The Feast of Seven Phishes (at the Sphere)

the discontent of mining life for content

I turn 42 tomorrow. The end of a seven year cycle. The Uranus Opposition aka Mid-life Crisis. I won’t go into details, but things are tectonically shifting in Myanus.

A reader wrote to me about a month ago, something to the effect of “just write when you have something to say.” It was a relief to hear that. Since writing these essays, I’ve been holding onto dear life with this ritual of turning my life into content. Retreating into my head as life passes me by. Reinforcing the storylines that so often prolong my internal bouts of suffering in hopes that something external will fill the hole.

And that little trick might be the seed of much suffering in my life.

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During my Substack fast, I’ve been focusing on another piece of writing: a script that takes place in the Phish scene, and I attended three consecutive weekends seeing Phish at the Sphere in Las Vegas, seven shows total. I will include my drug intake since I understand that’s why so many read this blog. The first weekend I did three shows sober, the second weekend I took mushrooms for one show, and the third trio of shows I reintroduced the psychedelics LSD, MDMA and 2CB back into my life after a six week full sobriety. I actively said no to weed and ketamine all three weekends. The last part is a big personal win.

But it’s also worthy to note my literary choices during this time: Michael Pollan’s A World Appears, Terrence McKenna’s Food of the Gods, Lou Reed’s The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, LD Deutsch’s Time, Myth and Matter: essays on the natures and narratives of reality. Several different treatises on consciousness — ways to challenge the validity of reality.

Perhaps my newfound tai chi practice, SUR, and these academic challenges to reality are substitutes for what everyday weed and every weekend psychedelic use offered me: an escape from reality. An occupation with the chase for transcendence. A chance to bask in the blurred lines between my individual self and the greater Self of the cosmos — to feel part of something greater than my stupid little story.

The Phish script I’m writing follows two middle-aged, estranged twin brothers: Micah aka Wolfman and Daniel aka Wolfman’s Brother. Micah is the black sheep, a psychedelic Phish-lifer struggling with addiction; while Daniel is the golden child, a tightly-wound conservative cop. The inciting incident is Micah’s death, an apparent suicide in the middle of a show. Right before Micah dies, he calls his twin brother, but Daniel doesn’t pick up.

Daniel looks for someone else to blame, and learns that his brother had a wife the family never knew about named Cookie, who doesn’t even show up to the funeral. Something smells phishy. Daniel attends a run of Phish shows to find her, and many phans mistake him for Wolfman and reveal the depth of love Micah received from this community. Daniel’s life at home is also falling apart, which he’s also avoiding, so he pursues Cookie to avoid the guilt for not picking up his brother’s call, and for missing out on the freedom that his brother and these phans seem to access that he simply cannot.

It’s a story of holding on with a clenched fist and learning to let go without numbing the pain.

Perhaps a bit overly macabre and emotional for a fan experience so often associated with wiggling and noodling, but if you’ve ever been to a show and seen the relief in the bodies and on the faces, you would understand that “the trick was to surrender to the flow.”

While it feels sort of strange to post a synopsis to strangers about an unmade film script (I’m likely just testing the waters), I feel it necessary to show how I process my life by turning it into a story. By making it productive somehow.

Because from the Buddhist perspective, letting go of the fixed storylines is a key to letting things be as they are, to find joy in life’s transience.

Is the multi-year all-consuming process of making a film about being unable to let go of a loved one not the same as Daniel building a case about Cookie to avoid grieving his twin?

Would my life be better spent repairing my relationships with my own estranged brothers rather than writing about brothers who no longer can?

Or maybe I’m missing out on the whole point of seeing seven Phish shows because of my preoccupation with mining the experience for content.

Or maybe, just maybe, there’ll be catharsis both onscreen and off, and through this process I can do it all.

Give a man Phish, you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man Phish, you’ll feed him for life.

(watch this video for a glimpse what I’m trying to capture)

I’ve let a lot go in my 41st year: Weed, Hollywood, hope that SUR will be my big comeback, and even more that I don’t care to share at this time. Still working on Jeff…

But at 42, in terms of reaching and striving for the transcendent peak experience, I’m still very much on the hook.