My Phish dilemma.

There was never time in which I didn't like Phish. But, you know, I guess I just didn't "get it." I thought they were cool, but they weren't ever special enough for me to see them as the holier-than-thou institution that my friends did. All that changed three weeks ago.

Something happened to me. It's like some distant recess of my brain suddenly activated and I finally have the patience to let all...that...music finally seep in. Ironically, this is perhaps the most consistently sober I've been in the past 4.5 years. Ha, maybe that's the trick.

Anyway, so I always felt somewhat insecure about the fact that I couldn't relate to all these Phish fans whose musical tastes I generally admired. In looking back, I know that insecurity manifested itself in the form of mockery. My mother always used to tell me as a boy that people who did mean things did them because they actually felt sad themselves. While it would be an exaggeration to say I was "sad" that I didn't get Phish, I think there was some relevance in that statement to my situation. All the time, "Trey sucks at singing! He always messes up! He's such a junke! He's such a failed pop-star!"

Now that I see the error in my ways, I can't help but look back and wonder what these people thought when I said those things. They must have thought I was a total rube. They must have just wished that I would either get it or shut up. The truth is that I wish I had as well, and I was generally uncomfortable in that, as a huge rock and roll fan, I couldn't make the connection that all these people so readily could.

Let me say this to all of you I hassled: I feel like a total idiot. Trust me, I stand here feeling like the last kid in the grade who learned how to ride a bike. Can you forgive and forget?