Set I:

For the past 20 years, whenever I hear Phish’s “Wading in the Velvet Sea”—whether live or listening on my own—I am immediately brought back to August 15, 2004, when Phish—an American rock band with a maniacal following, of which I am a part—played a weekend festival in Coventry, Vermont. It was supposed to be their last show of all time having announced their break-up that May (spoiler alert: they got back together in 2009 and have been raging since).

But this summer Sunday in 2004, when we still think we are at the end of our journey, after the first song of the second of three sets, keyboardist Page McConnell begins the opening chords of “Wading in a Velvet Sea” on his baby grand. Guitarist Trey Anastasio taps something on the ground—a foot pedal or two?—and walks to sip a drink. Trey, bassist Mike Gordan, and drummer Jon Fishman—and eventually Page—begin singing along to the Page’s tingling keys.

“I’ve been wading in the velvet sea. I’ve been wading in the velvet sea. I’ve been wading in the velvet sea. I’ve been wading in the, I’ve been wading in the…” They repeat the phrasing again and again and again—a total of four times. By now, we can hear the tender percussion of drums.

“I took a moment from my day,” Page sings, and begins to smile on “day,” dipping away. He becomes breathy, and his throat barely gets out, “and wrapped it up with,” as he tucks his chin to the left and taps his left hand on the microphone as he adjusts it in the air and looks towards the rest of the band. He turns his head back to the microphone as his eyes blink towards the sky.

He briefly glances out towards the crowd—all 65,000 plus of us, who have braved thunderstorms and 36-hour traffic jams and car-stopping mud piles to be here. We’re cheering loudly by now.

He puts his head down towards the keys, gracefully shaking it back and forth as he plays.

He tries again.

“I took a moment from my day, and wrapped it up in things you say,” he stops playing and his right hand grips the mic, grasping to hold himself together, “and mailed it off to your address.”

His voice is shaking as he attempts, “You’ll get it pretty soon I guess.”

Then, he surrenders to his sadness, his grief—he “surrenders to the flow,” as the lyrics from their song “Lizard” say, which has become a motto for our maniacal fanbase—and straightens the microphone out with his arm so we can sing it for him. So we can help shoulder the weight.

“You won’t find moments in a box, and someone else will set your clocks,” Page puts his head down and stops singing so he can start to play, Trey choked up now too, “I took a moment from my day, and wrapped it up in things you say, and mailed it off to you.”

They stop playing, ever so briefly. We all cheer. Then, the music monsters on.

He will soon extend the microphone out as we help hold him through, keeping each other afloat.

Similarly, I’ve spent a lot of my life keeping myself afloat. While I am now 20 years recovered from a decade-long eating disorder, I manage anxiety and a propensity for depression and suicidal ideation in a continual basis. And while I am also 20 years recovered from self-harm, at various moments throughout the last years, especially, I’ve wrestled with self-harm impulses or what I call “flare ups,” despite managing to sustain harm-reduction and keep myself from fully relapsing behaviorally—sometimes lasting minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes weeks.

I’ve long known that my relationship to my mental health and my love for maniacally following and listening to this band (I’ve seen them live 140 times) are somehow stunningly intertwined. I’ve known that since I was in college and—after my younger brother was hit by a car and killed the week after I was raped—I started seeing the head of counseling services on campus once a month as additional support, on top of a weekly therapist.

We were sitting in her Counseling and Psychological Services office at the University of Pennsylvania. I was talking about Phish (as I am wont to do) and she said how she too listened to Phish. And how the thing she most liked was that because we never really know where the music is going (they do loads of improvisation and never repeat a set list; ever), it allowed her to relinquish control and practice becoming comfortable with—even celebratory of—anticipation.

It clicked. Listening to Phish was quite literally teaching me how to surrender to the flow.

In fact––I realized––Phish had been teaching me that since my very first live show. While I’d been listening to Phish for a few years (I had two on-ramps: first in seventh grade when a friend had my music teacher let us sing “Bouncing Around the Room” in our music concert; second in ninth grade, when my dad’s college intern filled all six CD slots in our Volvo with Phish and he more formally––full blown elder Gen X style––introduced me to the band after I asked why there weren’t a lot of lyrics and they kept repeating “David Bowie” and “UB40” over and over), my first official show was July 8, 2000, at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin. I was 17. I went with two freshmen. One guy I knew from theater; the other was his friend. While I had my license and a car, my parents wouldn’t let me drive, claiming the hour and a half trip up I-94 from Wilmette, Illinois, to East Troy, Wisconsin, was too far. A family friend, Vladimir, who owned a limousine company, drove us in a fancy black sedan. I was mortified.

