Hello Phish Phans!
This week we will begin our journey into the mystical land of Gamehendge, home of the Lizards. Over the next several weeks you will hear the story of how the Lizards, a peaceful group of people, were deceived by an outsider, and their attempts to claim back their kingdom. This story was written as part of Trey Anastasio’s senior thesis: The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday. Each song in the thesis tells a different part of the story, connected by transition music and some narration. The transition music is called “The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday” and serves as the story’s theme music. Over the next several weeks, I will try to recreate the thesis by providing the narration and the songs (with lyrics). While the full thesis exists online, I will opt for finding better recorded versions of each song.
We begin our journey with the theme music “The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday” and the beginning narration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOcr5fJM_BI
Narration: Once upon a time there was a mountain that rose out of a vast green forest. And in the forest there were birds and lakes and rocks and trees and rivers. The forest was also inhabited by a small group of people called the lizards. The lizards were a simple people and they had lived in the forest undisturbed for thousands of years in utter peace and tranquillity. Once a year when spring came, and the first blossoms began to show, the lizards would gather at the base of the mountain, to give thanks for all that they had. They thanked the birds and they thanked the lakes and they thanked the rocks and the trees and the rivers; but most importantly, they thanked Icculus. Icculus lived at the top of the mountain, or at least everyone thought so, for no one had actually ever seen him. But they knew he existed, because they had the Helping Friendly Book. Icculus had given the Helping Friendly Book to the Lizards thousands of years earlier as a gift. It contained all of the knowledge inherent in the universe, and had enabled the Lizards to exist in harmony with nature for years. And so they lived; until one day a traveler arrived in Gamehendge. His name was Wilson and he quickly became intrigued by the Lizards way of life. He asked if he could stay on and live in the forest; and the Lizards, who had never seen an outsider, were happy to oblige. Wilson lived with the Lizards for a few years, studying the ways of the Helping Friendly Book, and all was well. Until one morning when they awoke and the book was gone. Wilson explained that he had hidden the book, knowing that the Lizards had become dependent on it for survival. He declared himself king and enslaved the innocent people of Gamehendge. He cut down the trees and built a city, which he called Prussia. And in the center of the city he built a castle, and locked in the highest tower of the castle lay the Helping Friendly Book out of the reach of the Lizards forever. But our story begins at a different time, not in Gamehendge, but on a suburban street in Long Island, and our hero is no king sitting in a castle, he is a retired colonel shaving in his bathroom.
Colonel Forbin looked square in the mirror and dragged the blade across his cold creamed skin. He saw the tired little folds of flesh that lay in a heap beneath his eyes. Fifty-two years of obedient self-restraint, of hiding his tension behind a serene veil of composure. For fifty-two years he had piled it all on the back burner, and for fifty-two years it had boiled, frothing over in a turbulent storm inside of him. It had escaped through his eyes, reacting with the cigarette smoke and the fluorescent lights and slowly accumulating into a sagging mass. He ran his dripping palm across the stubble on the nape of his neck and thought again about the door. He had discovered the door some months back on one of his ritualistic morning walks with his dog McGrupp. It had started out as a typical stroll with McGrupp bounding joyously ahead of the preoccupied colonel. As they reached the apex of the hill, he saw it and he knew it had always been there, and felt foolish for overlooking the door for so long. At first, he tried to ignore it, but he soon found that it was impossible, and slowly his newly acquired knowledge transformed his dreary life into a prison from which there was only one escape. And on this morning, Colonel Forbin stepped through the door.
As “The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday” serves as the theme/transitional music, we will not consider it the first song. This narration transitions into the first real song of the thesis: “The Lizards”
“The Lizards” is sung from the perspective of Colonel Forbin after passing through the door into Gamehendge where he first meets a knight named Rutherford the Brave….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HoDlGNTisI
Lyrics: Passing through the corridor I came upon an aging knight
Who leaned against the wall in gnarly armor
He was on his way to see the king
Wilson
Wilson
Wilson
He led me through the streets of Prussia talking
As he tried to crush a bug that scurried underneath his bootheel
He said there was a place where we should go
So he lead me through the forest to the edge of a lagoon by which
We wandered ’til we reached a bubbly spring
The knight grew very quiet as we stood there
Then he lifted up his visor and he turned to me and he began to sing
chorus:
He said I come from the land of darkness
I said I come from the land of doom
He said I come from the land of Gamehendge
From the land of the big baboon
But I’m never never going back there
And I couldn’t if I tried
‘Cause I come from the land of Lizards
And the Lizards they have died
And the Lizards they have died
And the Lizards they have died
And the Lizards they have died
He told me that the Lizards were a race of people practically extinct
From doing things smart people don’t do
He said that he was once a Lizard too
His name was Rutherford the Brave and he was on a quest to save
His people from the fate that lay before them.
Their clumsy end was perilously near
The Lizards would be saved, he said, if they could be enlightened
By the writings of the Helping Friendly Book
In all of Prussia only one existed
And Wilson had declared that any person who possessed it was a crook
[chorus]
The Helping Friendly Book, it seemed, possessed the ancient secrets
Of eternal joy and never-ending splendor
The trick was to surrender to the flow
We walked along beneath the moon
He lead us through the bush ’till soon
We saw before our eyes a raging river
He said that we could swim it if we tried
And saying this the knight dove in forgetting that his suit of arms
Would surely weigh him down and so he sunk
And as his body disappeared before me
I bowed my head in silence and remembered all thoughts that he had thunk
[chorus]
In the thesis, the narration continues over the music at the end (~7:50 in clip):But Rutherford and Forbin weren’t alone. And suddenly an unexpected movement caught his eye. On the far side of the river he saw a shaggy creature standing in the weeds who stared across at Forbin with an unrelenting gaze. A gigantic mass of muscles and claws. The hideous beast reared back and hurled himself in the water and swam toward the region where Rutherford lay. And in a flash, the beast was gone, underneath the surface to the frosty depths below while Forbin, bewildered, waited alone. The seconds dragged by in what seemed like hours till finally the colonel felt it all had been a dream. Defeated, he bowed his head then turned to go. Suddenly with a roar, the creature emerged before him and held the brave knight’s body to the sky. And the creature laid the knight upon the shore. And the colonel fell beside his friend in prayer that he’d survive. And Rutherford, brave Rutherford was alive.
Next time, we’ll meet Tela!
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