Happy Aloha Friday!
If you are looking for a morning boost, stick with this one, it’s a goodie! If not, feel free to skip to the bottom. Celebrating Bob Marley, in a roundabout way, on this last Friday of Black History Month, born this month in 1945.
On 2/28/03 I set out from Oneonta NY to Uniondale NY (Shout out to a teammate on Long Island) to catch the last Northeast performance of Phish’s winter 2003 tour at the famed Nassau Coliseum.
Arriving with three of my friends and no tickets, trying to get in to what we were certain was going to be the hottest show of their comeback tour, we separated from each other, roamed the parking lot and campus of Hofstra University, pointer finger in the air, and one by one, over those frosty hours before the doors opened, each scored a ticket. The excitement of the last ticket still captured in an archived VM from my buddy Chad, just minutes before the show. The show lived up to the hype and Phish dropped a bomb of a second set with my all time favorite version of Tweezer (Nassau 2/28/03). Each year for the past 19, I celebrate 2/28/03 with a full listen to this entire show.
Now there are things that happen that are outside of our control, or outside of our understanding of how the universe really works…the WHY of things. Decisions are made, left turns are made instead of right, minor insignificant seconds tacked onto the end of live song, with a spacey dissonance, that at the time just don’t seem to have any relevance. Sometimes you just have to be listening and the universe unfolds itself right before our very eyes (and ears).
Cut to 9/25/2016. I awake before dawn, drive to the end of the road North Shore Kauai and set out to hike the first 4 miles of the Kalalau Trail to Hanakapi’ai Falls. I hit the trail just after 6:30A, headlamp lit to guide the way until the sun makes it’s appearance on the far side of the crag that is Na Pali coast. I queue up 2/28/03 on my IPOD and begin the two miles to Hanakapia’ai Beach. Not a soul on the trail, it feels like I am the only person present on earth, and I am cruising the hilly cliff side landscape. The tempo of the trail and the music sync and I am transported. I hit the beach at 7:00 AM, music swirling through my head phones, and I make a slight detour down to the beach, to take in the scene of the emptiness and tranquility, before I start my trek another 2 miles up-stream to Hanakapi’ai falls.
The momentum shifts as the roar of the crowd, pumping through my head phones, signals the start of the massive Tweezer that starts set two. The next 27 minutes are like pure bliss, stream hopping as I glide up towards the massive waterfall. As the 24 minute mark hits on this song, the band fades into a dissonance, not quite willing to let the song fade off, they just keep it hanging on for dear life. Before this moment, though I had listened to this song hundreds of time, I never understood the meaning of the this specific dissonant section (other than it sounding cool and eerie), why it existed, why the band kept the song breathing just a few minutes more…until, on that trail, deep in the back country of Kauai, just moments from the massive waterfall, the universe revealed itself. Without this very small segment of the song, this “landing point”, “letting the dust settle” moment, I would have, on this hike, on this day, approached the falls a moment to early. Because, as the falls were making themselves known (that audible rumble of a 300 foot waterfall’s crescendo), the dissonant section, as it always did, gave way to Bob Marley’s “Soul Shakedown Party.” A fitting tribute the accomplishment of arriving at such a beautiful scene: A 300 foot flowing waterfall with not a soul around. Also, this song was a nod to the lock step the band felt with the crowd on this cold winter night in Uniondale!
Call it kismet, serendipity, the universe speaking it’s mysterious language, coincidence…whatever you want to call it, everything came to a very calculated point at that moment and with the Bob Marley “good-time” cover rolling, I arrived, exactly at that moment, at Hanakapi’ai Falls. I was floored that the universe had intended each song to be a certain length of time, for my hesitation at the beach…the pace with which I hit the falls, it all made sense. As I sat at the falls, shaking my head at the sheer unlikelihood of all these events coming to a head as they did, brining additional meaning to that evening at the Nassau Coliseum, now, 20 years ago, Monday, I couldn’t help but smile.
Mahalo Nui
