Phish.net > Charts > Narration Chart: "Mockingbird", 1993-08-07

TREY: Ok, before we take off for where we’re going, I wanna just tell you a little, a little thing about… One of the best things about travelling around in a van and everything, travelling all over the country and playing, is that we get to go to all the best roller coasters all over the place. It’s become kind of a pastime. So Fish over there carries around this book that he’s got; it’s sort of a roller coaster bible. It describes every roller coaster in the country. So far, we’ve gotten to go about 5 or 6 of the best ones, and today we got to go on this one.

What I just wanna say is thank you all for waiting so patiently in line here. I’m pretty sure that is the biggest line that this particular park has ever seen, but believe me it’s worth it because you’re all about to ride on... the Rollercoaster of the Mind [short maniacal laugh]. So no pushing, no pushing; you have to be, uh, this tall to get on this roller coaster. Everybody just keep pushing. We’re going to start loading now. Everybody can fit on this roller coaster so you just kind of stand there.

Picture in your mind now: you’re all going to get in this long, long car. Everybody’s climbing in. Climb in and you’re strapping in your headband, for your mind. We’re all sitting down, and now we’re sitting down in the thing. As we sit there, we sort of feel the thing click into gear [makes gear-engagement noises and Fish uses a drum beat to refer to the sound of the click up the first incline]. We’re rolling up now, and you can see now this is steeper than most any other roller coaster.

As we’re going up, it’s getting really steep. It’s really steep, and you’re hanging back against your chair there, going up. As you’re going up, you can look down around you. Right down there, you can see stage down below you and all the other people, sort of the shells of your bodies standing there because this is just a mind rollercoaster: you’ve got to leave your body behind. You look down, and you see the stage over here and the field and the teeny roller coaster over there and everything.

We’re getting higher and higher, sort of these red tracks going up. Everybody on this rollercoaster is in the front car, though, just imagine you’re in the front car. There’s nothing but front cars on this roller coaster. Two on a side, you’re all sitting there on this thing, going up higher and higher. Now, we’re starting to get so high, it’s going into a cloud bank, and you can’t see anything anymore. We go into a cloud bank, and now you’re just sort of surrounded by white, and you’re still going up, still going up.

Now we sort of bust out of the cloud, and we’re so high now that we can’t even see the Earth below us anymore. It’s really starting to get kind of queasy looking down: it’s just clouds. The air is starting to get thin. We’re so high we can’t even breathe anymore. Finally, we start to go up, up, starting to crest over that first hill, and as we start to crest over, we look down and something starts to feel strange. We realize that as we’ve been riding up, the car itself has started to disappear, and our feet are actually latched to the two bars. We’ve just got kind of wheels on our two feet. We’re standing up now, going up to the top, starting to crest over the top of the hill, starting to crest over the top. We’re going over! [long maniacal wail]

You feel your face pushed back by the wind, your hair going back. [maniacal wailing builds] We’re still going down! When’s it gonna stop?! We’re picking up speed! [cacophony from all instruments causes unintelligible narration] Can’t see the bottom yet! But suddenly, off up in space, the track ends. Floating through space now, the heart’s still beating fast [breathing heavily]. O my god. Floating through space, drifting, starting to go through a little loop, a little barrel roll, drifting around. We went so fast we just pushed through this barrier, couldn’t take it, and we look around us and just see black now, black everywhere. All of the other people have disappeared.

[taking deep breaths] We’re OK… [speaking slowly with pauses] As we float through space, we see in the distance a tiny green speck. The little green speck is going around in front of our eyes, and the green speck starts to come closer and the green speck gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until our whole field of vision is covered with nothing but like a sea of green. We see the sea of green, and we realize it’s a field of grass. And we realize there is a forest over in the distance with a mountain coming out. We realize we’ve ridden the Rollercoaster… to Gamehendge.

There’s no going back. You don’t have to wait in line in Gamehendge, we can just get on anytime, and we’re there. We look over and we see, on the mountain, Colonel Forbin climbing up the mountain, this little man climbing up the mountain. He’s climbing up the mountain, and rocks are tumbling down below him and crumbling. As we look out, we realize he is trying to find the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus who I was singing about in the last song.

He’s trying to get the Great and Knowledgeable Icculus to call on the Famous Mockingbird, who’s going to fly out of the sky, talk to Icculus; then, he is going to fly into the castle of the Evil King Wilson [Trey teases “Wilson”] and, uh, get the book. He’s gonna bring the book back to all the people of Gamehendge, and they’re gonna live in peace and harmony with nature, all because we got on the Rollercoaster of the Mind.

So here he comes now, the Famous Mockingbird, flying through the air, going to the castle, getting the book, bringing it back to the people...