“There are only two roads that lead to something like human happiness. They are marked by the words: love and achievement….In order to be happy oneself it is necessary to make atleast one other person happy….The secret of human happiness is not in self – seeking but in self – forgetting.”
-Theodore Reik, A Psychologist Looks At Love
The road toward Phall Tour lay ahead. It was September second, leaving Troy and Kali a week to get to Albany for the first show. They had saved only about two hundred bucks to get off their first leg of the journey. It didn’t deter them, they were in love and could conquer all of this together.
The little red two door car of Kali’s was packed to the gills with clothes, books, food and various toiletries and things she couldn’t leave behind. The whole apartment from which she had come was in the trailer on farmer Johns property. He had given her permission to leave behind whatever they did not take to pick up after tour.
Phish Fall Tour was a twenty – one show series of dates starting on the ninth, ending a month later out west in San Francisco on October seventh. Troy and Kali had no tickets, and both desperately hoped they could make the journey worthwhile.
Troy had drove the first leg of the journey to Philadelphia, where he had hoped they would stop and visit his family. They indeed reached their destination after one brief rest stop in central Pennsylvania near by where Troy had been born. Troy had been afforded the opportunity to meet Kali’s parents in Michigan, having a rather uneventful dinner at their home. Kalis family had horses, and he been able to ride the older female while there, his first experience on a horse. In the end, for obvious reasons Kali’s parents had decided they were against the relationship. Their only grounds for being together were sex, drugs and rock and roll.
In the little town of Media Troy got them a room in a cheap motel. It was notorious for housing migrating caddies for his home golf club. Kali was ill and the week before had gone to the hospital with a severe urinary tract infection. She and Ashley stayed behind in the forty dollar motel to rest while Troy went out in his hometown for the first time in months to see what he could do.
A visit to a member of the garage crews’ parents proved to be worthwhile. This was one of the best friends from Troy’s days there. His father was a doctor of there. Troy obtained a full series of antibiotic medications for free from his friends father to cure the ailing Kali. Disappointed by his friends absence at the house, he moved on to his parents.
As Troy pulled into the driveway of his parents house, he was struck with a homesick melancholy, and he became very anxious to see his family. Forgetting where he had left the relationship, he knocked on the door and entered. What happened next was tragically foreseeable. He no more than had said hello to his mother when his adopted father came yelling into the room. “Get the fuck out of my house, NOW!!” he yelled shaking a fist threateningly.
He shoved Troy towards the door before he could get a word in edgewise. Fear of his father shook through him. Through the door his mother screamed “I’m calling the cops!!”
Nothing had changed. Troy climbed back into Kalis car and sped off down the road, crying silently to himself. When he reached the motel, Kali was asleep. When she woke, Troy was still softly crying to himself over the incident.
The following day they left for Albany. It was here that Troy had made his boyhood home for a number of years, and he told stories of his life there the whole way. It was the night before the first show when they arrived.
Troy guided them to his old boyhood neighborhood. There they visited with his boyhood best friend and his parents for a few hours before moving on. They spent the night camped out in the woods where he had walked his dog years ago.
The following day they bought the water and ice to pack the cooler with to make ends meet. Parking was a nightmare, however they finally ended up parked in the Empire State plaza parking structure. Scouting the street, there was not much of a shakedown to work with. Tapers lined the front of the former Knickerbocker Arena, now renamed The Pepsi Arena waiting to go inside and set up their recording equipment.
This was a regular thing, Phish being amongst the league of tour based bands who allow fans to tape their shows with recording equipment and to freely trade shows. Tapers bought tickets in the ”tapers section” in the front row of the audience.
The Empire State Plaza in Albany was a sparkling hub for the city. There was art all over, and city hall on the corner. Everywhere still statues of pedestrians seemingly caught in time and frozen in their tracks stood on various corners, entrances, and walkways. Citizens preserved in midstride with open facial expressions that would never change through the years. The capital consisted of two towers which visitors could climb in a high speed elevator to an observatory.
An egg shaped stadium that hosted theatre and various conferences including Troys middle school acting days in “Shakespeare Fest” stood there in the center of town. Thousands of square feet, the oblong stadium was football shaped rising out of a platform that held it like a giant football trophy at a tilt in the Albany skyline. Thus its name “The Egg”. These buildings were all connected and leading to the Pepsi Arena by a series of glass enclosed breezeways like that of a major airport with its wide staircases and escalators.
