Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1992-12-04

TREY: As we stand here, we can feel something strange starting to happen out there in the crowd. [unintelligible]... everything, something to our knees. Everybody is starting to feel a little bit wobbly here, a little bit kind of loose [makes oooooo sound like in loose]. You can feel it, y’know, everybody’s starting to feel a little looser, sort of like you’re turning into gelatin or something. Everybody’s flesh is starting to sort, you feel it, everyone’s flesh is starting to turn into softer and softer gelatin. Sinking and slowly, i start to see everyone out in the crowd slowly sink into a pile of goo on the floor.

The whole audience, we’re all starting to sink into a pile of goo, and then as we lay down on the ground, everyone is started to turn into liquid. That’s right, we’re all sinking back because people are mostly made up of water anyway. As we’re standing here, we’re all slowly turning into water, just dripping down onto the ground, until there’s nothing left but water all over the ground. All the people are gone, and slowly the water is starting to sink into the floorboards. The water is sinking into the floorboards, but it’s not really water, it’s a little bit thicker than water so it’s just sitting in a congealed lump.

If you’ll come with us now as the water starting sinking into floorboards, down, dripping off the thing into the basement [makes dripping sound with his finger against the inside of his cheeks] drops of water in a puddle in the basement. Now, the water is starting to sink through, it’s sinking through the cement of the basement, going into the dirt. We all start to sink, we turned to liquid, and now we’re sinking into the dirt. We’re starting to get caught up into the groundwater below. Little underwater streams are taking to us. Suddenly, we find ourselves emptying out into the MIGHTY… MISSISSIPPI RIVER!

We’re in the Mississippi River, we’ve joined with it, and the current is starting to make us go backwards and forwards. [music begins to swirl] Whoaaa… Whoaaaa…. We’re getting sucked down the MIssissippi River. We’re all going down the Mississippi River. As we go, it’s getting bigger and bigger, all the other rivers are coming into it. Whoaa, the wave, whoaa, as it gets bigger, it starts to get, whoaaa, it’s bigger and we start to go farther and farther down, past, through Arkansas, past Clinton’s home and all that stuff, and he’s waving, “they’re they go.”

We’re going down, slowly we start to smell Cajun cooking, and all of a sudden we realize we’re going through New Orleans [music calms]. There goes New Orleans. In an interesting development, we empty out into the Gulf of Mexico, and we start to sink into the water [Page teases “La Bamba” while Mike bends low notes]. Sinking down into the water, somehow miraculously staying in one congealed clump of liquid, so we’re all sinking down into the water. As you sink down, we start to see a coral reef start to go by and a big school of fish is coming up and sticking their noses at us. Underwater, we’re sinking down lower and lower and lower, deeper, and as it gets deeper, it starts to get darker. The water is getting darker. [sonar radar sound] All we can see is a sort of green haze, a green haze. Now we’re getting deeper and deeper, deeper, we’re so deep now that we’re going by a big thing of lava coming out, you see it red lava [Page laughs]

FISH: A submarine, a submarine goes by! A big submarine goes by...

TREY: Wha? Red lava… O a submarine goes by!

FISH: A big submarine goes by [loud sonar radar pulses]

TREY: We’re sinking deeper and deeper as the submarine goes by, and the submarine starts to disappear into the distance. It’s getting really dark now and Coloneld: it’s Coloneld because we’re so deep. We’re all liquid. [Page starts Jaws theme on B-3]We see a huge eel, a huge yellow eel coming towards us, and the next thing you know off in the distance, off in the distance, we see the mouth of a cave.

We’re getting so Coloneld now, we’re so deep that we start to go into the cave, and we go into the cave. You hear bubbles [bubbling snortles], we’re in the cave, and we start to swim upwards in the cave, trying to see where it’s going to take us. As we get up higher and higher, suddenly we start to break through, and now this clump of water is floating on the surface of this cave. It’s this whole other place, and we step up out to the shore, as we step up on the shore, we all start to congeal back into human beings.

Now, a whole group of people is walking up on the shore of this cave. They’re walking forwards through the cave, and they start to see the cave opens up to a whole different land. There’s green grass heading out into the distance, and we start to walk across the grass. Fields going on forever, we’re staying together in a clump because -- it seems like there are a lot of people in the room here but now that we’re in this other land, it’s so vast -- it doesn’t seem like it’s that many people anymore.

So we’re walking across this green field, and over in the distance we see a Rhombus go by. We realize… that we must be… in GAMEHENDGE! Somehow we’ve ended up in Gamehendge, and as we walk forwards, we can’t see anything because there’s a huge forest in front of us. But, luckily, as we’re walking along we see an enormous plank, and we walk up and stand on the edge of the plank.

The whole group of people is now huddled together on the edge of this plank. The plank is going up into the distance. The plank is leaned over this enormous log, and we’re all on the end of it. Suddenly, this Mockingbird flies up overhead with a huge boulder, and he drops the boulder [falling noises followed by landing] and we go flying up into the air [noises reverse]. Then we reach the top of it, and we start to fall back down again, we’re falling down. Suddenly, our parachutes open, and now we’re floating down over Gamehendge.
From up here we can see the forest going off in the direction over there as far as the eye can see, a huge forest, and the castle rising up out of the forest and the Evil King Wilson, behind us the green field, and over farther in the distance the other way we see a huge mountain rising out of the forest, the biggest mountain you’ve ever seen. We look closer, and we see on the side of the mountain a tiny little speck. It’s a man, he’s climbing up the mountain, and we know that it’s Colonel Forbin. [“Fly Famous Mockingbird” theme begins]

Colonel Forbin is climbing up the mountain to find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus; he’s gonna go find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus. And, Icculus is going to send the Famous Mockingbird, who just dropped the boulder on us, to the castle of the Evil King Wilson to steal the Helping Friendly Book, bring it back to the Lizard people of Gamehendge, thereby restoring peace and harmony throughout the land once and for all.

So here he comes now, flying down out of the sky to land on Icculus’s shoulder, the Famous Mockingbird...