by sam paul
The last two days here have been incredible. After two nights of intense shows I am in awe. At first, it was very strange going from the daytime shows to seeing the concerts at night, but last night was the best show I’ve seen so far. Sitting in the rear of the Amphitheater on the grass under a “fronda de luceros” and losing myself in the visuals and music has been unreal intense. Really a whole new experience to go with all the new things I’ve already seen so far. Every evening, the moon slowly rises in a huge ghostly pale glow from behind the stage shrinking as it climbs into the sky. It hangs over us protectively until it gets really dark outside, then the screens around the place light up with lasers and slides of different things that morph into other different things. I can tell that California is the Grateful Dead’s hometown because they pull out all the stops and really make an effort to overwhelm the audience. There are a lot of variations of the “Steal Your Face”—that’s the unofficial Dead picture of the skull with the lightning bolt in its brain that everybody knows. I think it’s symbolic of an awakening in the mind created by a member of the band long since passed.
I generally consider myself a very anti-sports person but I found myself cheering like a champion when a humungous “Steal Your Face” with the San Francisco Giants logo in it flashed onto the screens. Jim Spiece’s girlfriend, the long-nosed hippy girl who happened to be sitting next to me, said she “never understood why the Grateful Dead who seem to represent the antithesis of the sports fan lifestyle would use a sports logo. I remember thinking I would normally have wondered the same thing once, but when I saw that image up there, hovering above us all, I had finally figured it ALL out an instant earlier. It’s hard to explain about topics of love and alternative thinking on paper, some people just get IT and some don’t. I realized right then, at that moment, why I held certain prejudices about organized sports and I’m going to have to get these thoughts down on paper in the next few days before it’s lost forever. I used to think I rebelled against the money, corruption and stereotype of the typical alpha male, but rebelling by being a slacker and doing drugs is really its own form of corruption that invites prejudice toward myself. Maybe this world isn’t really “us against them” after all.
At both shows I tripped really hard, big surprise right? During “Space” (the half hour/hour long drum jam in the middle of each show) I really lost myself in the music and visuals. Being exposed to all this experience is changing my life forever. The LSD has peeled away the protective cover of my brain and the warmth surrounding me has been so positive it’s helping me really see things that have always been right in front of my face.
Ha, some Charles Manson-looking motherfucker actually managed to sneak a two foot bong into the show, but just breathing the air around here would get anybody high so I don’t see the point of attracting unnecessary attention to yourself. It’s a good way to get free weed I’ll bet. The rest of the band takes a break during the intermission, so the concerts end up being at least three hours long even though the set lists are actually pretty short. When you really get into the music and show, time seems to fly by too fast.
Last night’s show was definitely the best one yet. There’s no way for me to really describe the way the music is so perfect and how they seem to tune into the audience’s energy and feelings and give it life through their music. I’ll need to see if I can find a copy of that show to buy at some later date when one of the tech hippies has a nice clean processed copy for sale. The bonus of every show getting taped is that there will always be a copy available to me for posterity. I must try and buy one later to play for Jenifer, but it might be more fun to bring her to a night show in person. Listen to me; I’m already planning another vacation with her so it must be serious. What am I saying? It IS serious. J-J-Jane’s getting serious. The last few days have been great but I’m still walking around with the nagging feeling like something is missing.
All the mild advances I’ve been getting from the hippy girls that the two John’s are hanging out with are just rolling off of me like Teflon. The air sure is sweet out here in California.
LATER—more about what I realized in that split second.
