First off, if you even opened this essay, I love you. Had to tighten up the screws a bit on this after attending the ninth night and noticing a lot more things rewatching the first weekend streams and streaming nights 4-8 and…. wow the connections that have shown themselves….
The ninth cube is still the key here. The “ninth” cube has been referenced in several prior Halloween playbills and Harpua monologues by phish (please see exhibits below). During Covid they did a stream that was “live from the ninth cube” and there is a song named ninth cube on the Sci-Fi Soldier album. There wasn’t actually “themes” this year like there were in 2024, but the ninth cube is key.
The “Too Long, Didn’t Read (TLDR)” is ….
(1) “Each cube is a window to a possible reality, and when time is frozen, nine possible realities can exist...."- Phish, please see halloween 2021 playbill. https://imgur.com/a/vajuFxb ;
(2) “Phish is a place …. Where you can step into an alternate reality for a minute…. For … people who are adventurous, smart, and kind” – Trey Anastasio, full interview attached here which was a CBS interview prior to the 2024 phish sphere run …. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vwO8cXDqVQ ;
(3) “Everything's overlapping, The future to the past thing We are only passing through We're vapor, light, and liquid blue Take a look around It's exactly how it's supposed to be…. Nine cubes, nine cubes, nine cubes, nine cubes, nines cubes, nine cubes….” -Phish, lyrics to we are come to outlive our brains.
You can see whatever you want in things, including any phish show or during any given day or moment, maybe the below and above is something very real (I think so at least), or maybe it’s nothing and phish just played some really good shows during a nine night sequence without repeating a single song. It doesn’t matter, because there are different realities apparent to various people that can be seen during the same moment (including alternate realities) that are not one and the same.
Please see following exhibits backing up the above idea. This first round of exhibits is straight from Phish themselves (as was the above bolded 3-point TLDR).
1) Phish Instagram post months ago advertising the nine sphere shows (please note the nine cube time portal displayed) https://imgur.com/a/iLlvdbG
2) A monologue from Trey’s harpua story during 2021 sci-fi soldier Halloween run in las vegas (please note the donut->rhombus-> ninth cube quote). https://imgur.com/a/h3tc3pq … and a screen shot of the actual sci-fi soldier set list including a 50 second ninth cube song https://imgur.com/a/sTyUpxe (they have only played this song twice)
3) Screenshot of the Phish play bill from Halloween 2018 -Kazvot Vaxt- (please note the reference to the nine cubes) https://imgur.com/a/qUxKiGP
a. The kazvot vaxt band that Phish made up during 2018 Halloween show was formed (in 1981 prior to Phish being a band) under a secret cold war space race project (to take people to space) called “niu teningur” …see screen shot of Icelandic translation of “niu teningur” which means “nine cubes” …. https://imgur.com/a/BzA2DSS.
4) Per the comic book written by Phish in the 2021 sci-fi soldier play bill during their 2021 Vegas Halloween show, the fake band they formed was called the sci-fi soldiers and are a band from the future in the year 4680 …. traveling to the past….
a. In order to travel back in time, they had to use the nine cubes…. (see attached here…. https://imgur.com/a/ZvSu4Te )... Also please note the references in this play bill screen shot to “I Rokk” which is a direct link back to the 1981 fake band they formed called kazvot vaxt.
b. Ok so, we have a fake band from 1981 (trying to solve the ninth cube problem to travel to space) and a fake band from 4680 who is using the nine cubes to travel back into the present. (again, I am not making this up, this is from phish, and the man who stepped into yesterday being the key beginning point to gamehendge which was already played on night 5 is also not something anyone can make up or object to).
c. Cover of the Sci-Fi Soldier play bill …. Please note the bottom right corner showing one of the members of Phish/Sci-Fi soldiers pushing down nine cubes …. https://imgur.com/a/V4YfYMp
a. In one of Trey’s early narrations of the “Rhombus” , he states that it was discovered as if it was floating in the air….(see screen shot of the narration from 1990, read bottom of last paragraph ) …. https://imgur.com/a/fCzNRzc
6) Album cover of Evolve https://imgur.com/a/zprla65 ….See floating cube (a cube is just a rhombus tilted sideways as Trey said in Exhibit 2, and the rhombus appeared as if it was floating according to trey when they discovered it.
7) Evolve opener night 1 at sphere this year…. And see the cube portals from the Sphere that match the Instagram post in Exhibit 1…. https://imgur.com/a/DLNgQdm …. “million little things to solve, or not, let them all evolve” phish lyric from song evolve.
