#harryhood

It may be controversial within the Tumblr world to out myself as a Phish fan. But amongst the band’s tight-knit community, I’m not exactly ruffling any feathers when I say that one of my favorite Phish songs is “Harry Hood.”

For the uninitiated, here’s an excerpt from the song’s history page on phish.net:

“In 1985, Mike, Fish, Page and friend Brian “Miles” Long lived in a house on King Street in Burlington, directly across from a regional Hood bottling plant. The plant’s pair of huge milk tanks bore Harry’s smiling face, his grin illuminated at night by streetlight. “Harry Hood” was inspired by its namesake, the signature character of the Hood dairy company’s advertising campaigns. The little animated milkman in the fridge would proudly rattle on about his company’s dairy products when the “unsuspecting” folks opened their icebox doors. But what happened to Harry when the refrigerator door closed? Brian Long was the first to ask the question that has passed the lips of virtually every Phish fan. “Harry! Harry! Where do you go when the lights go out?”

When Trey and Fish traveled to Greece in the summer of ‘85, they experienced a tumultuous series of events involving a sea storm, a capsized raft, and lots of super-clean “chemists’ reserve” LSD. Following their return to safety, Trey wrote several chunks of new music inspired by the adventure. Back at the King Street house, a former tenant apparently named Mr. A. Miner was still receiving mail. One piece caught the band’s collective eye, a form letter bursting at the seams with Miner’s name, telling him, “Thank You, Mr. Miner.” It is from these relatively nondescript circumstances that one of Phish’s most beloved songs was born. “ 

Lyrically speaking, it’s not quite “Tears In Heaven” level, but that’s Phish for you. But in my first actual post on this blog, I want to discuss what this song means to me. And maybe on a beach in Greece thirty-five years ago, Trey was thinking the same thing. Probably not, but who knows.

As a child, I remember playing this game. Closing the refrigerator door, while trying to catch the precise moment that the light goes out. Can I do both? In my parents’ fridge at least, this task seemed impossible. In “Harry Hood”, Phish poses the question: what does happen to the contents of our refrigerator when the door closes and the lights go out - specifically to this beloved dairy mascot?

The song first “clicked” for me while I was running on my local track in a torrential downpour. During the song’s triumphant peak, I left my body. I wasn’t affected by rain or fatigue or stress. I was gliding. It was then that my love affair with the song took root.

This experience in a way provides a basis for my interpretation. Maybe it’s my penchant for attributing deeper meaning to the mundane (perhaps unnecessarily so at times) and maybe it’s my affinity for the “psychedelic” way of thinking and line of inquiry it entails, but I take the song as an analogy for life.

In the context of the song, we are all “fridges” with a bunch of stuff inside of us. Fears, dreams, anxieties, cravings. Relationships and friendships, family, material possessions. But what happens “when the lights go out” - when all of that goes away? What are we left with?

And Phish has the answer: “Harry!”

During one of the sittings at a recent meditation retreat, a cartoon figure emerged to help me through a particular rough patch. My brain - who has been fed a healthy dose of cartoons and television over the years - rationalized this abstract concept and gave it a familiar shape: Jiminy Cricket. 

In Pinocchio, Jiminy serves as the titular character’s conscience. While that was also my initial interpretation at the time, I now understand it to represent something that is equally difficult to pronounce for me (hell, I even conflate the two when speaking - even if I can explain how they are fundamentally different): consciousness.

When you strip away everything, what are you left with? Buddhists say nothing, I say, “Yes, but not quite”. Sam Harris posits that you are left with “consciousness and its contents.” I like that. Better still, if you’re like me and want things broken down in easier to digest chunks, you might prefer Phish’s response. 

Awareness or consciousness or Harry Hood is all that we have. Beneath every layer of being lies something at the center. Western religions and - to a lesser extent if you really understand its teachings - Hinduism confuse this with an eternal individual soul. But consciousness does not have any attributes. Emotions, feelings, experiences - everything just arises within it. Within this nothing, everything appears. And we are just witnesses to it. 

This could be deeply troubling to some. We cling to who we are as a person - our preferences, our grudges, our “qualities”. But we are not any of these things. At our core, we are consciousness. We are awareness. God is consciousness. God is awareness. Or, if you prefer to be agnostic and don’t like to drop the big “G”, feel free to use the double “H” instead. 

All of us are sometimes caught in a storm - whether it’s on a track or out at sea. We all have to face the vicissitudes of life. Conversely, we all have things to celebrate. And they can be equally as harmful when we cling helplessly to such positive memories and experiences. 

Beneath it all, there is something more real. There is a peace and tranquility that can be attained in fleeting instances. Or in prolonged experiences like my meditation retreat. Or on a particularly scenic hike. While running in the rain. While watching one of your favorite bands in concert at the most famous arena in the world. While goofing off with friends at a college house. While driving through pine-covered mountains that stretch as far as the eye can see.

You aren’t your emotions. You aren’t your experiences. Hell, you aren’t even your self as you understand it. You are awareness. You are consciousness. Nothing more.

While this is destabilizing to some, I argue that this alternative is better. Because when you break it down, after all the food spoils and the lights go out, there is something that is still there. There’s something that lies beyond all that. And every blissful note in a delicious “Harry Hood” jam is a reminder to me of just that. 

That cartoon milkman is always inside of us. He doesn’t go away when it gets dark. He is always there. That peace is always there. We just have to train our minds to live from that place. A place where nothing can hurt us. Where we don’t always just live for the exhilarating, exciting moments. And if you live from this place - it might seem contradictory - but your life takes on new meaning. Colors feel brighter, love feels realer, your senses come alive, and music blossoms into a symphony of wonder and joy. You start living life as if for the first time.  

And that is something that you can feel good about.   

Favorite versions of “Harry Hood”: 12/29/2016, 8/2/1997, 2/28/2003, 10/23/1994. Comment below with your favorites!