When my family moved us down to Texas from the great white North that is Minnesota, I started third grade in a new school. Our first summer in Texas was right in the middle of 1980, the year of the greatest heat wave had since the great depression or some shit. All I can remember was that I spent all summer in the crappy rental house pool the company gave my step-dad as one of his incentives to move us all and learning to mull around with a slow gape-mouthed walk, literally stooping over and beaten by the heat. The grass went from lush green to a wilted deep brown seemingly overnight as sporadic patches of green only existed where someone would damn the water restrictions and succumb to watering their lawn. The television made a big deal about the water restrictions. Water restrictions?! What is that?! Have Texas the lakes dried up? I didn’t know that Minnesota, which practically has a nice clean and clear lake on every block, was an anomaly. I remember checking the calendar gauging the days and trying to determine when it would finally cool down. Watching as the calendar days moved to September and thinking, “it’s going to be getting cold now, I should get out my sweaters’’ Then into October, thinking, “we usually have to wear our big coats for trick or treating,” and I’m still wearing shorts. Finally, November, some relief should come for sure. Then Thanksgiving and I’m still wearing shorts. December? January? February? What the HELL!! There’s no winter here? The Polar ice caps are melting? The world is ending? Hot, it’s hot, it’s hot it’s hot it’s hot it’s hot. It’s like I’m living on Venus HOT! All the time. HOT. My body slowly started to adapt and change. I had pores open up in orifices of my body that it never fathomed actually having to use. It took some time for my body to get the signal down to the vacant unused sweat factories and get them to reopen but once they opened, a deluge of water was constantly having to go into me so it could pour from my prematurely induced sweaty puberty mechanisms. People talk about the awkwardness of telling their daughters about their first periods, well when the time came nobody bothered to tell me about the wonders and immediate URGENCY of wearing deodorant and that was really damn awkward.
In the Fourth grade I moved to another school in another part of the Dallas area, which might as well have been on the other side of the moon. Still to this day I can’t visualize myself in this part of the country and therefore have to ask a lot of gas station people for directions. Half of them gawk that I’m a MAN asking for directions in stubborn testosterone stereotype Texas where “real men” apparently don’t ask for directions; the other half can’t speak English and look at me with a blank look of ignorance that can only say “I hear you jibba-jabbering, but I walk across the street to my job at this gas station. I’m from butt-fuck Egypt and I can’t even give you directions to the freaking bathroom.” My other option factors in the anomaly that there is usually some sort of gas-guzzling minivan-driving soccer mom getting a fill-up outside most gas stations. A slightly overweight (but she’s dieting) big-haired, born-and-raised-in-this-10-square-mile-area (say that part really fast) of the city, who would love to give directions to me because she would be happy to talk to anyone that doesn’t speak in baby talk or talk down to her like her husband does and he works ALL the time anyway so she suspects he might be having an affair because all the kids she’s had, to make him not attracted to her plus she never even pictured having to stay in Texas, much less be driving a minivan full of brats that keep popping out of her, so she would love to talk to anyone who’s male and wants her opinion because her husband doesn’t pay attention or compliment her anymore.
So I usually just bite the bullet, drive around lost and find my way to wherever I’m going eventually.
Anyway, it was in the fourth grade when I was introduced to the fierce competition that always goes along with, and is encouraged heavily in, Texas sports. I probably thought at first that the e
xtended summer had something to do with the drive for constant abusive outside activity to these slow talking folks, but after experiencing the summer seasons’ heated oppression it had to be something more primal that drove the natives, some sort of blood lust that would motivate them to worship high school football and fierce competition in general.
My favorite sport of choice in the fourth grade came from the enraptured feeling of pleasure I got playing kickball. Kickball: all the rules and physics of baseball without the legal liabilities of children hurtling small rock-hard objects at each other. I’ve always been moderately swift, moderately coordinated and uncharacteristically strong for a wiry white fella, so sports like baseball, volleyball, track and especially kickball were my bitches. In fourth grade Physical Education class Mrs. Keys would make us play kickball ALL the time. I became a kickball expert and knew how to exploit the weaknesses of my classmates to excel as much as anyone truly can in the pre-baseball sport.
One of Mrs. Keys’ children died when I was in the fifth grade. He was riding in the back of a pick-up truck and bounced out. I remember thinking that was a really terrible thing at the time and I remember my friend James telling my mother that at least Mrs. Keys had other children so it wasn’t a total loss. James with his amped up hyper-intelligence was always very pragmatic and callous because he was raised in a large Catholic family.
Anyway, we had a substitute for a while that led the P.E. class and she knew absolutely nothing about physical education of any sort. I’m sure it isn’t particularly hard, you either give the kids free reign or organize them into teams and let them beat the energy out of each other. This substitute had us playing kickball one time and when it was my turn I booted the ball way off into the distance, determined to go for the homerun. My competitive spirit was in full bloom and I was a blond-haired golden god who could run like the wind. It was close but the ball came in as I was rounding third base. I was running towards home plate and saw the kid catch the ball and try to get a grip on it to tag me out. Going full throttle I ran at him and as he prepared to tag my chest I went under him, hitting a patch of gravel, and sliding with my bare skin over the hot blacktop into home plate for the run. It totally fucked my shit up. I was crying and had to go see the nurse and tolerate her dabbing my entire fleshy leg in peroxide. I got patched up and sent back to the field only to find out that the sub had called me OUT, despite effectively avoiding the tag while sustaining my injury. I argued. I showed her my bloody leg. I practically pleaded with her as she just moved the game along to making my run’ count to no avail.
As I sat tripping in the field of the final dead show in California I had an epiphany watching the Grateful Dead’s graphic displays on giant television screens, while they played something or other I didn’t recognize. In that split second of time I remembered everything about what I just wrote down, finally realizing why I hated sports so much for all these years. What I thought was an unbiased educated dismissal of an entire community was actually only a response to an inadequacy from my past. I realized every bad sports memory I have was a device of my own creation as a result of my feelings from one single stupid incident. I would never have associated disliking sports with childhood trauma but once that thought was acknowledged I couldn’t turn away from the truth. I have been playa-hating, literally, for most of my life based on an elementary school memory so deeply rooted only the perfect combination of meditation and hallucinogens could have brought enlightenment to the surface. How can I hate something that simply is? All the experiences of my life have immersed me in the joy and complex simplicity of life so why am I devoting my angst and ire to something I have no control over?
So, I guess maybe I’m probably the only person in the world who learned to re-appreciate sports at a Grateful Dead concert.
The “Steal Your Face” with the San Francisco Giants logo in it. Everything finally made sense in that one instant, like I had made a connection to the world. It gave me a lot of things to think about. It helped let me give up my fear and wrong thoughts concerning sports. The bitterness left me. I even understood I didn’t need any more LSD. I had used it to get where I needed to be and now I have a bit of things to think about.
Looking back, I think maybe I was soul searching a little when I decided to take this trip, but it turned out to be far more enlightening than I ever expected it could be. Ever since coming to college I’ve been aware that there is so much more to life than just dreary old Texas towns. This is a knowledge that has motivated lots of different road trips and mini-adventures, each of which has helped to expand my consciousness and make me a much more well-rounded person. Being poor and willing to travel unaccompanied by the comforts of home (that’s a laugh) has helped me to avoid the Teddy Roosevelt method of exploration where everything becomes sanitized. I’m a firm believer in total immersion and this trip has been exemplary. I’ve done and seen so many cool new things and I finally got the chance to let go and fall truly and deeply in love with reciprocation. So while I’m sad my vacation is nearly over, I’m tired and looking forward to being wrapped in Jenifer’s loving embraces again. It’s a good feeling to know that somebody is waiting for you at the end of a long hard road. Like a soothing shower after a long day of manual labor, a small slice of heaven. (Cue the Crue here) “I’m on my wayyyyyy…”
The last show for the season in California was excellent but I’m beginning to think too much of a good thing might spoil me. I didn’t want my tired body hardening my brain against everything I should be appreciating and enjoying so I feel we’re heading back to Texas at the perfect opportunity. Besides the summer shows are all over now, so there’s really nowhere left to go. I wonder what happens to the caravans in the off-season?
John S’s girlfriend is heading to Austin to see the Phish shows and she did her best to talk us into going too. I can tell my three traveling companions wanted to go and I felt like a dick for having to be the voice of reason and explain how we are all out of money and energy and there’s no guarantee we’ll even get to see the shows. I could have probably been talked into attending also (those wily hippie chicks!) if I didn’t have the sense that Jenifer is waiting at home for me in anticipation. Besides I’m afraid my experience seeing the Dead will dilute any experience I have seeing Phish and I’ve heard they are worth appreciating.
Winding home has been very, very strange. Police are always a problem for a van full of long-haired people but I’ve been especially nervous because not only are we still stoned silly, but now I’m transporting the leftover ten or fifteen hits of acid from the shows with me. Instant felony, just add police.
Nobody paid much attention to the gas gauge because we were all so fucked up on the last of the kind bud and hash we smoked in New Mexico, so we ran out of gas and came to an awkward stop on the highway in the middle of butt-fuck Egypt. Everybody just kind of looked at each other in disbelief and things were looking kind of bleak because there wasn’t anything even remotely like a man made construct as far as we could see and nobody was stopping to help four smelly hippes. Then a cop car pulled up and started fucking with us. Pushing us around, the officer was asking what we were doing (ran out of gas, duh!) and the kinds of the questions that usually preclude wanting to search the car. Things were getting way serious when all of a sudden, this crazy Christian man, wearing overalls and driving a beat up blue pinto, swerves around the highway and zooms onto the scene. He gets out and immediately takes over the situation, thanking the officer for stopping to help us even though it was quite obvious to everyone that’s exactly what he was NOT doing. Then from some magic Pinto place in his car he pulls out an extra can of gasoline that he just happens to have with him to help us get down the road to a gas station. While we’re putting the petrol in our tank the bible beater actually gets the pig to leave by intimidating him with Bible verses and that psychotic faithful intensity only a true believer can posses. If the guy weren’t so obviously loony tunes I would swear it was divine
intervention. God is good and he surely works in mysterious ways. If I hadn’t been so loopy, the situation would have been a lot scarier and John B was so grateful that we didn’t have to go to jail he gave the guy his last $20 for helping us out.
As bad as that was, I was put in an even worse situation the next day. We were all tripping during the final day of driving towards home and I got elected to drive because I had been on acid the most during our whole adventure and stupid logic dictated I likely had the most immunity. Actually, I volunteered to drive after everybody smoked a fat joint and it looked like we were either going to sit on the side of the road laughing our asses off all day if I didn’t drive. Everything went fine during the day while I was peaking but after dark, wouldn’t you know, I got pulled over by a State Trooper for having only one headlight. One of the big halogens in the van burnt out at some point and nobody even noticed. I was scared shitless because I just knew the officer would see my eyes were dilated and then everything would get seriously fucked up, but God must have seen fit to bestow another blessing on me. I gave the officer my driver’s license and John’s insurance, which was thankfully all in order, and then he made me get out of the car and walk around with him and then sit in the passenger side of his Camaro crotch rocket State Highway Patrol car. I thought I was going to freak out and die right there because my acid started kicking in again really strong thanks to all the nervous adrenaline coursing through my body. I’ve never had a ticket where the cop made me sit in the front seat of the police car while he wrote it and I did my best to present the polite vacation innocent college kid image to him, but I was so tweaked that I couldn’t help but ask about all the magical glowing computers, radar detectors and other futuristic cop gadgets that were blinking and flashing their hypnotic lights from the dashboard in front of me. If I hadn’t been so nervous it would have been really fucking cool but I had to really focus in order to myself to keep from wigging out. Everything turned out okay though I got a ticket and we stopped at an auto parts store to change the light bulb. Viking Mike accidentally dropped the old bulb in the parking lot of the auto store and we had to burn out of there when the manager threatened to call the cops. Everyone was officially weirded out by that point so John B. used his credit card to spring for a motel room so we could stop driving for the night. I should get home fairly early tomorrow, showered and refreshed. I’m anxious to sleep in my own house in my own bed and recover from my vacation.