"Yeah, but how can you be metameh your ears like that. It comes from such an impure place."
I had just returned from 2 1/2 years of study in Israel's picturesque Ayalon Valley, and while my ears did not hear too much Phish while i was there, ever-present as it may have been, when i got back to America, slowly my interest returned to the Fab Four (five if you count Chris on the lights). At that time i had long curly payos which i wore proudly and played with nervously, was dressed in a black suit for my friend's wedding i was at, and had just finished a discussion with this dude, who had just returned from learning in a yeshiva for boys who need help leaving the modern orthodox community, about some sugya in ksubos, yet as congenial as our discussion had been, it soon took a measure-for-measure turn for the worse.
"I can't believe you are saying this. What good can possibly come from listening to Phish. Where is the godliness in what they do? It only brings you down. But a good yiddishe niggun? Ah! The soul can soar!"
It's not that i had never thought in those terms. My experience with Phish had always bordered on the religious, but explaining Phish from my insider's perspective to not only an outsider, but a fervently religious polemicist, was a task that had little to do with whatever musings went on inside my own head. I began to question my ability to explain myself to this little rebba'le in any sort of constructive way.
I once heard from Rabbi Moshe Benovitz, explaining what one means when inquiring "Is he normal?" of someone who began intensely learning Torah full time. "Can he explain to people who aren't where he is why what he is doing is so important." Some other person's conception of what one should spend there time doing need not be what guides you life's path. But your devotion to what does guide your life should not take away your ability to relate to people who don't necessarily share that same devotion. I had not yet heard this teaching from RMB, but it was certainly this anxiety that was creeping up on me.
Where is the Godliness in what they do?
By divine grace, the first thing my mind latched on to was not his question, i did not immediately launch into a monologue describing Trey as some sort of demigod (as i was wont to do at that point in my life... and a little bit now too), rather my first thoughts were echoes of the words i had just heard, Where is the Godliness in what they do. That he knew that the words he uttered were Rabbe Nachman's keys to the ultimate religious potential, "Ayeh M'kom Kvodo," I was not sure, nevertheless the teaching swept over me like a warm blanket assuring me of my thoughts, calming me as i continued the discussion. The connection to what we were talking about was not iron-clad, and to explain it to him via this teaching from Rabbe Nachman would probably be a fanciful piece of casuistry, but the fact that his words trying to disprove my position were a quote from the holiest of teachings, telling us we don't understand the world we see around us and there are layers of depth and holiness that we can not comprehend, at the very least allayed my fears and allowed me to continue the conversation as if laying on a beach in netanya instead of waiting for the bus while freezing in manhattan...
I reached to the holy words of Rav Kook. In his collected teachings on the siddur, before friday night prayers, there is an introduction to King Solomon's Song of Songs which i had learned in yeshiva some years before. Rav Kook begins by quoting the holy sage Rabbi Akiva who stated "The entire existence was not worthy of the day that Song of Songs was written, for all the books of the Torah are holy, but Song of Songs is Holy of Holies." While i don't think it is hard to see the divinity in Shir Hashirim on any level of understanding you would like to apply to it (but most accessibly so in its surface understanding), even the romantic in me has a hard time putting it on a pedestal above mass revelation at Sinai. Rabbi Akiva, who thought it too much a distraction to cross the threshold of his house to say hello to his wife after twelve years away from her and before another twelve, would i believe agree with me on this point.
So what did he mean then? What made The Song of Songs so great that the world was not worthy of the day it was given?
Everybody knows that we are created in the image of god. Tzelem Elokim. The name Elokim is the first name of God that we are introduced to in the Torah and it is the name that stays with us for the entire story of creation. ...Barah Elokim...Vayomer Elokim...Vayaar Elokim. The name Elokim is the name of God as The Creator. The outward manifestation of an inner emotion or desire. When we are created Btzelem Elokim we are created specifically in the image of God The Creator. This godly image is every person's little piece of divinity, every person's opportunity and potential to act, to the best of their ability, as The Creator. Rav Kook says that it is therefore important to cultivate our ability to express our emotions outwardly. Be it through music, art or writing, when we focus on an inner emotion and bring that emotion in to the world we are staking claim to the godly image within our soul, imitating God in the way he put most close to our hearts.
