August 17th, 2024 was day three of Mondegreen, Phish's eleventh-ish* self-curated music festival and the first one to occur in Dover, Delaware. It had rained hard during the early morning hours but I had remained comfortable, balanced sleepily upon my new fancy-pants air mattress inside my equally new, equally fancy-pants big-and-domey blackout tent.

The huge cardboard city hall that was being constructed over the course of the weekend did not, however, fare the downpour nearly as well. My crew and I quit our campsite early so we could spend the day exploring the concert site, and the omission of the impressive corrugated paper and masking tape creation was the first thing we saw (or didn't see, I suppose). I'm glad I'd had a small hand in building it back on night one.

There were, however, several other objects of curiosity scattered throughout the site, and we checked 'em all out. We surveyed the site from the raised platform of the Helio, a two-story structure that served as the centrepiece of the concert pitch, we bought lunch in the farmers market, we checked out a very cool 20' replica of the moon that hung in a forest clearing, we tapped on the glass as Ari Fink broadcast live from inside the siriusxm trailer, and similarly lackadaised ourselves around until showtime.

By the time the show started my entire extended crew had congealed just ahead of and to the right of the the Helio, nearly the same vantage point as I'd had the night before and a great-sounding place to watch the show from. And it was a really good show too, if maybe a little standard.

But really, I'm probably a poor judge of the last half of the show, for it was sometime during the second set that m'lady went on a bathroom run and never returned. After a song or two I started keeping my eye out for her and after another song or two I raised both of my arms in the air and kept them there, waving them slowly and hoping that if m'lady was lost that she'd soon find us. Well, she was and she didn't. I knew she was okay but I was still worried. I tried to convince myself that she had run into friends - which was extremely plausible - but I told everyone to watch out for her and I kept my damn arms raised high in the air, ever-waving. I wanted to go looking for her and did do a couple of quick circles around the immediate area, but I figured staying put and waving my arms in order to make our large crew even more visible was the best gambit.

Oh yes...all the while my friend Linda was having a bit of an episode, one which left her mostly uncommunicative and balled up in the fetal position, laying at our feet. Lots and lots of people came over to ask about her - Phish fans have tons of empathy - but she was mostly fine, just being weird. So we tightened up our group so that people couldn't see her and kept on grooving. If I recall correctly Mike took her back to their glamping tent at some point midshow.

But back to me with my arms in the air, trying my best to simultaneously dance away to Tweezer and Boogie On Reggae Woman. By the time the band tore into You Enjoy Myself during the encore I had abandoned any hope that she had simply found other friends. She was almost certainly lost and I was too distracted to pay attention to one of my favourite Phish songs. After the Tweezer Reprise set closer we all posed for a group shot. You can see me in the back with my arms dutifully raised, a concerned look stuck on my face.

"What do you guys want to do?"

"Let's go grab a drink somewhere!"

"We were thinking of heading back to the campsite..."

"I'm not going anywhere until m'lady gets back," I announced, my arms still up. Several people agreed to stay with me, and a few moments later m'lady appeared. She had indeed been lost and had spent the entire time circling the crowd about twenty metres away from us with mounting frustration. She'd not had a great set. Nor had I but I tried not to let her know that.

I know what you're thinking, but I still think life is better without a cellphone.

*It's not that I don't know how many festivals Phish has hosted, it's more that some people count some things as festivals that weren't, and vice-versa. Let's just say that the true number of Phish festivals is a matter of opinion.

https://toddmanout.com/