Ruby Waves Carried Me Home
How 25 years of inner work and brotherly love turned noise into revelation
Standing twenty feet from the stage on the first night, sound distorted and overwhelming from proximity, with only a routine amount of cannabis in my system, the evening amplified into a full psychedelic experience. I received a message with startling clarity: your life purpose is to live from the feeling of love. Focus on that and it will guide you.
This was not what I expected from a Phish show. This revelation would reshape my understanding of how consciousness operates within cultural realities I had previously dismissed.
The last time I saw them was 1999 in Kansas City. They were also the first big concert I ever saw in 1997. After 25 years, my brother finally convinced me to return for two nights in Austin, their first shows in Texas for over a decade. His persistence reflected the same patient love he had shown years earlier when he agreed to join me in family therapy sessions. I went knowing I am not a Phish fan, attending primarily to spend time with my brother doing something he loves. I approached the experience with openness, hoping to see it through his perspective—someone who overlooks the lyrics and tunes out the crowd in favor of pure musical exploration.
What I discovered was how decades of inner work had fundamentally transformed where I find meaning, and how ritual space can function in unlikely places.
Maze
The person experiencing Phish in 2025 could be present for mystical guidance in ways my teenage self couldn't. During the 1990s, I was caught in patterns of seeking coherent alternative systems to replace the incoherent family and religious structures I was attempting to escape. Phish and the jam band scene offered one possibility for comprehensive frameworks—the music, community, and consciousness exploration felt like they could provide complete systems for understanding reality differently.
However, this remained a dependent relationship dynamic with different content. I needed external systems to organize my reality because I had not yet developed my own internal compass or gained the quiet necessary for hearing my own voice. This seeking pattern stemmed from surviving an alcoholic and narcissistic family system overlaid with Evangelical Christianity, which left me extremely porous and absorbing everything around me.
The therapeutic work that changed everything began years later when I found myself in another abusive romantic relationship. I recognized the familial patterns repeating and connected them with lifelong suicidal ideation. My brother, who had survived the same family system through different strategies of boundaries and isolation, immediately agreed to join family therapy sessions I initiated. This gesture of solidarity—what seemed to him a small act of support—may have saved my life. Those sessions solidified something I had previously sought externally: an internal foundation stable enough that I could engage with cultural influences without needing them to provide salvation or complete answers.
The message at the Austin show was not musical bypassing. It became possible through foundations developed via therapeutic relationships, years of yoga practice, and other somatic work. I had learned to trust my feelings as guidance and to rely on love as an organizing principle rather than survival instincts, endless seeking, or attempts to make sense of fundamentally senseless situations.
Wilson, Can You Still Have Fun?
What I witnessed was a predominantly white, male space—demographic categories that often remain invisible to those who inhabit them—being transformed through ancient consciousness technologies. Hallucinogenic drugs, ecstatic dance, and hypnotic music transformed the arena into the possibility for genuine ritual space. This transformation occurred despite the significant cultural limitations of the environment.
The scene has changed dramatically since the 1990s. Gone are the grilled cheese sandwiches, granola hippies, and extensive parking lot culture. I observed only one man in dress and encountered exclusively well-groomed fans. Present now are quirky, printed button-down shirts and trucker hats, representing hippie chic aesthetics with diminished counterculture or queer expression. Both versions share highly homogeneous demographic patterns while maintaining essential elements: public drug use, license for unconventional behavior, trance dancing with closed eyes, and commitment to transformation through sound.
A particularly transcendent moment occurred during "Split Open and Melt" on the second night, when the band established a three-over-two polyrhythm that dissolved into pure noise—beautiful, deep noise that held thousands of people in silent attention for either a thousand years or fifteen minutes. This represents the same tradition I'm drawn to: integrating classical innovations like serial composition and noise as consciousness technology into popularly accessible music. Having attempted similar integrations, I recognize the technical difficulty of what Phish accomplishes seamlessly in live performance. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but the capacity to fill an arena and hold attention through these passages is impressive.
When people wearing polo shirts close their eyes and move to complex rhythmic structures, something ancient becomes available within the cultural conformity. These consciousness technologies function regardless of their cultural containers, accessing fundamental human capacities rather than demographic-specific experiences. This observation became central to understanding how transformation operates independently of the worthiness or sophistication of its delivery mechanisms. Standing beside my brother in this unlikely ritual space, I experienced how love can create the safety necessary for genuine receptivity to emerge.
Strange Design
This transformative capacity emerges despite rather than because of their musical and lyrical inconsistencies. I remain unconvinced by much of Phish's catalog. My main feeling is that the lyrics are sketches for great songs that someone should write proper lyrics for. Harmonically, absurdism—as complete randomness—is just not as pretty as I want music to be. However, I now recognize their approach draws from three distinct musical traditions that serve different functions.
The creation of public ritual space connects them to the Grateful Dead as facilitators of consciousness exploration through music. Like the Dead's role as house band for the Acid Tests and early emissaries of the psychedelic experience, Phish continues the tradition of using musical performance to create opportunities for collective transformation and consciousness exploration in public settings.
The absurdist lyrical content connects directly to Frank Zappa's satirical approach to songwriting. Phish's seemingly random psychological descriptions of mundane events—a man who steps into a freezer, characters named Wilson or Fluffhead—echo Zappa's use of nonsense as response to existential absurdity. When confronted with the fundamental chaos of existence, traditional narrative structures can feel inadequate. This approach creates linguistic spaces where meaning becomes playful rather than urgent, fostering a party atmosphere among casual listeners while offering insider knowledge for dedicated fans who recognize deeper patterns.
