2 posts tagged “phish”
I'm writing this post from a friend's apartment in Long Beach, California. Unfortunately, my internal clock hasn't quite matched up with the actual time here, which made me decide that it might be a good time to get some thoughts down on (virtual) paper. What's in Long Beach? Festival 8 - Phish's eighth music festival, and the first one they've held since reuniting this year. More on this:
That summer, they mounted their first two-day festival — The Clifford Ball — at a decommissioned Air Force base in Plattsburgh, New York. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people were in attendance; MTV was on-hand to document the experience. In Phish's own makeshift city, Great Northeast Productions created an amusement park, restaurants, a post office, playgrounds, arcades, and movie theaters. Aside from six "traditional" sets, the band rode a flatbed truck through the campground, serenading the audience at 3 a.m.[25] The concert's production company went on to host six more Phish festivals.
The Great Went, Phish's second large-scale festival, was held that summer at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, just miles from the Canadian border. The official count for the show was an impressive 65,000 people, qualifying the festival to be the largest city in Maine.[27] For many fans however, the crowd felt larger. Band and audience collaborated yet again in a colossal work of art: individual pieces of art by fans were connected to a large piece of art by the band. A giant matchstick was lit, burning the resultant tower to the ground.[28]
For the Millennium Celebration, Phish traveled to the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in the Florida Everglades. Of the major New Year's Eve concerts around the globe — Sting, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel — at 85,000, Phish had the largest attendance of any paid concert event that night.[31] During ABC's millennium coverage, Peter Jennings and World News Tonight reported on the massive audience and featured the band's performance of "Heavy Things". Called "Big Cypress", the enormous festival culminated with an extended seven-and-a-half hour set that began at midnight and ended at sunrise.
This is going to be my first Phish festival, and I can't wait. I love the music, I love the vibe around these sort of events, I love the fact that this will be on Halloween, and I love the fact that I'm in sunny California instead of freezing New England. More than anything else, this is the first time that I can remember that I really feel like I'm going on an adventure.
I don't have a clue what this weekend will bring. I do know that I'm more excited for this than for anything I've done in recent memory. I think my brain has always been wired to want to take in as many new experiences as possible, but self-doubt and a lack of confidence has always held me back. When I reread this blog to see what I was like in 2007 (or even worse, reread old emails to see what I was like in 2003), it dawns on me that I was incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of meeting new people, and not really self-aware enough to realize this.
Before transition, the problem was mostly apathy. I didn't particularly have any interest in doing typical guy stuff, and I didn't have any interest in dating or relationships, and I didn't really care about what type of guy I would grow up to be. It was a lot easier to lose myself in gaming, and to convince myself that if I became really good at winning, my self-esteem would increase. This never really happened, but it made a great distraction.
During transition, the problem was mostly fear. I couldn't get over the stigma of being transgendered, and spent any time out in public being afraid that people were snickering at me behind my back. I'd be shopping at the mall, realize I had to use the restroom, and actually drive home to use it because I was afraid that someone would call me out if they saw me in a womens' room. I was well aware of the fact that I had no idea how do basic things that most women know, like using makeup or wearing clothes that matched or talking to guys, and convinced myself that other people were as aware of these flaws as I was.
The only cure for fear was facing it, which I did. People talking behind my back? Yup, they probably are. I can't stop it, all I can do is decide how it's going to affect me. Don't know how to talk to guys? Well, hell, the only way I'm going to learn is to try. Feeling like a hot mess whenever I go out? Solicit feedback from others, even if it means my feelings might get hurt every once in awhile. Afraid that a guy will find out I'm transgendered and run away screaming/beat the tar out of me in a transphobic rage? Well hell, the only thing one can reliably do in this situation if they want to move forward is to learn how to read people and to figure out if it's worth bringing up at all, and to hone and trust my instincts so that the worst never happens (and so that I can handle it if it does).
In fact, these days people seem to think I'm going in the opposite direction - because facing my fears has resulted in a more confident me, I find myself wanting to push the boundaries even more, sometimes to the chagrin of those around me who don't think I worry enough about anything. Worrying got me nothing but wasted years, and I'm done with that. One of the last things my father said to me was that he wished I had come out sooner, because he felt like he had lost a lot of time being able to see me truly flourishing - I think about that almost every time I'm feeling sad or scared or overwhelmed, and it helps me see the bigger picture. I'm upset with myself that I let this irrational "my family is religious, what if they don't accept me?" crap take over my brain, because I think the reward was well worth the risk. I wish it didn't take me years to realize this.