Kali and Troy wandered its various paths and walkways, took the tour to the top of the building to view the city by. They were obvious participants to the show in town, and stuck out like sore thumbs. The buildings were filled with business men in suits, themselves dressed in hippy garb. Kali wore a flower print one piece dress she had gotten at her first show at Polaris, Troy in his patchwork pants and a t – shirt. The Public Interest Research Group had spearheaded a drive there in the parking lot. Troy was dressed in the patches he bought the same place. They were not working for The Waterwheel Foundation on this venture, though they hoped to further its cause.
In each city of tour the groups not – for – profit Waterwheel Foundation set up tables for donation to a select conservation or wildlife preservation cause raising millions over the course of the national tour.
As the evening stretched on crowds of show goers filled the narrow city street surrounding the arena. Kali and Troy spent from sex in the top floors of the capital building done for the sake of the thrill, tiredly resolved to deal their goods. The water was gone within an hour, and they held no further responsibility to the night. They split up for the time being, for Troy to return the dog and the water cooler to the car.
Ashley trotted beside him through the indoor breezeways of the capital, happily visiting with people here and there throughout the journey back to the car. The night had soon passed quickly, and without seats in the concert.
They drove the miles to the next show at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Together they made an incredible team, selling their goods out within the first few hours of lot. This parking lot was more like the ones Troy had experienced over the summer. Old faces began to stick out in the crowd. He saw Jim and Carlos, Mark and Carey, amongst others.
As the second set came roaring to a beginning, Kali came screaming to Troy “I got tickets!! I got tickets!! Lets go!!!”
It was magic. The first miracle of tour, their first show together. They spent the rest of the night dancing, closing with an encore Squirming Coil, the song Troy had performed for her on her parents piano back in Michigan.
The next show was Darien Center at the Darien Lake Six Flags near Buffalo, New York. They had stopped with fumes to spare at the rest stop a few miles short of the show. There they sat together in the sun and made crafts to sell at the show. A ride was found to the lot, and they rode in beside a school bus conversion made by kids from Alaska. The bus was incredible, complete with a wood burning stove inside, labeled “Home” on the front of it.
There Troy introduce Kali to Dream, and Larry who was wandering with his parrot on his shoulder. The lot was a tiny one as the show started, and they were approached by Carey and Jim.
Carey and Jim had resolved to skip this show, and recognizing them gave them two miracle tickets to the show. The payment was done in hugs. After the show they got a ride back to the rest stop, where they gassed the car up. The kid who gave the ride to them had come expecting to trade the full Deer Creek shows on CD for his ticket, but had gotten in for free, and so he gave them to Troy.
They went on to the show in Hershey, PA. At Hershey Troy spent some more tie with Dream, talking of his years on the road with the Dead. He learned there was a further show in Camden, and it was decided they would go to Camden.
Short of Philadelphia Kali and Troy stopped at his families house to visit. The place was a multi million dollar mansion in the country, and Troy hoped to see his family while taking rest for the show the following night. There was no answer to the knock at the door, and Troy resolved to leave a not for them explaining their visit. He and Kali set up a tent in the expanse of grass behind the office converted nineteenth century barn and there spent the night.
Troy was an aspiring writer, and told stories to Kali late into the night. It was a daydream about a child gone wandering through the countryside. She met many talking animals along the way and soon found herself in a field of sunflowers that brought to life the dreams she now envisioned amongst the talking flowers of the field. Troy called Kali “sunflower” for the rest of their time together.
The morning came ,and they went to the site of the beginning of this venture for Troy. Camden was filled with the kids and elders who had been in the circus folk of Hershey. Camden became Bryce Jordan Further outside of State College, PA and Troy found himself growing nearer in heart to these people. He dreamt of making it on the crew and never ending this lifestyle. He talked to some of the crew outside of the arena that night. He felt part of this family like never before as they lay outside listening to The Other Ones “China Cat Sunflower” into a revved up “I Know You Rider” beside Ashley playing on the lawn. The mind once filled with tension and drug filled anxiety was replaced with love and affection for the life he had. They drove on that night in silence, Troy listening to his inner thoughts.
“Of all nights I chose the stormiest to venture forward. It was midday gone and the sun strode through the strides of my eager foot on the gas pedal, its reaching acceleration. The acceleration was reaching overboard to the dreary side view mirror streaking the roadway past my ever changing head. I had taken four tabs sometime back in the years that now were midday sun flashing back the stream of consciousness in the forefront of my frontal lobe now inside of the passenger seat. Her wetness lingered on my fingers, and the phrase on the foreground of the music streamed my finger inward in thought.”
“It moaned the road did, thinking the right path on the way to the right mind of the still perched policeman clocking us on the way across the border.”
