Oh my god, Christmas Jam last night was an incredible experience... where to start. So much happened...
Well, I ended up taking bumps of 3-MeO and 1.5 hits of ALD-52. Had an incredible, deep, full trip, and had my mind blown many times. The absolute biggest thing was something wonderful. I've probably mentioned my ex-neighbor before, he became a really good friend of mine, he was involved in the drug moving scene, mostly weed, has been to prison twice for it. He lived next door and we became very close for years. He confided in me on a personal level to a point he has hardly gone with anyone. He started to fall on hard times because he has a good heart and people would take advantage of him, he ended up getting robbed for everything from a "friend" and then incidentally totalled his car 3 days after the insurance had lapsed, so lost his job, lost his connections, couldn't go anywhere, got suicidal, actually attempted suicide, and then got kicked out of his house (renting) and lost his cell phone service. Last I saw him I was trying to help him sell his collection of gems/crystals, and he was going to be homeless in the middle of winter, and basically just wanted to die, and had tried to hang himself (got cut down by a friend who showed up because he had a bad feeling and went to check on him) like a month and a half before. That was like 4 years ago. I haven't run into him since and not a week has gone by in my life when I haven't thought of him with some heart wrenching feelings, I loved this guy as a brother but I fully believed he had killed himself or was otherwise dead. I felt it in my heart and it hurt a lot because I tried so hard to be there for him and lift him up, when he ran out of firewood in the winter and couldn't get more I'd let him come over and hang out in my heated house for hours and make him breakfast. I'd be a shoulder for him to cry on, I'd try my very best to help him hang on to that love for life and love for people that he has but was having the hardest time hanging on to because everyone in his life was using him and betraying him and his time in prison had hurt him too, deeply. He grew up in one of the acid families, he was good friends with Owsley, he has so many stories. Sort of like an older brother, we got really close and I got to know him during good times, and then I had a traumatic experience of watching him lose control of his life and get chewed up and ground down and broken by the drug underworld and his post-prison life and approaching old age, it was incredibly tragic to watch and I very much tried to be there for him but felt ultimately that I wasn't able to help and I have carried that regret in me every day. But anyway I believed he was dead, and I have always wanted to encounter him again randomly, and I have had this consistent vision in my mind of when I would encounter him, a specific vision of precisely what it looked like, it's been there for years. It's honestly been a source of pain and concern and wondering for the past 3+ years.
Well, tripping profoundly, I decided to go down to the floor area and try to wade into the crowd to get close to the stage for Bob Weir's set (which was amazing, you guys should look for youtube videos of the 2016 Christmas Jam Bob Weir set in the next few days, best Eyes of the World I have ever heard, it was like the entirety of the Dead wrapped into this one set, so beautiful, emotional, incredible, absolutely next-level jamming), and I looked up, and saw that ex-neighbor, my dear, "departed" friend, it was the exact vision that I had been carrying inside for years, the biggest deja vu ever, like precisely what it looked like in my head. I had to triple take. Yes, yes, that's really him, this moment I've been imagining is really happening. I just tapped him on the shoulder and was like, dude, hi. He didn't recognize me at first, because last time he saw me was 3-4 years ago, I had short hair and no beard and now my hair is long and I have a beard. But then I said dude, I'm Eric, I was your neighbor for 3 years. And then he recognized me and just gave me the biggest hug. I asked him how he was doing, and he said he's doing great, he's recovered from that dark period and gotten back on his feet. He looked healthy and happy, as much as when I first met him, or more. I told him how much it meant to me to see him alive and well and that I've thought about him often. He was there to sell weed, basically working the scene, and he said he had to go take care of some stuff but it was great to see me and he hoped we'd run into each other later and catch up (we never did but it's okay).
After that I was utterly floored, stunned, overwhelmed. I just went to the bathroom and cried. My friend is alive and well.
