Initiation Rites by Dead & Co

I almost started this post apologizing for being a millennial with no Grateful Dead experience prior to 2014, qualifying my experience in Boulder as I felt would be respectful to those exposed to the light so many years before me, during the years of its creation in a genius, a spirit that only possesses a consciousness ever so rarely. Even more rare is its combination with the chance set of circumstances leading to its amplification and distribution. But this music taught me not to do that. It is with this mindset that I describe my experience in Boulder on July 5th and 6th of 2019.

In my life, there has a been a death and a coming of anew, a settling into myself and an acceptance of my own skin–all of it. The very worst of me and the very best, a reality which we must all face if we are to grow, a truth that applies without exception to the collective world itself. There is a responsibility we must take for what we experience that attends the power we have to choose it.

July 5, 2019

As life starts with warmth and joy, so did the first set on July 5, 2019, in Boulder, Colorado. Relative tragedy soon struck in freezing rain, gusty winds, hazardous lightning, and for a time, a sea of panicked hippies. We found ourselves soaked, cold, and wondering if our psychedelic powers of will could move the clouds on down the valley, away from the stadium and Bob Weir’s guitars. Wearing my cat ears and my rainbow wig, I shivered like the willfully ignorant Texan in me was deserved to do without a raincoat in the Colorado mountains. But like all others who'd had a taste of what was to come, I waited. Doubt swept over the crowd about an hour into the evacuation, but the majority of us held true. Such is the dedication to the Dead. And Dead & Co felt it that night.

As the sun set, Folsom field was surrounded by lightning on all sides, but the clouds were held at bay. John Mayer and Bob Weir counted D&C in, combining their voices to welcome us back from our cold wait with jubilance and mutual appreciation with Cold Rain & Snow, previously interrupted by lightning. (If the thunder don't get ya, then the lightning will!)

The Dead (and D&C) inspire my body to move, the titillation of an instinct existing between the note’s playing and my brain’s registering said note, perhaps even between the instinct that inspires the note’s playing and the note’s actual playing. I like those in-between spots. These are especially easy (and fun) to access in the transitions in the Dead’s (as well as D&C’s) set list. There is something about the Dead (as well as D&C)–perhaps the method of playing or the fact that they actually Play. Perhaps it needs no definition. I strive to be in the flow of things. Sometimes I’m in it, and sometimes I am not. In Boulder, D&C was in it the entire time. I am humbled; perspective befalls me. The Dead (and D&C) do that for me.

As China Rider rolled in, that funky jazzirific creep of a creature appeared from behind the stage and into my skin, as directed by Bob. Dancing with CC is like walking on rainbows on a 70-degree summer day without a cloud in the sky and birds chirping in the trees lining the rainbow. We fell into Terrapin like a cascading fountain, melting into Drum/Space, delving deeper and deeper until we met with that we most needed to face—a Darkness. In me, I faced something I feared. I saw again and accepted my darkness, and my arms pulsated with power reaching far into the stadium like an octopus, personified further by Chimenti's wizardry, a power that until this point inspired in me fear. I am, like all others, a part of some Thing greater than me. That Thing is me, though I am not it. I could feel myself at times during Drum/Space losing touch with that part of me that is not That Thing, but another part of me knew that was not possible. Not truly. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. What is consciousness but energy? Perhaps consciousness is a subtle energy, its detectability increasing with the passage of time…How many more layers are there that we have no idea about? How nano (and simultaneously macroscopic) are the finites our observational tools will discover during my lifetime, during the next? The mass and sudden and exponential increase in nanotechnology must logically be accompanied by a mass and sudden and exponential increase in access to greater extensions of our consciousness. Does it matter?

Of course.

The rest of the set was spacey; I like that.

John Mayer brought us back from the brink with a light and sweet Casey Jones. D&C just knew what to do; the Dead always know what to do. The Dead bring the medicine.