“Time had stopped for the night, but Vegas to come would stay with me for the eternity beyond and into the lifetime next. In his righteousness the preacher Buddhas temple aware of itself somewhere in my wrong mind created the journey. The hand thought on its way inward physically. I had the fresh sensation of an area cloudburst coming through the air from the side intent of the passenger window as it seemed to light in the cracked windshield. I screamed.”
“The windshield cracked and I realized my stifle had begun her moaning "oh put it in Troy, put it in" I did, erotically, maybe timidly... was I uptight? “
“I was feeling the wetness of the seat behind her my hand sliding off the neutral gear as it went forward. It was good this life in fifth gear.”
“It thought itself forward for the blackness that loomed from the pristine car interior now filling me as I filled it with my omnipresence. Its semi lit car interior felt good for the sporty lowness of my sexual intent. The thought seemed to make sense.”
“Thats your hand inside of a girl, a woman, back off the gas and pull over."
“I did it in my mind but instead played a missing chord from the phrase Van Halen screamed from the “Twister Soundtrack” into my fingers as they ear tuned two thousand years of “Humans Being” into effect. “
“oh Troy... mmm.... harder" a sigh escaped her as she stared at the road out the passenger side flying past at fifty. I Forgot the road itself and it had forgetten about that foot pedal and we drove on to toward the show. The show. The show.”
“The right mind of the leftist wing in the creation of the political minded dweebs behind me at the golf club out there were feeling my wanderlust for death. Some fat old woman who owned an empire thought she was sexy a thousand miles away and I was sweet and not going to carry her clubs for the day. She blushingly put the club in my mind for her caddy whose ass she stared at seeing my own.”
“It was the road in itself that fought to maintain. The road itself I thought as the gingerly gingering ginger of her gingering the seat cushion gills open and inviting swimming with light fresh lusty scent. Her scent filled free the air from the converted air conditioner, now my toy to put to use as I got hard.”
“I laughed at putting it out openly though the thought was not actually audible. The freeness of the occasion put into a gear that was frustratingly not pulling me over to finish. This was it.”
As if the night had won its right over their eyes, he thought they were yet missing something. It would have been to no cause for the night to search for it. The missing link seemed built on an endless eternity. The nonsense was built on the foundation of the acid he had consumed. It was Riverbend Music Center, Cincinatti, Ohio.
The parking lot had wielded miracle after miracle ticket handed out as if it were candy.
The secret society of hippies or wannabes, whichever, of met their generations destruction in the midst of this circus. The American political climate now was growing but faltering on its own legs of those fathers and mothers who could by their responsible age made these kids responsible for conscientious objection all too often in overbearing objectivity.
Members of the society that had followed in the streets of the sixties rather than in the offices of the government, these were those kids reborn. With long hair that they had hid their fortunes to come in dreadlocks and beads that now hung from hundreds of dollars of hair wraps. They were as their parents had been. Too good to follow in light of the conscience of their American spirit whatever hip hop culture had now taken form.
They flocked around Kali and Troy, handing over drugs and tickets with the careless cheer of youth. Troy had sucked down several hits of LSD on a Sweet Tart.
Habit forming, the ticket frenzy came and went . They were on to the arena in all of its glory sucking them in with hopes and dreams beyond compare.
The night filled with sound inside of the arena. The sound seemed to fill a space much larger than just the arena. The notes themselves were filled mantra, with knowing. A Velvet Sea descended on Kali and Troy in the warm rain. Troy found himself filling with awe and wonder as the lights of the stage weaved themselves in to a pattern over her love lit eyes.
Climbing into the car after the show, he got in the line to make their exit. The radio lit to life with a flick of her wrist, and suddenly the air filled with sound wave pattern of streaming colors from the car stereo speakers.
He looked at her and filled with a knowledge he would take this love of her to his grave. Her hair blew in the breeze, and before his eyes the face wilted and withered and became that of an old woman. It then began to decay and rot before his eyes until moments later she was just a skeleton with glowing eyes, blonde hair streaming back it seemed from Sinatras glowing voice on the radio.
“Troy! Go!” she reminded him, and he fell out of this Buddhaverse seeing the line of cars had advanced a hundred feet.
Several shows later in Chicago they had been car pooling with another girl and the two brothers with her. On the way to replace a tire on Kali’s own car that had blown flat coming out of Darien Lake. She got into an accident.
The incident left her heading home for Atlanta, abandoning the rest of her tour. The two kids on board with her wished to go onward, however.