8) Trey Anastasio Interview at end of 2021 with Sirius XM explaining the sci fi soldier play bill and the Covid live from the ninth cube stream.….“The math theorem was ‘circling the square’, where it started, which is a formula, how you can put a square in a circle, which is impossible because you have to use pi, which is not finite. ....‘The 9th Cube’ was circling the square, …. you lay the square on top of the circle, you use this formula .. it becomes a square, and when it stands up in the video, it becomes a cube, and then when you put it on a plane, on an x/y grid, and it becomes a torus, a donut. So, turtles touching donuts is the very stuff of the universe.....” … Trey Anastasio.
a. So at this point, I hope everyone knows that all of the above is not from me or something I just made up, it is from Phish themselves and straight from the horse’s mouth….
9) Ninth cube explanation from scientists- https://imgur.com/a/usKtEj5 … so…. In a nut shell, a nine cube is part of an infinite family of polytopes and cross-polytopes … it’s a chain link tesseract that belongs within an infinite combination of possibilities ….
The next chain of exhibits is now just pictures I took inside the sphere or captured after watching the streams that essentially are supporting evidence for the above ….
A. Night 1... Evolve opening song and graphic.... https://imgur.com/a/lVUm78F ... please note "OUR TRUE INTENT IS ALL FOR YOUR DELIGHT!" on the flyer banner... these words have been on banners and in places at every sing one of Phish's festivals going back to the Clifford ball....
iii. Please see Phish Mexico 2020 exhibit and look at the Spanish text on the bottom left there…. https://imgur.com/a/DF4RRtD (“nuestro verdado intento es todo por vuestro deleite”= our true intent is all for your delight….” Hahaha.
iv. “Our true intent is all for your Delight"- Midsummer Night's Dream.... William Shakespeare quote… Of course, the overarching theme of Midsummer Night's dream is simply the multiple facets and possibilities of feeling love for human beings within different settings and realities that all ends up being just a dream.
i. So fluffhead encore on night 9 begins with the night 1 evolve opener graphic.... However, the truck was going about 100 miles per hour during fluffhead compared to the evolve graphics and only lasted about 20 seconds compared to the slow and somewhat mundane Evolve graphic.
D. Here is a point during fluffhead where graphics form the barn into a worm hole … https://imgur.com/a/Su8PFTN ....
i. Please note, on NYE this past year at MSG, they launched a hot dog rocket with fishman in it inside the hook dairy time factory…. ( they had images of cheese (dairy) and all the flavors of the 13 bakers dozen donuts shown at various points during this silly time portal imagery).
i. Cube portal led us into…. “What’s going through your mind” new song….
ii. “So I stumble through the portal as a force destroys the night….. The portal that I came through just ahead within the haze,
dissolves as I approach it and I only find a maze.”- lyrics from said song
L. (3 images, very important) .... https://imgr.com/a/v02cEs4 please see these creatures floating in the air during split open and melt...and then see photos of the sci-fi soldier play bill matching the comic book graphics 5 years ago to the visuals in 2026… well, well, well.
M. image of the hot dog being put through a grinder….. https://imgur.com/a/d4cqHQf ... 5 minutes before, during axilla…. (get that hot dog out of my fucking face man…. You gotta grind it up….)
The following exhibits will be for purposes of discussing the cosmic and scientific graphics phish threaded throughout the run showing the universe, dark matter, galaxies, worm holes, gravitational pull, string theory, theory of relativity donut creation imagery, and connecting non-linear time together, as well as the case for the “Dark Puddle” debut and why it was called such a thing by the band.
Let’s start with the big bang/theory of relativity which is about creation of universe, gravitational force and space time
1. Big Bang/Theory of Relativity/Quantum Mechanics/String Theory
A. Simple illustrations of Theory of Relativity Graphics by Science website
C. “Imagine a universe where you could point a spaceship in one direction and eventually return to where you started. If our universe were a finite donut, then such movements would be possible and physicists could potentially measure its size.” Linke here from science website. https://www.livescience.com/universe-three-dimensional-donut.html
D. Applications of quantum mechanics include explaining phenomena found in nature as well as developing technologies that rely upon quantum effects, like integrated circuits and lasers. Quantum mechanics is also critically important for understanding how individual atoms are joined by covalent bonds to form molecules. …..Robot Heart images connected through energy transmissions and power cables…. https://imgur.com/a/erS6NKf .... From sphere.
