After realizing that I was more likely to find a baby cow than my brother, I fashioned a large red sign that simply shouted our last name in four big, black letters, easily readable at 200 meters away, KATZ...perhaps someone remembers seeing it. Anyway, I had a difficult time dealing with security about bringing it in to the show because as everyone knows, no signs allowed. I asked for the supervisor, and having no good answer to my simple question, "why?", he allowed me to proceed as long as I swore I wouldn't kill anyone. 

I walked all through the grass for an hour before the show and began waiving the sign, receiving looks from all the disgusted people who didn't get to bring in their own signs. Eventually a kid came up and asked if he could put his friends name on the back. Naturally I said yes, and in return he gave me a small plant bud of some kind that was very green and very smelly. I reached into my pocket and pulled out, by chance, my $100 bill that represented all but four dollars of the money we had left for the tour. 

The show began, and having never found my brother, Zshannna and I began the dangerous trek down the grass, under the railing, across no-man´s land, and into the pavillion at least half-way down, all along dragging the big red sign, refusing to let the dream die...We´re pro´s at this stuff. About three fourths of the way through the first set, I reached into my pocket to load up a pipe of the green stuff, and it was gone, the $100 bill and all. Lost? Stolen? Misplaced? Abducted? Dissolved? Ran away? These were the thoughts running through my head while 40,000 people jammed to antelope. 

I desperately tried tracing my steps, but that was nearly fatal and I couldn't figure out what we were going to do for money. Needless to say, I was anything but enjoying the show. At intermission, I sat in a seat and began writing myself a letter to mentally get over it all..."Don't worry about it." "Enjoy the show." "It's only $100." "It's not your fault." "You're a complete moron." "What the fuck is wrong with you?" "IF you think you're mad at yourself now, wait until I kick my own ass as I will be waiting for myself in the parking lot after the show." 

Zshanna wasn't any more sympathetic, and the words I was saying to myself may as well been coming straight out of her eyes. In a combination of anger and nausea, she storms off saying, "This is fucking bullshit, I'm going to look for it [you stupid, short, fucker]."  Zshanna goes walking up the cement stairway calling out into the night air, "Has anyone seen my $100?"  Standing among the mass of people who snuck under the fence at the top of the stairs is a young phish head. The only person Zshanna actually asked, "Have you seen a 100$ bill?" The kid says,

"What did it look like?"

"It's folded up with a bud in the middle."

With a warm grin the kid says,

"You know what? I think it is your lucky day," at which point he pulls the package out of his pocket and hands it over to my stunned girlfriend. She comes racing down the isle waiving it the air like she found the golden ticket, and after only a short committee meeting, we decided that the best thing would be to smoke the kid up. It turned out to be his first show, and I imagine it wasn't his last. 

The second set ended and we were high from it all. I was walking towards the main exit at the top of the grass, shoulder to shoulder with smelly, post-show phans, still holding onto the dream of finding my brother with my big red sign.  Without knowing it, he was walking ten feet behind me, at which point his friend asked him if that wasn't his name, and sure as shit he found me. We skipped deer creek opting for some R and R with family in Michigan, but the three of us went on to Columbus for two fantastic nights. That's pretty much it. 

Anyone who has been there knows about the magic that happens at shows. I think that magic like that happens all the time, but people just aren't perceptive to it. You can't hear the music if you don't shut up and listen, and the universe is always singing... it's cosmic song, a long glorious tune that breeds life, pulsing in and out of our veins. For me, a show was an opportunity to not only hear their music, but to silence myself, my own brain, and listen to the groovy sound of the Universe.

- A. Katz