One of the two kids was the same age as Troy, and had seemed to hit it off with Kali. She announced to Troy that they were going to travel with them to his displeasure. That night after a coursing parking lot they made camp at a motel with the two and an older head with whom they had made camp for the two shows prior. The tents were drenched from rain, and they needed a night indoors.
It was after the Target Center that several of the kids Troy had fund for them to share a motel room with had shown off a stick of heroin. Troy had been aware of what a bad scene this was, and had taken Kali and left. The show following, sure enough one of the group had turned up dead of an overdose, another in jail. Troy had a bad feeling about these two as well.
He soon learned the two were traveling with hundreds of hits of acid with which to support themselves. This was a breach of the law which if caught in possession would carry years of imprisonment for attempted manslaughter. Late that night after pulling into the motel Troy took one of the hits, bracing himself to stay awake for the night. He would wake her later, he had to convince Kali to leave in the night without the two.
As he lay in one of the twin beds with her late in the night the high peaked. The faces of the children on a childrens charity commercial turned into the various face of the Buddha scroll. Little blue Buddhas in the Lotus Position came visually in focus all over the wallpaper of the room. Soon the room was a mesh of vibes in colorful pulses coursing through the Buddhas. It was time to go. He became nervous breaking a cold sweat and pulsed with fear that any minute the cops would come busting through the door, ending life as he knew it. He entered the small bathroom adjascent the room to still himself for their flight. The wallpaper here bloomed with flowers coming to life, growing, and then wilting and dying a few seconds later. It was definitely potent product. He dried his sweating face on one of the white fluffy motel towels.
He walked back into the room and lifted Kali up off the bed.
“What are you doing?” she protested. He put a finger to his lips and urged her onto her feet and towards the bathroom. There he explained the penalty they would face if caught with these two. He was afraid of the one kid, and she could tell by the familiar look in his eye that his intuition was not going to let this one slide.
“I am not going to do eleven years in prison so these two can freeload with us. We are leaving, NOW!”
He gathered their belongings and they silently exited the room, Troy breathing a sigh of relief. As they drove away, Kali argued with him over the decision. She asked that he stop at a McDonalds as they drove, so she could use the facilities. He stopped the car, and suddenly it hit him.
“Will you marry me?” he asked out of the blue.
It was something he had never said to anyone, ever. But he was sure.
She looked at him for a brief moment and then said simply “Yes.”
They kissed for a moment across the front seats. Ashley resettled herself in the back seat.
“On one condition, “ she added “We go back and get my glasses I FORGOT THEM!”
Troy agreed and minutes later they drove through the corporate park outskirts of Chicago to the motel. The sun had come up during his proposal at McDonalds, and the occupants of the room woke when Troy reentered to get the glasses.
“We are leaving. Alone” he told them.
In the end, Troy watched in silent hostility as the two removed a few belongings they had forgotten in her car to the motel parking lot. He felt bad, but not bad enough to go to prison. They said a brief emotional goodbye to the older head, who had been awakened as well and was now packing his truck to return home. He handed them a card with his number, and a container of bubbles, saying only “Yeah, I think you are making the good choice. I don’t know about those two.”
They were off to the Midwest section of the tour. After a slow night Sunday show in Minneapolis during which Kali slept in the car they headed for Kansas.
The flatlands of Kansas were a symbolic show for Kali. They spent the show discussing Phish and the hidden meaning behind the lyrics, her growing notion of the reason for their tour. She had come to a conclusion of her own, and it was the same Troy had left with months before. There was a reawakening movement. One for peace and for peaceful compassion towards other traditions and lifestyles in the world. It was a moment of truth for them both, and she talked openly of her trip to New York City showing a picture of “Imagine” spelled out in Central Park, New York.
The trip to Kansas had itself had yielded various stops. One of them was at Castle Rock on The Great Plains. Troy had pulled the car over to see the great rock, rising thousands of feet into the air. It jutted high above the plains, the only such obstacle of its kind. It was a beautiful formation, into the back of which a path had been carved to make a park. Visitors could climb the great rock of they wished. Kali and Troy had done so, Troy barely making the climb. They had overcome their fears with no restraints, soon stood atop the rock looking miles over the expense beyond. Trucks were the size of ants below, as they embraced looking far out over the country. “Loving Cup” came to mind and Troy began to sing it on their descent. It was to become their song, of sorts.
“I’m the man on the mountain, won’t you come on up?!”
The next drive was to Colorado, the Fiddlers Green show. It took them through all of Utah, and the Bryce Canyon National Park. They were a few miles short of this sight when Troy pointed something out to Kali.