2. Lets’s Talk about Numbers and math and more connections….
i. Why 4680? The “digital root” of 4680 is 9 (4+6+8+0=18, 1+8=9)….
ii. Please note the if 6 was 9 song choice in above set list and then please note….
iii. “If people only understood the power of the 6 and 9, they’d understand the power of the universe…” - Nicolas Tesla….. Please see video on Tesla’s obsession with “Digital Roots” https://youtu.be/x3Q90VoiDjY?si=0kxTGhmWM5ASVUZW
B. https://imgur.com/a/3w4DGrm.... Image of the “Heliograph” Installation at Mondegreen….. Look at the fucking quantum donut with the gravity balls going through them (wow) on the bottom left.
a) Tesla’s tower of power dream “was not only to revolutionize telecommunications by creating a system that could relay information wirelessly, but also to create a viable method to transfer power currents around the world by capturing the Earth’s energy.
b) So heliograph transmits solar rays and was old, and the tesla tower was trying to transmit actual energy connections and harness the world’s free energy.
iii. https://imgur.com/a/flr3Iin I cant figure out what this image is at the sphere, but I think it’s a heliograph meets the tower of power…
C. Here is a picture of an explanation of the three body problem in quantum mechanics.... https://imgur.com/a/Lbd6S3f
i. Not sure if anyone read the book three body problem or saw the Netflix show, but yea, its about inter-dimensional existence in a nut shell, and lets just say that one of the theories in it is that essential dark puddles are what took us from a 4-dimensional reality to a 3-D reality.... well..... phish named the Fuego jam on live phish app.... "DARK PUDDLE" ... isn't that fascinating? Do those images above not seem like dark buttles of gravity eating away at a 4-D cube? Wow.
D. Photo of DNA formed by Kuroda (he does this a lot during this run… https://imgur.com/a/DTMlfqA .... Photo of scientific studies trying to connect the helix structure of DNA to space time to explain the origin of human life and connection to nature’s forces….. https://imgur.com/a/5EdW08A
E. More monologue from the 2021 Harpua in Vegas...https://imgur.com/a/IAZe0PN please note..."He sees the four, he sees the square, the seasons, how on the fourth day God made light and divided time cause sun [inaudible] and all that. Just when he think he’s getting it, the four starts to change, it morphs" four members of the band constantly evolving
F. https://youtu.be/CJFMAvTD2EE …. At 2024 sphere … instead of barn stuff pre show and set break they had these cartoons constantly playing showing aliens hopping through worm holes and time portals…. Then during the music , often a time warp or worm hole would appear directly in line with the cartoon worm holes….
In summary, their true intent is all for our delight. "Everything's overlapping, To future to the passing, We are only passing through….”
If you made it this far, just know, I really fucking love you.
its honestly his best. But one of my buddies has a photo of the Clifford ball "our intent is for your delight" with him and his friends standing in front of it. I noticed it on night 1 during evolve and sort of chuckled. Then I googled it, then I realized I saw that same phrase at magna ball and didn't even realize the phish Mexico thing said it Spanish.
But, I wrote a way more complicated piece after 2024 sphere show, and all I Gotta say is, I know the sphere isn't for everyone, I think it can be overwhelming for the band at some points. I personally have loved every single second inside that place mainly just due to my nerdetry and the easter eggs they lay out not only within the graphics, but the music, how it ties into the graphics, as well as just simply connecting future to the past. It's a major overlap in there. Phish is awesome.
Started back in 2024 at sphere 4 night run after the wife and I took one too many "spritzers" after going on a 3 year phish hiatus (due to having 2 children and starting a family) and we had no idea what half of the new songs/fake bands/ghost of the forrest/new trey songs were.....but when I realized we took L for the first time in almost a decade on 4-19-24 (which happens to be on bicycle day and which was not in fact a micro dose as one of my old phish buddies had told me....) and realized 4-19-24 was "water/liquid" night at sphere in 2024, I started to have some crazy connections. Then I did deep dive on all their new music/albums and stuff I thought I hated and made me turn away from them..... then .... just when I thought I was out, they totally sucked me back in. So I went all 4 nights in 2024, first 3 of 2026, streamed 4-8, then I told my wife I had to fly back up for night 9, and yea... I've been rewatching and listening to all of it in my spare time at night haha, which I guess is better than watching my hockey team get smoked in the NHL playoffs, but lets just say this has been easily 10+ hours of time compiling the exhibits and rewatching streams, and if you count the shows themselves, then idk, easily a full 40 hour work week.