As we neared the venue on that sunny Saturday afternoon in July, stuck in traffic, I got out of the car to walk alongside the cornfields that kissed the Midwest highway. Everywhere—as far as the plains could see—hippie kids in patchwork clothing ambulated with their fingers in the air, looking for tickets to get inside. I felt arrived, home. I wanted more. I never wanted to leave.

At the time, I was deep into the throes of the eating disorder, which began at age 11, as well as depression and struggles with self-harm. I was also grappling with having been sexually assaulted for a year and a half in early high school by a peer. To say I was having a hard time in my body would be an understatement. And having been a dancer, figure skater, and theater kid, the formalized training in my self-loathed body and eating disordered-brain was an ongoing hell.

So when––at some point during the first set––I felt a burst of possibility as the sound waves hit my skin, I pushed my way out of my seat and erupted into the aisle, something broke. For the first time in my life, my body took over my brain. The early seeds of my eventual recovery from the eating disorder, sexual assault, and the rape still to come at 19, were planted in my hips.

Phish became where I could embody my body. Phish became where I could let go of control. 

Now 24 years since that first show, and 20 years since the head of CAPS told me her take on Phish, I’ve held on to it all: Phish as my body’s physical respite, and also a space for my brain to practice letting myself mentally stretch. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized how it wasn’t just consuming the music that was helping me flex my flexibility, my relationship to following Phish—like that potent and poignant moment with Page during “Wading in the Velvet Sea”—was helping me stay afloat and shoulder the weight of my mental health in a way I didn’t fully previously grasp. 

* * *

Set II:

It’s December 30, 2023. I’m at Madison Square Garden. I’m Mike’s Side (which means on the right side of the arena, since Mike and his bass take up residence on the right side of the stage; Page Side is the left side, which is where Page and his merriment of keyed instruments reside.)

Tonight, I’m sitting with a friend who has us in incredible seats.

It is—again—the second song of the second set. But tonight’s a standard show, so to speak. There are two sets and an encore (tomorrow—New Year’s Eve—will be, like in Coventry—three sets). The song is “Tweezer,” which I feel comfortable describing as anthemic. When “Tweezer” starts, we know there is going to be a long jam (the longest to date was a 50-minute and 17-second “Tweezer” in Memphis in 1995; but in general, it’s usually sizably long).

This Tweezer is 13:16 minutes long, and somewhere on its journey into the next song “Twist,” I have an epiphany. I realize how freeing it is to have physically gotten myself to a place where I’m so open to possibility, so flexible with uncertainty, to explore chance in such a safe way. Outside of the expectations of work. Outside of any risk of causing harm myself or anyone else. And here in this safe bubble I have created for myself, I am able to find out that it’s possible to be calm and uncertain without being seeped in anxiety. I am able to explore a calmer mind.

A mere two weeks prior I’d had a panic attack and barricaded myself in my bathtub. I got super triggered by something and took a pillow and blanket and my body clad in a black cotton robe and laid myself on in the waterless tub to keep myself from harming myself.

There in the empty bathtub, I called a friend, who listened to me hyperventilate and sob. 

Eventually I was okay enough to get myself out of the bathtub and ensure I wasn’t a safety risk. 

I canceled going to a Hanukkah party.

I took care of myself.

I of course let my therapist know too. 

And what does all of this have to do with Phish?

It was hard to commit to four nights of seeing my favorite band in the wake of compounding atrocities, massacres, and horrors happening both in the Middle East and throughout the country and world. The direct and indirect impact on too many of my loved ones across myriad identities and nationalities. The death and destruction incurred by tens and hundreds of thousands of people I will never directly know. Loved ones with loved ones displaced, captive, or dead. Loved ones and their loved ones fearing for their lives. Feeling continually caught in the ideological storm as a leftist American Jew pushing to expand my container for grief and love to hold everyone––all of my loved ones, all of their loved ones––and the unrelenting catastrophic griefs.

It felt impossible to flock off to four nights of Phish in the middle of such devastation. Even though there is and has always been so much devastation happening around the country and world while I’m seeing concerts. Even when those atrocities are happening inside or next door to the arenas in which I’m seeing shows. But this fall––especially––it felt eminently unavoidable and loud. 

It also felt potentially unsafe (because while my body is physically safe where I am, I was feeling unsafe in my head) to commit to anything—especially something that felt seemingly frivolous or even “fun”—when I was in an hour-by-hour and day-by-day space with my mental health. 

As I approached Phish’s four-night MSG run, I decided to play which shows I would see by ear.

I’m a planner. Not only with seeing Phish and other live music, but in life overall. I use a paper Kate Spade calendar. I schedule things months out in advance. I’m not so rigid that I’m not up for what I call controlled spontaneity. But I most certainly spent the first two decades of my Phish-following life in levels of high anxiety around what shows I was seeing, whether or not I had tickets, where they were, with whom I was going, what time I’d get to the venue, etcetera.