On the other hand, this can serve as cover for what is actually just really lazy songwriting. For example, the chorus of Ruby Waves strings together mystical phrases—"sea of love," "ruby waves," "prison of lies," "ocean up above my head"—without coherent relationships between images. How does an ocean exist above your head while also carrying you up from below? Why does touching stars enable doors to open? The repetition of "prison of lies" and "ocean of love" creates the impression of thematic depth while remaining deliberately vague about what lies or what kind of love. Unlike genuine absurdism, which requires precision in its meaninglessness, this approach allows cosmic imagery to substitute for the hard work of careful artistic construction—the kind of integration between technical innovation and aesthetic beauty that makes art compelling rather than just functional. I wish the same person who whispered in Trey’s ear about voice lessons would also mention edits on lyrics.
But we saw Ruby Waves on the second night, and after a couple of minutes of painful lyrics the jam opened into 25 minutes of interesting and fun improvisation. Their sonic exploration at its best represents a lineage rooted in classical serialism and minimalist composition. The band routinely established repetitive patterns anchored by droning bass and drum foundations over which guitar and keyboards shifted imperceptibly. These sections reminded me most of minimalist composers like Philip Glass or Steve Reich. Despite the high-powered light show and arena-rock presentation, Trey Anastasio often operates within serialist frameworks when constructing written foundations for improvised explorations.
At their worst, the combination of serialism and absurdism produces embarrassing lyrics and jarring musical compositions that serve no clear purpose. It sounds like what it is: music written in a dorm room, early experiments with serial musical language that capture the technical but not the aesthetic qualities of that movement.
People disagree with me on this, arguing that absurdism represents freedom—that reality's incoherent nature opens space where life is best served by generating meaning, however that resonates for each person. While I appreciate this attitude, it reflects what seems like a human-centric universe. Which is more convincing: that humans create meaning from nothing, or that meaning—essential to all forms of life—forms a baseline of the universe that we understand in our own, human, way?
The serialists created new musical language to express integrated thought—not random ideas jumbled within novel time signatures. The radical elements of serialist music—shifting tempos and bar counts—are woven into larger wholes, and the integration of parts into a whole remains one measure of beauty. The coherence of larger systems, in which humans participate rather than dominate, represents the deeper message I don't hear consistently in Phish. Even their straightforward songs about love and shared grooves suffer from this same lack of integration. I need my art to demonstrate greater coherence between technical innovation and aesthetic beauty. More artful, in other words.
My Friend, My Friend
The second night we positioned ourselves further from the stage where sound quality proved superior though less visceral. The mystical message from the first night became a physical practice and a challenge to love myself. I noticed postural shifts, my chest opening to accommodate expanded space around my heart. Feeling unconditional love for myself, my mind raced with criticisms and excuses that this was selfish. The challenge of self-love is real—try holding yourself in high regard for a few minutes. My brother stood by me through the show, enjoying the enhanced sound from further back.
Trey Anastasio has clearly stepped into his role as band leader in ways that feel healthier than previous generations of psychedelic rock frontmen. Jerry Garcia famously resisted being called the Grateful Dead's leader, despite obviously being central to their sound and vision. Anastasio's willingness to actually lead represents a more mature model for creative collaboration when consciousness exploration is involved.
His commitment to sobriety has transformed both his personal approach and the band's energy. Getting clean changed how Phish approaches their live performances—consciousness exploration now happens within frameworks of responsibility and mutual care rather than endless experimentation without guardrails. Anastasio has become a prominent advocate for addiction recovery, particularly addressing the opioid crisis that has devastated communities throughout his native northeast and beyond.
This same intentional approach to growth shows up in his craft. His recent voice lessons have produced noticeable improvements from the shout-singing of the past. The dedication required to keep developing fundamental skills decades into a successful career demonstrates the same spirit that characterizes his recovery and leadership.
Love opens toward freedom because it requires accepting uncertainty about future developments. When we harden ourselves against the world, the world hardens against us. Expectation determines outcome. Love demands embracing indeterminacy while working within constraints of personal history and cultural positioning.
Ruby Waves Carried Me Home
The most significant revelation concerned not Phish but the internal foundation that enabled genuine mystical experience within an imperfect cultural context. Twenty-five years earlier, I attended these shows seeking external validation and meaning-making systems. The desperation of that seeking prevented reception of the very guidance I was frantically pursuing. By developing internal stability through therapeutic work and somatic practices—work that my brother's love had helped facilitate—I created space for authentic revelation to occur naturally.
Am I now a Phish fan? Not in traditional terms. I maintain critiques of their songwriting and remain conscious of cultural limitations surrounding their scene. However, I understand what their live experience offers as consciousness practice and ritual space. In this capacity, they continue the lineage of the Grateful Dead as facilitators of consciousness exploration through music, but with evolved awareness of leadership responsibilities and community care.
Ancient technologies for consciousness exploration function through whatever cultural containers prove willing to accommodate them. The message, far more ancient than our cultural limitations, emerged through this circumscribed space. This paradox illuminates how consciousness operates—not requiring ideal conditions but utilizing whatever openings become available through human willingness to remain receptive to growth.
The transformation was possible because I had developed sufficient internal foundation to receive guidance through whatever delivery mechanism presented itself, including Phish's capacity to create ritual space and facilitate consciousness exploration. This foundation began with my brother's willingness to accompany me into difficult therapeutic territory and culminated with his invitation to return to music that had once represented desperate seeking. Both gestures created moments where love could do its transformative work. The mystical message about living from love gained deeper resonance when I recognized it as part of a lifetime of brotherly love that consistently created safe space for authentic revelation to occur.