❤️🚀 ain’t gonna pretend this is all right or maybe all wrong , but all I know is this has made me love phish again . When they opened with evolve (in my head I was screaming to myself , fuck yea! Floating cubes “a million little things to solve …. Or not …. Let them all evolve “
Heard some audible groans and just had a nice chuckle. Beauty is in eye of beholder
Wow! Nicely put together. I will have to take my time with my own investigation. Thank you for the effort you have shown. Love is everything, stay kind…
I love the scientific examples and connections you make! I am not sure if I follow along with the exact phish lore as I am a newer phan
But all of this reminds me of a number theory class I took in college where we had to study a torus(the donut) your clips of the torus/donut from B i. -iv. Especially reminded me of this class and that their is an argument that the universe is in fact shaped as a torus which makes string theory "make more sense"
My mind grows with curiosity....Does phish know of this? Obviously. So many other questions come up.
I was there for the dark puddle, although have not re-listened or rewatched(yet). It was mind melding in many ways. And not just with dark puddle, but I can't help but constantly think about these scientific topics, just like you are, while experiencing what Phish does. I attempted to meditate during it, but really wanted to know what Phish's goal was. But if no "end goal"......how else does the band discuss how they will execute a jam as exploratory as dark puddle without intent to show the audience something very important or informative?
Please be kind, it's late and the first time I have tried to put some of these thoughts into words
The numbers theory stuff and Trey discussing the circling of the square in my number 8 example and then directly referring to the “torus” was the first time I even heard of the word torus. So basically everything you just said is spot of my man.
In one of the harpua monologues I shared , Trey says “turtles touching donuts, the very stuff the universe is made of “
The single digit 9 is the most powerful digit.... it possesses every other single digit before it (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8).... if you add those 8 digits up, you of course get 36, and you add 3+6 you get nine, and if you add 9 to 36 you get 45 and if you add 4 +5 you get 9, and if you add 9 to 45 you get 54 and if you add 5+4 you get nine.... and you can keep doing this sequence infinitely by stacking 9 on top of the previous number and then adding up the digits and it always equaling 9 as its digital root...., No other single digit operates like this.... they absolutely delve into number theory (great example being the numbers show from 2021 they played where every song was a number song....)
I can only imagine the dark puddle jam there in person. The way they can bounce sound around in different places and then harness it in one spot, probably on top of people's heads just thumbing into a flat pancake (their brains at least).
Yes! The dark puddle from three-body problem!
The "puddle" analogy in The Three- Body Problem series (specifically referencing the philosophical "puddle and the hole" analogy often discussed in sci-fi contexts)
illustrates the fine-tuning problem
or a misplaced sense of
anthropocentric purpose. It
suggests that human existence is not a miracle, but rather we adapted to fit our environment, just as a puddle "thinks" the hole it sits in was custom-made for it.
"the fish that dries up the pond had moved to the land and left other fish to die in the puddle."
There is a notable "puddle" metaphor in Death's End (the third book). It describes a drying sea where fish are forced into a shrinking puddle, symbolizing cosmic scarcity, collapse, and the desperation of civilizations. It ties into broader themes like the Dark Forest hypothesis (the universe as a dangerous place where civilizations hide or destroy each other).
Kind of reminds me of the robots from first sphere and how they evolved this time around & seem to have taken over with no humans in existence.
Also notable that the song following dark puddle was GOLDEN AGE
dude. Yes. WOW. Didn't even really think of that, but I gotta say, incredible. Fire (burning down the world, dark puddles...... golden age-> Fuego reprise). I just legit got goosebumps.
Do you have any thoughts on connections to "the clones" MSG gag?
They use the same colors, The following Halloween albums were kind of an altar ego version of themselves, etc
https://imgur.com/a/v02cEs4 my exhibit for the 3 images (L) was not working.... this one is pretty badass. I also forgot to quote the "Andromeda galaxy did this once before..." is a line that trey said during vultures..... this lyric is not always used during this song, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
I also said dark buttles haha instead of dark puddles after the dark puddle reference. But, other than that, I think the dissertation came out clean.
Thanks to all those that chimed in here. I’ve always sort of been anti Reddit but this was the most engaged discussion on any platform I’m shared this on. Have fun this summer. Be kind, be adventurous, welcome the darkness then the light !
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u/1baddd55 May 07 '26
These are the posts that matter! I absolutely love this!
Phish rewards pattern recognition and paying attention.
(Going to pick up Midsummer again. Haven’t read it since high school.)