Above, just inside of the canyon were five twisters spinning round each other inside of the confines of the giant stone monuments. They were hundreds of feet high, and red dust and rain could be seen shooting all over the area. Troy did not stop, but continued forward toward the danger.
They passed, jaws agape at the natural beauty of the canyons. The road wound around giant formations which had taken millions of years to form in the shifting of continental plates. No sign of the storm could be seen. They turned through a massive pass, hundreds of feet high and wide through the delicately carved smooth sandy stones.
Suddenly the rain came at them from every angle. Dark and menacing clouds moving faster than them floated past. Still Troy drove on to the top of the pass. There a sight seeing lot revealed a mile deep drop into the canyons beyond. It was breathtaking. Red rain pelted the car from all directions, the wind threatening to blow them off the cliff. It was a lifetime memorable sight.
The Colorado Lot was a sight, more laid back than many of the other lots. Troy sold their goods, while Kali wandered amongst the nomad village searching for tickets. When she returned, she had two tickets and talked of how Dream and Larry had recognized her, given her the best food she had all tour.
“They called it a Jerry Roll?!”
Troy smiled to himself. Phish ended the night with an encore of “Loving Cup”.
They now turned toward the next shows at The Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas , Nevada. Along the way, about a half an hour outside of Mesquite, Troy had opened the car door to adjust the roof rack. When they reached Mesquite, he turned to give Ashley some attention, when he noticed little black Cocker was missing. Hours of backtracking later they found the dog out of breath and overheated in the middle of the desert. They resolved to stay the night at a casino in Mesquite, and returned to tour the next day. It was Trey Anastasios birthday gig.
They arrived on lot early in the afternoon, and spent the remainder selling the water they had bought to turn over their money and socializing with their neighbors. Kali turned up two free tickets somehow from the tour heads who recognized her and they were in again, with floor seats to the show, which was going at a hundred a ticket by the scalpers.
The show was the most intense of tour, broadcast live from Yahoo around the world. The arena was packed.
As the band returned to the stage for their second set, the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Trey for his thirty sixth birthday. Trey took the time to thank the people who supported them, including the crew and to talk about the hiatus they would take and how they would use it to write songs and recharge so they could tour another seventeen years.
He started to talk of a strange dream he had the night before. He was sitting in the middle of a beautiful field on a beautiful day when suddenly he saw from the periphery of his vision people walking towards him. It was an army of people surrounding him before sitting down. One of them took an apple and handed it to him and explained they wanted to eat the apple as a gift, but he realized he had no teeth. Then a giant tooth grew out of his upper gum. But he couldn’t eat the apple with just one tooth.
He began to get nervous that the people would wonder why he wasn’t eating the apple and he had a moment of panic.
Luckily, at that moment, the sun flew closer to the Earth than it had ever been before in history, and as a result the his first thought was that the Earth would burn up. Instead , the Earth acted in the way that a grape acts, it shriveled up and turned into a raisin version of the Earth.
The ground wrinkled and became mountains and the people got crushed together into a big pile. Only moments before he’d been panicking, but being crushed together, he realized that all of his senses became much more vivid in the way that a raisin is more intense tasting than a grape.
Sounds, emotions, love…and just as the Earth was becoming a more rich and vivid place, he found himself in a pile of people.
This pile of people became a groping pile of love and goo and he realized that Gamehenge is a state of mind and you don’t have to get there physically.
He decided then that everyone needed to know how simple it was to turn yourself into a seething pile of goo, so he called on the famous Mockingbird to spread word about this.
The band played a Rolling Stones cover that ended with Trey setting a delay loop before he and Mike moved to the from of the stage and began a bizarre synchronized duel involving them swinging their guitar and bass at each other and around themselves while wandering across the front of the stage. Troy hoisted Kali onto his shoulders so she could see Rock and Roll history in the making. They began putting strange hats on Page an Jon; at one point Trey and Mike put both the guitar and bass down on the stage and kicked the stage beside them to produce more feedback. In the end Trey finally “defeated” Mike before the band walked off stage.
Troy and Kali somehow made it to the show in Pheonix the next night, and once again got free seats in the back of the first section. All were tired, including noticeably the band who had spent the night before partying with Les Claypool they learned. They got in and slept through most of the show in their seats.
Their final show turned out to be Chula Vista, California. Tired from the road, and somewhat scared of the end of tour, they made arrangements to stay with Troy’s sister outside of L.A. Kali was sick again, and they did not go into their final show. They would miss the final show at Shoreline, where they later learned Phish was joined by the remaining members of The Grateful Dead on stage.
“There was only one catch, and that was Catch – 22…”
-Joseph Heller, Catch – 22