So here I am in California, with a very small amount of people that I actually know. There's the friend I'm staying with tonight (who sadly can't attend the festival), a girl I've been talking to online for a few months (who found this blog and was really supportive), and a guy from Boston who I've talked to a few brief times. There are some people from online forums who I sorta-kinda know and will likely meet up with - if we click, great, and if not, no worries. But this is going to be a 3-day Halloween party with ~40,000 people in it; the whole idea is to socialize on the basis that we're all experiencing this amazing thing together. Unlike with gaming, there is no competitive aspect to bring out the worst in people; unlike with transitioning, I don't feel like I'm completely out of my comfort zone.
In two hours, I'm taking a cab to the airport and then a shuttle towards the site. And from there on, what happens this weekend is completely up to me. That feeling - the sort of freedom of being in control of my life - is what I think I've been chasing all these years, and it's time to start cashing in on it.
On Friday night, I went to my fourth Phish show in Hartford. What a night!
The day before the show, I went onto a forum for concert-goers and found a guy who was asking for a ride from Boston to Hartford for the show. A ride with company is certainly better than a ride alone, and I had good luck the last time I offered someone a ride, and so I sent him a message offering to help him out. I left work early on Friday so that we could get there in time, and he met me at 3:30 and we hit the road.
One thing about the Phish/concert scene that has been so appealing to me is that it is a chance to start over in an environment where no one knows that I'm transgendered. For that reason, I didn't feel the need to tell my passenger about my past, and the conversation on the car ride down was mostly smalltalk and discussion about the music. I certainly had a good impression of him - like most other Phish fans I've met, he seemed very laid back and friendly, two traits that I hold in high esteem. We split up once we got to the show to meet our respective crews, and he told me that he wasn't sure if he would need a ride back. I told him to send me a text after the show and we could figure stuff out from there.
I met up with my friends by their car partied a bit in the lot, getting ready for the show. I knew that two of them had never seen Phish before and were in for a treat, but little did I know just how good it was going to be. People who had seen 100+ shows across two decades of concerts were calling it "one of the best Phish shows they had ever seen". I was happy to see that everyone in my group was having a great time. The only hitch that came up was that we got separated from one of our friends, the one in the group who happened to not have a cellphone - we spent a good twenty minutes looking for him before we decided that he must have gone back to the car. Fortunately, this was the case, and so that crisis was averted.
After the show, the guy I gave a ride to messaged me back, saying that he would, in fact, like a ride back. I met up with him in the lot, at a spot where someone was playing the drums. We chilled out for a bit and talked about what we had just witnessed - I could easily say it was the best show I had been to, and when he (someone who had been seeing Phish since 1997) agreed with me, I was pleasantly surprised.
On the way back, we started talking about our lives a bit more. He told me about his past, which was both interesting to hear and flattering to be entrusted with. Based on that, I opened up a bit more about myself and told him that I was transgendered. I wasn't surprised that he didn't have an issue with it, but I was a bit surprised to learn that he had read me pretty much right upon meeting me. It's so rare that people actually indicate that they know or suspect that I'm transgendered that I think I had tricked myself into thinking it doesn't happen. Unforuntately, he noticed my Adam's Apple, and until surgeries happen there really isn't much that I can do about that.
It was all good, though. A year or so ago, my biggest fear was being read by others after being full-time. Right there, I finally got confirmation that it does in fact happen - as it turned out, there was nothing to be afraid of at all. It didn't matter that he knew I was transgendered, because he was still completely nice/respectful to me and we ended up getting along just fine. He had some questions - I'm sure I was the first transwoman he's ever met, and so I was more than happy to answer them. If anything, him knowing that I'm transgendered just meant that I no longer felt like there was a big chunk of my life I couldn't talk about. It actually alleviated more pressure than it caused.
I have been thinking lately about how I have historically approached the question of what to do about people finding out my history. Before/early on in transition, I was petrified of anyone knowing I was transgendered and kept it secret, mostly because I was embarrassed about it. When I went full-time, I 180'ed, deciding that I wasn't embarrassed about being transgendered and didn't want to keep secrets anymore. When I started expanding my social circle and realized that people treated me differently when they didn't know my past, I stopped telling people again. After Friday night, I'm modifying it again - I'm going to keep my trans- status under wraps until I feel like I know the other person better, and then will judge the situation from there. What I've realized is that as long as people develop a first impression of me before they know, it's not really damaging for people to find out.
Every time I think I'm in the tail end of this transition thing, I learn something new!