July 6, 2019

Adorned with scarlet begonias in my rainbow hair, I entered from the sweet haven that was the field house on Folsom’s west side to our seats, just 5 rows up in section 106. We entered as the band launched into SB-Fire and danced through the crowd as the sun began its descent over the Flat Irons. It was as if the night started with a love-filled first half of the first set, drawing the crowd into a light-hearted bliss and then bringing us into a damp shipyard in New Orleans in the 19th century, lit by oil candles, passing bottles of bourbon. I found myself dancing in the shadows in the corner, just watching. The funked-out reggae groove of They Love Each Other got us back to Dead homeostasis, preparing to soar us into Bird Song, looking for the little bird within our own hearts, and bluezed us out (John’s special sweet spot, though he is uniquely remarkable in all variants of his instrument’s expression) through the end of the set, setting us back down from our lesson-time for the intermission.

D&C woke its devotees up with a cool Playing in the Band, followed by an Estimated Prophet that always starts bright and then becomes tinged with a blue-ish purple, taking us down a side passage, not upwards or downwards but next to; what all do I miss when I am only looking for the light and the dark, the black and the white? There are so many—infinite—ways to look. I question whether I am constricted by the light and dark dichotomy. Then posit that perhaps all possibilities exist on the spectrum of light and dark. Good and evil. I digress.

The swirls of a cool, night sea kept endlessly exact time, pulled by the full moon and eddies of stars making shapes in the clear sky, jammed up into a sun-filled meadow just clearing after a heavy rain with skipping small woodlands creatures in Franklin’s Tower, which gave way to Eyes of the World, a reminder that each of us is an embodiment of the same energy, from whence we came and to which we will return. You are the eyes of the world. We are the world.

It was this night that I empathized with Music as if she were a timeless entity, a goddess, the great goddess, rising up into my body, all of our bodies, to dance with the Dead, to hear Bobby tell her how much he loves her (as if it were the first time), to D&C’s lessons and reminders in keeping her lighthearted and playful; her everlasting beauty that outlives all who have loved her, yet they love her still. Tears rolled down my face at this beauty, at the Feel of Love, of Spirit, of Universe; the Presence of God. Thank you, Music. Thank you, Dead.

And then it was down the Drum/Space drain we went. We swirled into a deep, dark hole, captive prisoners (we literally could not get out; Folsom was sold out) to the wizardric journey on which Bill and Mickey decided to guide us, augmented and exemplified by Oteil’s primitive witch doctor influence, a primal rumbling at the depths of our souls, perhaps beyond. There was no choice but to trust these Grand Master Wizards. It was at the bottom of this sequence that I faced absolute nothingness, hovered over it, floated above it, until BOM brought me back from the edge. BOM showed me the edge. The meditation that is Drum/Space sets the tone for the Dead (and Company) experience, tuning the audience into their truest frequency, readying them for the rest of the show. D&C slowly returned to stage, jazzily jammed through to Althea, the Mother welcoming us home, back from the brink, back to her bosom.

Bobby bared his soul during Days Between and throughout the night. I could not hold back my tears during Days Between. It overwhelmed me to truly hear him, to hear someone truly communicating like he was, and so musically at that. A 72-year-old man who has given so much to this world, over and over and over again, in great sacrifice to himself and those he loved (of course to their great joy as well, I am sure), was belting out of his belly these words: There were days/And there were days/And there were days I know/When all we ever wanted/Was to learn and love and grow/Once we grew into our shoes/We told them where to go/Walked halfway around the world/On promise of the glow/Walked upon a mountain top/Walked barefoot in the snow/Gave the best we had to give/How much we’ll never know we’ll never know.

This is authenticity. You cannot hashtag that, Palo Alto.

D&C ended with Not Fade Away, and the crowd held onto their Love, did Not Fade Away, bringing D&C back out to sweetly swing us into Ripple (but not before Bob called the entire crew on-stage, refusing to play until they were all present to receive a well-deserved standing ovation from Folsom), followed by an all-band-sung, emotional Brokedown Palace, rounded out with Playing in the Band—they had to put us down gently. A perfect little bow on top. The love they brought was a gift, one the Dead community will try to pass on for time to come. As is our responsibility.

It’s not always perfect, though they are elite in their level of perfection, but Boulder…was perfect. What. A. fucking. Show. What a community. What a band. Viva Los Muertos.