Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Harpua", 1993-04-14

TREY: This all started one night a couple of weeks ago as I was lying in my bed. I was just sort of drifting off to sleep, and I started to think about dreams and these dreams that were hanging over my head that night. Kind of, as you’re just drifting off to sleep, often times your dreams are just rolling out of your head, one thing after another, and you think, you know, if I could just get up and write this down.

Well this particular night, I had this pretty clear vision of these dreams that were floating up over my head here and were making these bubbles as they came out of my head, these kind of big bulbous dream bubbles. And, I started to wonder where these dreams went after they came out and another one took their place. I started picturing this huge Dream Pile sitting sort of on the side of my bed piling up these ovular bubbles of dreams piling up and all the dreams i’ve had all my life.

Thinking about this now, all the dreams that everybody has, all of you people out there every night as you’re drifting off, all of these dreams bubbling up. You know, where do they go? I think I probably realized that somebody comes along in the middle of the night that we’ve never thought of before and scoops up all these dreams in a big package and takes them away some place to Dream Pile Land.

So, somewhere out there, there’s this huge mound of dreams, all the dreams that all of us have had all of our lives. They mingle together in this big pile. It’s the Dream Pile. So there’s ugly mean dreams, happy dreams, and all mingling together into this one huge pile of concepts that you could never even imagine because you’re usually either having like a happy dream or having an ugly mean dream or maybe you’re just kind of having an indifferent dream.

But, somewhere, if you can picture, all these dreams are piled up into a huge mountain, a Mountain of Dreams. Well, it just so happens that where all these dreams piled up, all these minglings of different dreams sort of created this little hill, this little grassy knoll, and in it, these two creatures came out that are compilation of all the dreams you’ve ever had since you were a kid, everybody.

One of them is this old man, who is kind of a ratty old man dressed rattily. He’s got one leg and he’s scraping along on the ground as he walks, a mean old man. Next to him is this, this dog, that walks next to him. The dog’s name is, of course, it’s Harpua. So, here’s Harpua, the ugly mean dog, sort of a bulldog, with saliva coming out of his mouth, hair all in clumps coming on top of his head and these big red bloodshot eyes coming out, evil fangs sticking out of his mouth. The two of them walk along everyday out of this little dream land.

There’s other little creatures that came out of the dream land, too, but these two happen to be notorious on the Dream Mountain. Gonna get a little theme going here [plays Jimmy’s theme]...

So anyway, here in this Dream Land, every once in a while, this dog Harpua and his evil master would go looking for a little action, a little fun, and they would kind of wander off, looking for some kind of fresh meat, some kind of fresh kill. That’s what they’d do. Well somewhere down in the bottom of this grassy knoll, there was sort of a suburban area where a lot of these dreams were coming from.

In one little house--there was sort of a pink house, a blue house and a green house on the street, all the nice little mailboxes lined up and all the little cars looked all the same, and if you kind of come with us down the hill, down the street, then take a left turn, up into the window of one particular little house. You go in there, and you see sitting on the couch, a young boy. He awoke a little while ago, and he had dreams last night that went to the Dream Mountain. But, right now, he’s sitting there flicking channels on his TV, he’s listening to his stereo, and he’s looking down next to him. He’s petting his little cat, his little kitty, that he loves so much.

It’s really a beautiful day, you’ve got the sun shining in through the windows and the stereo is playing and he’s petting his little cat. He’s looking down and he says, picks up the cat and says to his little cat:
“You are the light of my life; you’re everything to me; I love you so much; you’re just such a beautiful kitty, I love you so much; you’re always there for me, my sweet little, my beautiful little, my sweet little, POSTER NUTBAG!!! Ah yes, my sweet little Poster Nutbag, I love to pet your fur; you’re so beautiful and soft and furry; you’re always there for me, Poster Nutbag. You’re always there for me: I hope nothing bad ever happens to you.”

So, he’s watching The Jetsons on TV and he’s petting Poster Nutbag when he realizes Poster wants to go out for a walk on this particular day. So, he opens up the door, and Poster Nutbag starts to walk out the door. And, he walks on down the hall. And, he says, “Mother, Father, I want to kill you. Mother... I wanna go for a walk, I wanna go for a walk.” So he walks on down the hall, and he walks on out the door, and he walks on down the sidewalk, and he walks out on the driveway, and he walks across the lawn. He walks past the little tree in front. And, he walks on down the road.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, here comes the old man. Here comes Harpua, too. They’re looking for a little action, like I said before. So here you got the old man and Harpua. On the other, you’ve got Poster Nutbag walking down the road. Harpua. Nutbag. Pua. Nutbag. Pua, Bag. Pu, Ga. Until suddenly they come around a corner, face to face, the cat, the dog, the cat, the dog, cat dog cat dog, at og, t g uh. Eyebrows raising, saliva dripping on the ground, fangs, claws, claw, fang, fang, claw, fight, people, blood, sinking teeth, push, oh my god, it’s gonna be brutal.

Look, the storm’s gone...