I really loved that dude, such a kind, good soul who really got pretty lost in a kind of dark world and life beat him down hard and I was the only person there for him. I really thought he had died, by his own hand in a pit of pain, I even grieved for him. I felt it in my heart as truth and the vision of meeting him was a beautiful dream, but just a dream. And then to see him, in the exact vision I had been imagining, like, so synchronistic and magical and profound. I'm still processing it, wow.
After that, I went up to the front of the stage between sets to get close to Holly Bowling as she played (she is a classically trained pianist who arranges solo grand piano performances of specific Phish/Dead/etc performances/jams in classical piano style). She was the single most impressive musician there, I don't know if any of you know of Hiromi Uehara (if not, look her up on youtube, there is no way you won't be glad you did, she's IMO the best piano player and live performer in the world and of all time thus far, doing absolutely groundbreaking stuff that leaves you in awe), but Holly Bowling is tapping that same thing, she's phenomenally talented, not quite as far along as Hiromi but stunningly impressive. She's coming from the rigid ivory tower world of classical piano, and bringing it to music as a whole, in this profound and wonderful way that I respect so much. Can't say enough about her, she was wonderful. Her performance last night was a level above anything I've seen on her youtube videos (which are amazing already). And then Bob Weir came on, I was about 20 feet away from him. The set started out slow and acoustic, and then a band came on and they jammed all of some of the best Grateful Dead songs, jammed it in a modern way that was also a full throwback to the early-era Dead, it was overwhelmingly amazing. Best Eyes of the World I've heard, hands down. It was just sublime. Pretty much every other thing I wanted to hear from them too except for Dark Star, and it was all glorious. I was looking around at old dead-heads, couples as old as Bobby, who have been following it the whole time, and I could see the emotions playing out on their faces and it brought me so much joy, it was really profound sort of witnessing the history melding into present. Words just can't convey, fortunately there was some professional crowd video/audio recording and it will be on youtube soon I'm sure if it's not already. It meant so much to me to be there.
The rest of the show went great too, everything was wonderful. Me and my friend D were basically on the same level, we had many adventures in the 9 hours of music (like a 1-day festival kinda, except indoors), talked about a lot of important and epic things, talked about our music (he's my drummer). FInally we left at 3am, and when we got back we chilled more and my friend put on Talking Heads Stop Making Sense show/movie (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQO-fKDMLVc) and we smoked a dab (which I haven't done in years). I proceeded to have another music paradigm shifting experience, equally if not more profound than anything else that night. Fuck, those guys were doing something incredible. That show was from the year I was born. It's like an alternative form of funk that never took off, only they did it, but it's so unique and SO GOOD, they just tapped into something. Plus the performance art aspect of it. I recommend anyone to watch/listen to that whole show in the link, with attentiveness. Blew my mind. Put ideas for what music could be in my head that I've never had before. Incredible.
Then I took 3mg of etizolam because it was 6am and we were all going to bed. I had had a variety of beers by then and more 3-MeO and was overall in a very spun out sort of place, in a good way but like, totally mentally exhausted and barely capable of conversing or even processing new information. Well, last thing I remember is opening a new beer and laying down on Delsyd's couch in all my clothes. I woke up on the couch at 1:30pm, in just my underwear. I found my pants first, they were in the hallway between the couch and bathroom, quite wet. It had wetness patterns like I had peed my pants, and it was enough to all the way down to the ankle of the right leg, but it didn't smell at all like pee, seemed like water. And the couch and my underwear were dry. My T-shirt was near the front door and my sweat shirt was balled up on a chair and each sock was in a different place. I have no idea what happened. My friend said she heard someone walk out the front door earlier, in the late morning, but then she came out and I was on the couch sleeping still. And the beer was not even touched, it was open but totally full.
So I had a little benzo sleepwalking adventure to top it off. Mysterious... but I find it amusing. I feel great today, but definitely overwhelmed and tired.
I might try to write a TR/story about this so that I will have the story to better relive last night in the future from my fresh perspective I have right after the fact.
