When I was growing up in New Jersey, my mom would regularly take

There is a tender, almost sacred warmth in the words of Trey Anastasio, who said, “When I was growing up in New Jersey, my mom would regularly take my sister and I into the city to see shows. I have many fond memories of standing in the half-price ticket line in Times Square and going to matinees.” In this remembrance lies not just nostalgia, but reverence — the quiet gratitude of a soul who knows that beauty first entered his life through love, through family, through shared wonder. It is not a quote merely about music or theater, but about origin, about the moment when art first touches the heart and awakens something that will never sleep again.

The origin of this quote rests in Anastasio’s childhood — long before he became the celebrated frontman of Phish, long before the lights of fame or the roar of crowds. It began in those humble pilgrimages from New Jersey to New York City, where a mother, understanding the quiet hunger of her children’s imagination, brought them to witness art. The half-price ticket line in Times Square is a symbol — not of poverty, but of passion; not of limitation, but of devotion. It speaks of a family that did not need luxury to find magic, only the willingness to stand together in the cold, waiting for a chance to be moved by story, by music, by light.

This story echoes the wisdom of the ancients, who knew that the formation of the soul begins with what one sees and feels in youth. The philosopher Plato, in The Republic, declared that the arts shape the moral and emotional character of society — that what we allow the young to behold determines the harmony or chaos of their inner worlds. Anastasio’s mother understood this intuitively. By exposing her children to the living pulse of the stage, she offered them not mere entertainment, but communion — a living dialogue between human emotion and human expression. Those afternoons in the theater became seeds, and from them grew a lifelong devotion to creativity and truth.

Such acts of parental love are the quiet foundations of greatness. History remembers the achievements of artists, but seldom the unseen hands that guided them to their first encounter with wonder. Consider Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose father Leopold took him from court to court, not to display talent alone, but to open his young son’s heart to the vastness of music. Or think of Michelangelo, whose early sketches were encouraged by his mother’s gentle spirit before illness took her too soon. In every artist’s life, there is such a moment — when a parent, a teacher, or a loved one opens the door to beauty, and the child steps through, never to return unchanged.

Anastasio’s recollection of standing in line is therefore more than an anecdote — it is an emblem of patience and longing, of art’s accessibility to those who seek it with open hearts. The theater, in this memory, becomes a temple, and his mother a priestess leading her children into its sanctuary. Each matinee was not just a show, but a ritual of awakening, a sacred rehearsal for a life devoted to melody, to improvisation, to the mysterious dialogue between audience and performer. In those early journeys, the young boy learned that art is not a luxury for the rich, but the inheritance of all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

There is also humility in this story — the understanding that greatness begins small, in simple joys and ordinary days. We live in an age that chases spectacle, but Anastasio’s words remind us that the roots of inspiration are planted quietly, often without us realizing. The laughter of a child in a dim theater, the sound of applause in a crowded room, the sight of performers giving everything for their craft — these are the sparks that ignite destinies. His mother’s gift was not only the shows themselves, but the lesson that art is worth the journey, worth the waiting, worth the cold line and the cheap ticket, because beauty itself is priceless.

The lesson, my children, is this: feed the imagination of the young, for it will become the light of their lives. Do not underestimate the power of a single shared experience, a concert, a poem, a painting, or a play. These are not mere diversions — they are encounters with eternity. And for those who have outgrown childhood, the lesson still holds: return often to the sources of wonder that once stirred you. Stand again in the long line for beauty. Wait patiently for the curtain to rise. Let art remind you, as it reminded Anastasio, that the world is not made of logic alone — it is woven of emotion, melody, and memory.

For as Trey Anastasio teaches through his quiet reflection, the moments that shape us are rarely grand; they are intimate, ordinary, and filled with love. In every artist, every dreamer, every seeker of truth, there lives a child once led by the hand toward a world of light. And the greatest art we can ever create is to pass that same gift forward — to lead another soul, gently and faithfully, into the beautiful mystery of what it means to feel alive.