Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1994-04-24

TREY: Take a minute here to think about, just think about what you know. Think about who you are, what you are, just standing there. Imagine if you picture yourself standing here, what you really are, that you’re basically a bunch of molecules bouncing off each other all throughout your body, your flesh. If you really stop to think about it, you can probably realize there is a lot of space in there that is basically nothing, all this space that needs to be there for the molecules to go bouncing around.

So, I’m just gonna be standing here thinking about that for a minute. Think of yourself as this group of molecules bouncing off each other. As you think about that, think about the fact that everyone standing next to you is more of the same, and in reality even that board you’re leaning against and the floor you’re standing on, the building all around us, is basically more of the same.

Of course, the people that study all this gene technology and everything, they’re finding out that a piece of wheat and a human being are pretty close to each other on a genetic level. So really it’s a lot of the same stuff oozing around. So if you think about, say, water or something which would all blend together, if you dropped dye in water it would all meld together. So, it’s kind of a miracle with all us standing here like that, being so much the same, that we just don’t kind of ooze into one just huge puddle of muck.

So, the funny thing is that as I’m standing here right now, I can basically see that we are oozing into one big puddle of muck. Everybody here is all kind of blending into one huge puddle of muck. I think that’s basically what it’s all about when we get into those jams that were going, communicating and oozing into a puddle of muck. So here we are oozing into a puddle of muck…

So, we’re oozing into a puddle of muck, and the puddle of muck is oozing together. And the thing that’s really strange about it is the puddle of muck is starting to get a little more solid because all of that stuff that I was talking about, this space that isn’t really there in between the molecules is kind of disappearing because the molecules are bumping closer together and we’re sinking and getting down to the floor until now the puddle of muck is about an inch off the floor, but it’s all the actual stuff we are made of here turning into more goo.

What’s happening now is Paul is leaving the soundboard, he’s getting a big broom, and he’s pushing all the muck into one big pile in the middle of the room. So the muck is getting pushed into a pile, muck getting pushed into a pile [sounds swirl]. Muck into a pile, go ahead Paul sweep it up into a pile. As he pushes it up into a pile, he starts to kind of push it together and Chris and everybody at the soundboard, they’re all coming out and help push the pile of muck. As they push, they start to form it into this giant circle of muck until finally they’ve kind of molded the outside until we’ve all become a giant perfect sphere of muck.

Now we’re a perfect sphere of muck, the lifeforce of muck. As we’re standing in this perfect sphere of muck, we notice that the building, which is actually in the shape of a kind of curve here, has actually pushed into more of a curve. Now, it’s like this long, incredible long tunnel that’s like a curvature thing, but the giant sphere of this oozing muck. And Paul pushes a button and as he pushes the button a giant hydraulic lift at one end of the building starts to lift up and starts to lift the whole tube up. The giant puddle of muck starts to roll downhill.

Now the giant puddle of human muck is rolling downhill, and as it rolls it goes a little bit faster and faster and it’s going faster and it’s really moving now. [music begins swirling, especially Page at the piano] HERE COMES THE PUDDLE OF MUCK!!! WATCH OUT FOR THE PUDDLE OF MUCK!!! HERE IT COMES, THE GIANT PUDDLE OF MUCK! WATCH OUT FOR THE MUCK, WATCH OUT FOR THE MUCK, WATCH OUT FOR THE MUCKKKKK!!!

It goes off the muck jump, and it’s floating in space now. So, here it is floating in space, the giant puddle of muck. You look over and you see all the planets, Mars, Saturn, you see the sun, and you see the giant puddle of muck. As the puddle of muck is floating, we realize we can see out of the puddle muck. And as we look out, we can see a lot of black space underneath the puddle of muck. We see Pluto over there, Saturn, and we drift out of this solar system and into space.

As we drift out into space, we sigh, we see, we sigh, we see a tiny green spot off in the distance. As we come closer and closer and closer [Page teases a couple of notes from “Sunrise” by Strauss] we realize that it’s nothing but a little fleck of dust that’s right in front of our face that goes by. And then we see another tiny green spot off in the distance, and we realize that green spot is just a speck of dust. It’s coming toward us. As we get closer, it starts to take form. It starts to come into our field of vision, closer and closer and closer, we realize it’s not tiny at all, it’s absolutely vast, enormous [Page continues playing “Sunrise”], it’s an enormous thing, an enormous green thing, an enormous green field.

We see it is a green field. We see that off in the distance is a sort of field of wheat. And we ponder the question of the genetic similarity to that field of wheat and this giant puddle of muck. As the puddle of muck comes down, we start to separate again, and all that space that disappeared comes apart until we find ourselves standing in the green field. As we look over to our left, we see this black rhombus rising out of the field. As we look over to the right, we see a huge mountain and we see on the mountain a tiny little guy climbing up the mountain.

We realize that the tiny little guy is Colonel Forbin [Trey returns to the “Fly Famous Mockingbird” theme]. Colonel Forbin is climbing up the mountain to find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus. He’s going to find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus because he can’t read the book like Icculus has always said to do. He should read the book you know. You should read the book. But, right now he can’t read the book because the book is in the castle, and Wilson has the key to the castle.

Colonel Forbin has come to find Icculus because he wants the key to the castle so he can get the book, so he can give the book to the people, so they can read the book. They wanna read that book. So he enlists the help of his friend, The Famous Mockingbird, who comes flying out of the sky over the heads of the people who only minutes before were a giant puddle of muck, a giant sphere of muck, and The Famous Mockingbird flies off to get the book.

Here he comes now…