It is hard though to squeeze our thoughts and feelings in to the limits of physicality. Art of any form is always only a small frame of a much broader and more profound emotion that the artist is experiencing. Watching an artist paint, for instance, you will always see them take a periodic step back in order to see if the picture on the page matches the picture in their head. They survey the work, and continue to make adjustments in order that the two pictures, one in mind and one on canvas, become a little bit closer. They will never be exactly the same however. There is no way that paints on a canvas can completely capture all the complexities of the artist's emotion. They can come close, and the more talented the artist is the more they will be able to accomplish this goal, but the nature of physicality is such that there will always be some sort of disparity.
Rav Kook tells us that this is true of all artistic pursuits in this world, except for Song of Songs. King Solomon set out to express in writing the relationship between Hashem and his people, and was 100% successful in doing so. It is a most perfect expression of his inner emotion, with no hindrance or impedance in its expression. This is what makes Song of Songs so holy. True unfettered emotional expression is a hard thing to come by in this world and is a joy as well as benficial to observe no matter the nature of that expression. Here we have a true expression of the love affair between the Jewish People and their God. Such a powerful piece of writing. Hitting the emotional mark so strongly, speaking so truely to the human experience, these are things that are so rare in this world and enrich life so much, they are so outside the limits of our regular abilities, that you might even say that the world was not worthy of their creation.
PHISH
Ever heard a band described as effusive? These days i find it hard to describe Phish with a word other than that. In there most powerful musical moments, the band is pouring fourth with a giddy unbound excitement. The boisterous, exuberant energy of Phish's sound is compounded by Chris's light show, and the result is a most awe-inspiring musical experience. (I am posting here a link to what i believe is of the best recorded phish i have ever heard. The whole thing is amazing, but if you don't want to listen to all 15:00, start at 10:00. The clip is dripping with the youthful improvisational exuberance that typifies Phish)
Trey once said in an interview here that his days of being a metal-head came to an end when he went to his first Grateful Dead concert in Connecticut. He explains that at metal shows there is a one-way flow of energy. The goal is for the band to pump out as much energy as possible, and the goal is for the crowd to absorb as much of that energy as possible. But at the Dead show that all changed. he saw, for the first time, a conversation between the band and the crowd that came to see them. sometimes the "conversation" got started by the band and the crowd responded, but sometimes the exuberance of the band was spurred by the crowd. Either way, Trey experienced a new archetype that would fuel his own love for Bands like the Dead and the Allman Brothers, as well as the immutable style of Phish.
I think that the thing that fuels the devotion of the many committed Phish-heads is this the marriage of the two ideas that i have have spoken about in this post. The first idea, drawn from the beautiful words of Rav Kook, is the substance of that devotion. Trey, Page, Mike and Fish are true creators. If God gave all of us a small spark of His ability to create, if the closest way we can relate to god is through our creation, then it is no wonder that so many correlate their love of Phish with religious experience. In fact it is only in the halls of the yeshiva have i encountered a milieu where the conversation more easily moves to god and religiosity more than at Phish shows, and i am sure my experience is not unique. so many times, either sitting on the floor during set-break, or on line to get a beer, suddenly, and often not because of my prompting does the conversation switch to God and our relationship with Him.
The second idea is the conversation that goes on during the show between the band and the crowd. Along with our ability to create comes an inborn desire to create (if i may, i once heard from a friend of mine that the reason people look in a tissue after they blow their nose or look in the toilet after they go to the bathroom is this very same reason). A Phish show presents an almost unique opportunity for a music fan to be part of the show, to be part of the creative energy, to be part of the godliness...
I"ll see you at the next show!
