Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1993-04-05

TREY: So, we’re standing here right now. Things are happening, strange things are happening most of you don’t even realize, which happens sometimes. There’s a guy over there who can… Actually what’s happening right now, I can kind of feel it and see it out there in the audience. Everybody’s starting to get kind of thirsty. Is anybody thirsty out there? [crowd cheers] Me too…

I can really see though, seriously, looking out there I can see that everybody’s looking pretty thirsty right now. Really, it’s starting to get desperate. You can kind of taste that dryness in your mouth, you know kind of a dry thing that, just how good like a cold beer would feel right now just going down, and the strange thing is that as I can see what’s sort of starting to happen here is everybody’s getting… everybody’s getting… ok what... everybody’s getting thirstier and thirstier.

Actually all the moisture in your body is actually starting to dry right out. It’s coming… kind of dissipating up into the air and as you’re standing there. Your skin is starting to get a little more and more chaffy and cakey, and you’re getting dryer and you’re feeling dryer and dryer. It’s getting dryer and dryer, and the outside of your skin is actually starting to crust over. As I stand there I can see everybody in the whole room is starting to sort of crumble into little dried up sacks of dust, and all the dust is kind of crumbling into one big mound until everybody’s starting to pile down into this huge pile of dust.

There’s nobody standing out there at all anymore, and it’s now just a big sea of dried up dust. As we stand here [?] like the whole world is starting to dry up. All the moisture in the walls is starting to go up in the air, and the building around us crumbling until the ceiling, chunks in the ceiling start to fall down onto the ground, [Trey makes crumbling sound effects] the ceiling until...

Crumbling down, there’s nothing left except this huge pile of dust lying on the floor, and if you look up at the sky there’s just stars up above us everywhere over the skyline. Even the sound now is starting to dry up. All of the moisture of the sound is starting to go up into the air and everything is drifting away until the fish are kind of starting to lie on the ground, and they’re turning into dust. For some strange reason, everything on the Earth is just turning into a dry ball of dust floating through space. [?]

Now, there’s just wind, starts to blow up out of nowhere. It’s kind of blowing up at this [Trey makes wind sound effects] tumble of wind coming up out of nowhere, and the dust sort of starts to sort of kick up in the air. There’s big clouds of dust everywhere going up in the air til the whole earth is starting to just crumble away because there’s no moisture left to hold it in.

Everything’s dried out. There’s nothing left but a big cloud of dust, and the whole cloud of dust is kind of floating through space. It’s kind of floating up here and you can picture it. It’s all just this big cloud of dust now floating in space. There’s no earth left at all, and as you’re looking at it, the dust is turning from… it’s turning from dust into some of these bluish crystal little teeny teeny dots up there. It’s looking, it’s kind of hazier and hazier.

I’m kind of looking at it now and I start to see this frame around the outside of it. The dust is actually turning into sort of static now, and it’s actually static on this TV screen. And the whole thing is actually this virtual reality… ah there it is, the static coming up. And everything is just a big… everything is just more TV now. There’s no reality at all it’s all just a big TV screen, the dust on the TV screen. As we’re standing there looking at this whole thing, this giant hand comes out of nowhere and starts to change the channels [channels change].

The channels are changing, you’re seeing different things. Suddenly the whole world is nothing except this... Channels are changing and changing until finally it comes onto this one channel, it’s… it’s a different channel now. This time it’s a guy hang-gliding. He’s hang-gliding on TV, and at this point the frame starts to sort of disappear. All the dust and static that used to be there disappears, and there’s nothing left but this guy hang-gliding through space.

He’s hang-gliding, right. He’s floating around on this hang-glider. You start to feel like you’re underneath the hang-glider now. Now the whole, the whole group of everybody’s consciousness together is in this one guy’s brain hang-gliding. So we’re all hang-gliding around now, and we’re looking down below us. Yes, and at one point we go over this mountain and into this black space, and as we’re hang-gliding around we feel ourselves reach up with our hand behind our back, put our hand on the latch that’s hanging us on to the hang-glider, and with one little motion…

We’re falling through space. Looking down, as we’re falling through space we start to look down and we start to see that we’re coming down toward some land here. It’s a different place than we’ve ever been. We look off in the distance, and we see a green field. There’s a green field stretching off as far as you can see in that direction. There’s a huge forest stretching off in that direction as far as I can see, and we’re still falling down. Out of the forest over there, there’s a huge mountain. There’s a huge mountain coming out of the thing when you realize that we’re about to land…In Gamehendge [sinister laugh].

We’re coming down in Gamehendge. We look over the mountain, and we see this tiny speck that couldn’t be seen before on the mountain.This tiny speck is on the mountain. We kind of start to go a little closer to the mountain as we’re going down, and we see that the speck is actually a guy. This guy is climbing up the mountain with hand over hand up on the rocks. As he’s climbing up this mountain, the whole thing starts to quake like an earthquake.

It’s quaking like an earthquake. [Earthquake sound effects from Trey] Boulders coming down alongside of him. And as the boulders come out of the mountain they’re actually leaving like sockets, and these boulders fall out. They leave what looks like an eye socket over here, and boulders coming down it looks like a nose til the whole mountain takes the shape of the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus.

So now, there’s this guy, it’s Colonel Forbin. He’s hanging on the mountain. He’s going up on the mountain. He’s trying to get the Helping Friendly Book, and only Icculus can help him. So, the mountain has now changed into the shape, the form of the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus. As he looks up, he says, “Icculus can you help me please. I need to get the Helping Friendly Book because this is the book, of course, that contains all the knowledge inherent in the universe. It’s gonna bring all the people that live in this land, they’re gonna be able to live in peace and tranquility hopefully, with nature forever.”

So, Icculus looks down at Colonel Forbin, and he says, “ok I’m gonna get you the book. What I’m gonna do is call on my friend here the Famous Mockingbird.” So the Famous Mockingbird comes flying out of the sky and lands on Icculus’ shoulder. Icculus whispers to the Famous Mockingbird, “Fly off, steal the Helping Friendly Book from the Evil King Wilson and come back. Bring the book to the people.” That’s gonna be, that’s gonna be it for them so...

Here he comes now if you’ll come with us, the Famous Mockingbird floating up in the sky…