Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1992-12-08

TREY: Ahhhhhh, the Sacred Greed, because you really can’t fight with ole Mother Nature now can you.cause for instance it’s feeling pretty warm and hot in here at this moment, but you know that outside these doors it’s cold. It’s damn cold and windy and icy. Even as we speak, this building seems pretty strong. There’s big cement walls around us. But, it’s still manmade, and when you think about Mother Nature and how powerful it is, there’s nothing that can hold it out.

Even right now as I speak, I’m looking back at these little cracks in the doors that the cement couldn’t fill, these little tiny seepings of cold coming in. We can’t hold it back. It’s starting to get colder and colder in here. It’s really starting to get pretty damn cold in here. The little cracks, ice is starting to make everything contract, the cracks are getting bigger. The cold air is starting to come in more and more and circulate around. I can see everybody out there starting to get a little colder.

Now it’s really starting to get back, you’re shivering. And soon, your heads start to feel numb, everybody’s heads starts to feel numb. They say it’s not such a bad way to go, to freeze to death, they say it’s pretty good, it’s kinda peaceful. You’re all standing there, and it’s getting colder. Suddenly, I start to see people like slow down in their movements, they’re getting closer. The blood is getting thicker, little bits of ice start sticking to your eye lashes and everything… is… slowly… starting… to… freeze… into a… solid… block of…ice… until… the whole… room… is… [slowly] froooozzzzennnn sollllid

Suddenly as you’re all frozen solid in a block of ice, off in the distance you see a huge metal robot with enormous flat metallic feet stomping towards across the horizon [Mike and Fish create stomping rhythm]. It’s stomping slower than that, stomping a little bit slower. The huge feet are coming up, and it’s coming up towards the diner across there. It’s coming up and with one giant step, he crushes the diner [makes crushing sound]. Walking across to the little health food store next door, with one giant step [makes another exploding sound], crushes the health food store.

Walking down over to that big white truck over there parked outside. But OH he doesn’t crush that big truck because Bob really likes the truck, and we wouldn’t want to crush the truck so he goes by the truck. And it goes up to Charlie’s bus, but he doesn’t crush that either because he likes the bus. So suddenly, with one giant foot raised up above everybody’s head [makes big explosion sound and band crescendos]. Now you have all been crushed into tiny dust particles of ice. There is nothing left in the whole building except a huge sea of dust particles of ice

Then, way off in the distance, we see a huge 5,000 foot broom coming up [sweeping sound effects]. It goes up across to the diner and with one great swoop of the broom, dust, and the diner goes off into the distance. And the broom keeps sweeping. It goes over to the health food store and with one giant sweep of the broom, voosh, the health food store disappears. And then it’s getting closer [Trey continues vooshing sweeping sound], it comes up to the venue here, the Barrymore Theater, and with one giant sweep of the broom: WOOOSH [Fish across the cymbals], everyone is now just dust floating up.

As we all float up in the air in this pile of dust that we’ve become, up in the air, we suddenly feel ourselves being taken by the wind, and the wind is carrying us away. It’s carrying the dust. We’re being carried on currents of wind up above Wisconsin, and we can see up higher and higher in the atmosphere, we’re starting to drift over the country. We feel the wind as we get higher, it’s getting stronger and stronger, we’re drifting along in the wind in this huge pile of dust.

As we drift off, we’re going far away from the earth, we realize we’ve never really thought about what makes wind anyway: where the heck does the wind come from? As we’re floating along we start to think, “my god, I never knew it,” but up in front, I’m seeing what makes the wind, where the wind comes from. It’s a huge vast head as big as the sun. It’s a huge hairy headed thing with a white triangular dress on, holding this vacuum cleaner, a huge vacuum cleaner, and it’s sucking us in!

O my god! {Page making swirling sounds on the organ] It’s Fishman! He’s the one that makes the wind. He’s sucking us in. As the tub gets closer, we’re going faster and we’re going into the tube! And everything’s black. We’re in Fish’s vacuum cleaner. We start to congeal back into the human beings that we were before. We’re now all standing in a huge group, but we’re inside of Phish’s vacuum cleaner. We realize we’re knee deep in saliva, swimming around in Fish’s saliva.

Suddenly we see a raft, and we climb up onto the raft., this raft that’s floating on Fish’s saliva. We’re going downstream and we come up to a huge waterfall. As we get closer, the saliva starts going faster, we’re on a big thing, Suddenly, over the edge of the big waterfall, now we’re floating down, downwards, and poof, the parachutes come out and we’re all, a thousand of us, floating down with parachutes. We look down below us, and we seeeeeeeee [sing songy like a lullaby] green fields, big huge forest over there, huge mountain rising up off in the distance, a castle rising up out of the forest.

[sing songy continues] Floating down, we realize, we’re in Gamehendge. Floating down, we look over, we look out, and coming up out of this forest is a little tiny old man who’s climbing up the mountain. He’s trying to find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus, he wants to get the Helping Friendly Book. He’s climbing up the mountain to find Icculus, rocks tumbling down around him, moss trees, Icculus, rocks moss tree, Mockingbird Icculus, rocks Wilson Lizards rocks moss Icculus Lizards rocks moss Icculus rocks moss. And then, out in the distance, we see The Famous Mockingbird flying across the sky.

[lullaby-like lilting sing songy continues] It’s The Famous Mockingbird, and the Mockingbird lands on Icculus’ shoulder and Icculus says, “Famous Mockingbird fly away, fly away, go to the castle of the evil King Wilson,” who we already sang a song about him so you know about him, “go to the castle of the evil King Wilson, steal the Helping Friendly Book, take the Helping Friendly Book to the beautiful people of Gamehendge,” thereby giving them peace, harmony, and tranquility forever and ever, for eons of time to come. And off flew The Famous Mockingbird, off into the sky, off towards the castle of the evil King Wilson…