But something shifted during the earlier parts of the pandemic. Perhaps because Phish—and most touring acts—went off stage for a bit. Spending so much time in social isolation and disconnected from the normalized hustle and bustle of capitalism and my overly scheduled and at times debilitatingly busy life, I realized I could ease up needing to so intensely control going to shows (and it’s maybe worth noting at this point that I haven’t had drugs or alcohol in 20 years, a choice that coincided with recovering from the eating disorder, not because I had a problem with either, but because part of my commitment to ceasing from harming my body was to fully treat it like the temple it is, which means I’m dead ass sober at every show). 

For so long, Phish had become one of the many things I felt I could control in an uncontrollable world. I’d prioritize Phish over so much else (family vacations, loved ones’ birthdays, not having credit card debt). (And p.s. we haven’t talked about this yet, but like forget mental health, there’s also money involved, as well, and as a check-to-check freelancer, I have to factor that in each choice and step of the way too, especially because financial instability exacerbates my anxiety and mental health!). And it wasn’t that Phish replaced the eating disorder or became an addiction in and of itself, but it most certainly became––and still is––a place for me to release. But maybe my priorities shifted. Or maybe my need to be so controlling in the first place began to breathe.

Here in this new “Play It By Ear” Era, I don’t push or plot what nights I’ll see, including New Year’s itself. In late-October, after first checking to see how I’m doing with everything happening in the world, a friend asks what shows I’m planning to attend. I say I’m playing it by ear, and as things unfold—first a night with he and his wife, then a night with another friend, then a second night with the aforementioned friend and his wife and some of our other friends—I find myself with three nights of tickets that sort of just organically fell into place. Fine.

But the real takeaway while standing in the arena on December 30, 2023, is realizing how liberating and freeing it is (no doubt juxtaposed to the lack of liberation worldwide) to know I still don’t know if I am going to go to see Phish the next night on New Years Eve. (And it’s a good thing I did because the New Year’s Eve show was historic; I’d have been super pissed). 

Standing there on December 30, looking at the stage, taking in the music, now three days into the run, still unsure if I am going to even go the next night, I realize that Phish is a safe place for me to not only experience the anticipation of the set list and music, but the choice to go at all.

There is so little to control in an uncontrolled world. 

If I could trust my body and my intuition to know what I can handle, I could also trust my brain. 

The further I get into being recovered from an eating disorder and self-harming behavior, the more I deepen my understanding of and relationship to my anxiety and propensity for suicidal ideation, depression, and self-harming impulses and thoughts. The better I learn the cartography of the landscape, the elements of the ecosystem. The more holistic my knowledge of my brain and its interplay with my feelings, thoughts, and emotions become.

The more I both know and honor and exercise that which I need to stay afloat.

There is a privilege in this, yes. It was also a turning point for me. Something loosened. Lifted. 

I realize too that I would have had more anxiety feeling fastened into all four nights instead of three given the way my mental health had been. That too is progress, learning my unique flow.

After the New Year’s Eve show, I head to my friends’ hotel room (after grabbing snacks at a nearby 7-Eleven) and join them and some other friends to hang. It’s not unusual for me to be comfortable rolling entirely solo to a show (which is what ended up happening for this one), and definitely not unusual to have made friends with the person next to me (who wept on my shoulder when the second set began, which has to do with the aforementioned historical nature of the show, which literally no one will care about unless they’re a Phish fan, and if you are, you know what I’m talking about, but it’s not worth otherwise explaining so I’ll spare the rest of you), but one friend does take note to give nod to how wild it is that I was willing to wait until that morning to get my ticket. He says I used to have so much ticket anxiety. This shift is new. 

Mental health wise, I’ve overall had an easier last eight months since then. I’m still devastated by what’s happening throughout the country and world. I’ve still had plenty of rough anxiety and a few self-harm impulse patches here and there throughout the spring and summer. But as someone who has lived with anxiety and mental health challenges my entire life and will presumably continue to do so for the rest of my life, the more I learn the ebbs and flows of my brain, the better I am able to withstand the whirling winds of chaos and change. I’ve felt that now since.

