The “It” Kings and Tantric Love Music

Posted by admin on May 7th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

In the Summer of 2004, Trey Ananastsio, lead singer and guitar player of Phish promised Charlie Rose that he would NEVER get back together with his musical soul mates.  A famous last word, “Never” can sometimes come back and bite us in the ass…but nevertheless I understood where he was coming from, and didn’t believe him.  

I also had a feeling that some of the reasons, (not all)  he was giving Charlie for the

bands “final” break-up were dancing around the truth.

I know that family had a part in it, and definitely being tired out, perhaps bored, not their best anymore had a big part in it as well…but I also think that drugs played the biggest role in their post hiatus demise.  

Why do so many musicians turn to drugs?  

There are so many reasons, but I am going to talk about one that maybe doesn’t usually get talked about so much.  (I could be wrong…but I’ve never heard it spoken of that much)  

I have had the priveledge of seeing some of the finest musicians in the world in concert.  Last october I saw Keith Jarret, Gary Peacock, and Jack De Johnette play at Carnegie Hall…I have seen Larry Corryel, Christian McBride…I have seen Joe Lovano, Paul Motion, Bill Frissel…at my college I had the priveledge of seeing some of the best classical musicians in the world…

All these concerts were amazing.  Truly extraordinary musical experiences that I will remember forever no doubt.  None of them compare to Phish concerts.  

And, I feel totally ridiculous saying that.  I feel like a huge hippy doofus admitting that actually…but it’s true…at least for me.  And the musicianship of the four members of Phish is not even close to the same ballpark as the afore mentioned musicians.  However, in my opinion…they are masters of “It” moments.  They are the “It” kings if you will and are able to sustain “It” for incredible amounts of time.  They are the Tantric Gods of Music.  

All joking aside…my experiences with Phish have teetered far beyond the edge of Wittgenstein’s idea of the “sublime.”  They have taken me (without the aid of psychedelic drugs) past the boundary line of feeling myself as a separate entity from the music and have tossed me into a whirlwind of ecstatic and indescribable bliss.  Being at a great phish concert (they aren’t always great) is very much like being on a 2 and a half hour roller coaster ride that only stops for the 20 minutes set break halfway through.  They take you “there,”…they make “It” happen and keep “It” sustained for endless periods of time.  

Now  if I feel this way as an audience member…i can only imagine how it must feel to be the people doing it.  If I feel this way listening to Phish, what euphoria, what bliss must Trey, Mike, Fish, and Page be experiencing on a nightly basis?  I read an interview with Page once where he says that everynight he has an average of 1-2 “peak” moments but many times has way more.  If those peak moments are anything like the peak moments I have experienced…that’s an IMMENSE amount of euphoric energy to contain in one body.  And the crux is that the come down must be as intense.  

When I was five years old…I literally started looking forward to my birthday two months in advance.  I could barely sleep the night before my birthday and when my “party” was over…you could probably say that I entered a mild state of temporary depression. 

Coming down from a concert where you are the players, the creators, the purveyors of sometimes, insurmountable joy, day in, day out, year in, year out must be somewhat equivalent to being addicted to narcotics and dealing with the up and the come down of that addiction.  In addition to that…when you have fans who know how “high” you’ve been able to take the music…and come see you, expecting that high…that’s quite a large amount of pressure to “produce.”  Thousands of people, riding on you every night to pull magical out of your ass…  

It makes sense to me why so many musicians turn to drugs…feeding their addiction to peak moments…and doing whatever it takes to avoid the come down.  

We forget that our first act as human beings, our first breath, is a microcosm of the nature of life.  We inhale and expand, taking oxygen into our lungs and then we exhale and contract, releasing carbon dioxide into the air.  We take what we need from the oxygen to survive, and with the expulsion of carbon dioxide, we remove what is not needed and harmful to the body.  

The universe actually breaths in the same way, although on a much greater scale.  Life is very much like a huge breath, and on a smaller level, a series of millions of both little and big breaths.  Contraction feels scary…if we let go of our breath to the point where if feels like we hardly have any air left to breath out…it feels very much like we are drowning.  ”The come down” of life experiences…like the end of my 5 year old birthday can feel very similar.  We forget that we are simply doing nature.  We are exhaling.  We have taken in what we need…and if we held it or sustained it…it would be harmful to us.

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