ghost that followed. Though it wasn't necessarily the highlight, the Weekapaug was most likely the keynote/keystone for the set. Trey's guitar tone was airy throughout and it blended perfectly with both Page's chunky synth parts and Mike's thick bass tone. The segue into Nellie Kane was perfect. Trey began to quote the song in earnest, almost as unconsciously as he did New River Train in Poor Heart, but this time the rest of the band picked up on it and, within moments, they had dropped whole into the song, which Mike sang with a mature expressiveness he seems to have only recently developed.

The Ghost which followed - the first of the tour - was an exercise in energy build. The band moved from a fairly typical, mellow Ghost jam, to a point where it seemed they could've slipped into the ending of the unfinished Weekapaug without much surprise, to a chaotic point even higher than that. While Ghost doesn't have an ending, it's nice to see the band being able to confidently create a spontaneous one when need be. It would've been nice had they picked up on the idea of a Weekapaug reprise, providing a nice cap for the set, but what they did worked just fine -- and made absolutely perfect sense.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage.