My first Phish show at 51 years old was revelatory, but it had nothing to do with the music
Courtesy of Sarah Gundle
- I went to see Phish for the first time when my brother — a huge fan — turned 48.
- Phish fans (or phans) are so proud of their community, and there's joy in belonging to it.
- While the band is not my thing, it made me realize that I'll always be there for my brother.
My brother Jacob has probably been to a hundred Phish shows. I've never understood the draw; to me, his devotion always felt a bit cult-like. But I love my brother, so when his girlfriend Carrie asked me to fly across the country to attend a Phish show for his 48th birthday, I didn't hesitate.
Carrie met me at my brother's house wearing gold sparkly pants, a pink Angora sweater, and heart-shaped sunglasses. Eyeing my jeans and button-down, she said: "You might want to change that."
Peering past her into the living room, I saw a group of 40-somethings who looked like they'd been given 30 seconds to dress themselves at a vintage clothing shop that specializes in feather boas.
"So, what do you like about them?" I politely asked one of Jacob's friends, a can of "Beard of Zeus IPA" in her hand.
"You've never seen them before?" she asked in astonishment. "You're going to love them. My first time, I was transformed." Her eyes glowed in apparent rapture.
"Now I've been to 60 shows," she continued. By now, others nearby were nodding their agreement. "The music is amazing, but it's also just the feeling of being held by this crowd. It's hard even to express. I feel like they make the world a better place."
"Wait until you hear the Hose," one person said.
Phans are very proud of their community
When we arrived at the concert venue, children ran between blankets with glitter on their faces, playing with glow sticks and large inflatable donuts. Several strangers hugged me, including a man wearing what looked like a grown-up version of my 7-year-old's unicorn footie pajamas.
Phish fans, I found out, are inordinately proud of their community: everyone wanted to fill me in on what was happening and what would happen next and to explain their special Phish-centric lexicon. They told me the meaning of "phistory," "pfandom," and "phellowship," the latter the name of a particularly "phanatic" group that meets before every show.
After a while, I eased into the concert as I would a warm bath. It wasn't Phish's music — which to me sounded more like a band tuning up before a set than the actual set itself — it was more the spell they cast on their fans. To attend a Phish show, I learned, is to feel the joy of belonging. The rituals surrounding the band — the dress, the words, the familiar faces — create a container for meaning. One of Jacob's friends built their wedding weekend around Phish shows. Others structure their vacations around them.
No wonder Phish hooked my brother. I had thought of the band as his hobby, but I now see it as a way of imbuing his life with meaning and connection, of creating a sense of "home" that neither of us had in childhood.
We came to the US when we were little
Jacob and I left Israel and moved to the American South when we were just kids. I first felt the sharp sting of alienation when I was called out in class for not knowing the pledge of allegiance. In Israel, we'd been the children of American immigrants who never quite fit in; in the South, we were often the only Jews.
Adrift in this strange land, Jacob and I clung to each other. We learned about America by watching endless episodes of Little House on The Prairie inside forts we made from overturned chairs covered with blankets.
As we became adults, we continued to lean on each other. When I miscarried at five months, I came home from the hospital numbed by shock, unable to even look at my husband. It was my brother's offer to say kaddish that shook me out of my dissociated state. He stayed on the phone with me, silent, as I convulsed with sobs. My final divorce came in the form of a clinical email from my lawyer. Without thinking, I called Jacob. "What now?" I asked. "You keep being you," he answered.
In those years after my divorce, my brother became the most consistent male figure in my children's lives. He sends us postcards from his travels, or sometimes just to say he loves us, his scrawled handwriting adorned with exclamation points. My kids regularly receive beautiful books in the mail from him about the environment and social justice that are covered in pine needles because he also always includes a bar of his homemade pine soap. When he arrives at my house for his annual week-long visit, he heads straight for the tool shed, and before I know it, he's built my girls a treehouse, a set of swings, or a climbing wall.
My first Phish show didn't transform me, and I never did discover what "the hose" is. It turns out that watching shaggy-haired aging men from Vermont sing jam-rock tunes is not really my thing. But I did realize something important: when my brother reaches for me, I will always be there, the way he has always been there for me. No matter where we are, being with him feels like home. Our closeness gives me solace in an unstable world.
"True goodness is worth holding onto," Carrie said later that night on Jacob's porch about the show. In the words of a Phish song: "It's that simple. She's right."