* * *

Encore:

It’s August 10, 2024. Almost 20 years to the day since that night at Coventry. It is night two of Phish’s three-night run at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York. I remain in my “Play It By Ear” Era. I hadn’t intended to see tonight’s show. I came last night having borrowed a friend’s car and already been in upstate New York for a work gig, and I was intending to drive back to Brooklyn—where I live—earlier today. But yesterday, as I left the Walmart parking lot in Kerhonkson, New York, where I purchased the full-body rain suit that would become a necessary accessory amidst the on and off rain throughout the show (that one of the people I ended up spontaneously meeting up with and watching the show with was coincidentally wearing and rocking too), a friend’s husband (who is also my friend) reached out to see if I was going to the Saturday show. Before I knew it, I was crashing with them, utilizing one of his extra lawn tickets, and standing back on the lawn at Bethel, now in the stunning sun.

As my friend’s husband (also my friend) and his friend and I make our way to the lawn, pick up our rented lawn chairs, and settle into a spot, I run into one of the people with whom I’d spent the show the night before. She points me to our mutual friend, to whom I walk over to say hi, and then another mutual friend and her friend bump into us, and then it’s all a reminder—as seeing Phish usually is for me—that once you catch the wave, it all surfs itself into place.

While I live by the “everything happens for a reason” motto, I still struggle with it too, given the grave injustices and inequities on earth. Given how challenging it can be sometimes for me to maintain life inside and with my own head.

While Phish helps allow me to catch a wave and surrender to its flow so that I can unlearn and learn the ocean of life and my mental health and brain all in time, so too the wretched waves crashing against the shore subsist. So too they pound and press and pull.

I love Phish’s unpredictability. But the unpredictability of life can be a particularly rough rush to hold. To surrender to mortality and its subsidiary grief, as well as the twists and turns of mental health—in this case, my own—I’m trying to find where the surrender intersects.

And here’s the thing.

I want to surrender to the flow of my mental health. I think that helps support my ability to live my life. It helps me surrender my need to control, both my mental health and my life, since I can’t control the world around me, even though I’ve tried by trying to control myself. 

But somewhere over the last year or so, I’ve accepted that my mental health has a mind of its own. And I can either fight it, try to control it, or meet it with an abundance of trust and care. 

At night two of Bethel, Phish closes out the first set with “Run Like an Antelope” (I love the song so much, I named my first and only car––I’ve lived in New York City for 17 years––after it––“Antelope;” and yes, Antelope was a Volvo). “Antelope,” as we fans tend to call the song for short, is one of those many Phish songs without a lot of lyrics. The musicality is itself the dialect. The notes are the language and words. The song builds with anticipation, in a way that is––perhaps amongst the canon that is Phish’s library––in a league of its own. I’d argue a handful or two of other songs do what “Antelope” does, but it’s one of their earliest songs, and so there’s a rawness about it, a bunch of young musicians surrendering to their thirst for their instruments and this artform that gives them––and as a result, hundreds of thousands of us––life. 

Towards the end of the song, after the musical build up has taken us into the stratosphere of euphoria, after the song takes its usual sharp turn like a BMX bike scatting across the blacktop on a 1997 middle school playground, after my body is pulsing to the now poppy and swinging rhythm of guitar, and keys, and bass, and drums, after lighting designer Chris Kuroda has started syncopating a symphony of bright crisp light waltzing across the pavilion and into the lawn’s sky, after the band starts softly singing, “Run, run, run, run, run, run” over and over again, Trey thrusts his mouth to the mic and shouts, “Set the gear shift to the high gear of your soul!” And we all scream. Our ocean screams. “You’ve got to run like an antelope, out of control!”

“You’ve got to run like an antelope out of control,” all four of them sing. And second time. And a third. Fourth. During all of which I am, in fact, running like an antelope, out of control. 

And I feel it in my body. Like that first time at Alpine Valley. And every show since. Like that night at MSG in December, I know that this is a safe place for me to lose control. To release. 

There is something so liberating about surrender. Knowing too it is also a privilege to be able to do so. In a world built on systemic oppression and disenfranchisement, there is a privilege in having the choice and access and ability to relinquish and surrender and trust we’ll stay afloat.

We can’t actually all surrender in a world where many of us are subject to death or harassment or police brutality or one late check away from being unhoused or a medical bill away from bankruptcy or displaced or fearing daily from hunger or starvation or trying to seek safety from literal bombs.

In an unraveling world wrought now and always with mass and state-sanctioned violence and massacre and famine and authoritarianism, we do not all have the ability to surrender to the flow.

And still too, in the depths of my “Play It By Ear” Era, rather than the depths of my despair, I’m practicing giving myself permission to experience some fucking ease. I don’t think it helps my own brain or the larger atrocities occurring on the planet when I resist the ease. I think it’s worth resisting oppression. I think it’s worth resisting systems that demand us to cause or experience harm. But I don’t think it’s worth resisting my brain, trying to control everything so tightly that I don’t allow myself a surrendering into the seas of possibility as a way to wade in the sea of this life and help to keep myself afloat.