Notes from the Dance Floor..

I made it home just in time to welcome a bit of a cold and a runny nose but I fell pretty good after 4 days in San Francisco, being on the road taxes you, your money, your health.. or at least the kind of travel I’ve been doing lately. Furthur travel, going where ever Phil Lesh and Bob Weir chose to perform, hopefully on the west coast or as close to it as possible, the east coast scares me for good reason but thats a whole other story. I left San Francisco and was on a nice, calm plane ride and with little or no Canadian customs presence and before you knew it I was in a cab riding home, through those familiar streets where I have spent most of my days. Looking around at the people walking the streets I wondered where they were last night and mused about how oblivious we all are about what other people do with their time. I was in a big hall with lots of friends dancing till the early morning hours. Its always a bit sad having to leave but we just can’t stay there forever, those timeless moments of the fusion of mind, body and spirit in some of group revelry’s highest moments and when my knee and back reel me back in to mortal reality. I take in as much as I can with my eye’s, the glow of the green exit sign illuminating us in a dim spacy glow where the floor disappears and from the ceiling ancient patterns of multicoloured fractal ribbons rain down on us. The constant negotiation of personal space where one persons dance is absorbed into anothers by sharing, collaborating and improvising with out words, just rhythm and dance. I do best dancing around my friends, some I know, others I don’t but we all end up in the same place, out of site from the band where we can be free to celebrate our personal expression with what the band has given us. Going into these shows I was a little worse for wear, my knees especially were giving me a bit of trouble but as the shows wore on I became once again like that coiled spring, ready to jump and pounce to the lovely, tribal bass notes of “Fire on the Mountain” or to the intense force of the instrumental refrain prior to the last verse in “St. Stephen”.. I was in heaven, wanting to be nowhere else on earth, surrounded by my Grateful Dead family but nothing lasts.. the lights have to come up eventually and we all have to go home too. I am now back in rainy Vancouver, Canada, a few short hours after all this went down, back home, resting my poor knees as I look out at the wet, grey sky with a big smile, see you all real soon I hope.. “Mama mama many worlds I’ve come since I first left home”..