Didges We Doo

Just a short update here to follow the monster that I wrote yesterday. I found a ride down to Manjimup and I'm leaving Perth tomorrow morning to go out and start a new phase for myself. I'll by picking fruit and doing other hard labor in the heat, sweating and getting healthy, while focusing on my general well being instead of sitting around drinking beer. I'm feeling very upbeat and exuberant so the rest of this week should prove to be very exciting!

I went to my didgeridoo lesson today. Michelle kept going on and on about how good I was for a beginner and how she was really impressed. Some other people came in the store later and she was telling them how I can play the big ones better than she can and how she wishes she had the lung power that I do. I sometimes have the tendency to be get impressed with myself when I excel at something so I was really trying to keep my ego from getting inflated by all the praise.

Didgeridoos in the keys of A and B resonate with the spiritual chakras, third eye and crown. They are the hardest to play of all the keys because they need to be longer and bigger to achieve the low, throaty tones and therefore require more air and more control. They are generally not for beginners and I had to prove to her that I could play them or she wouldn't have sold one to me. She started me out on smaller ones and kept giving me bigger and bigger ones and I could play all of them. She said that out of 10 beginners, only 3 can get a basic sound out of A or B and that it's rare that they'd have as much control over it as I did. I'm glad that I was able to pass her test because I didn't want to leave that store with a didge that wasn't in A or B, even if I couldn't play it well at this moment in time. I think my ability to play the didgeridoo is greatly assisted by my experience with woodwind instruments and yogic breathing, rather than my general state of supreme awesomeness.

She taught me several other cool techniques like growling and singing. The basic drone is sustained and the growl or singing pitch can be heard over top of the low drone. I tried my hand at circular breathing, which enables the player to sustain a constant tone from the mouth while breathing in through the nose in quick spurts. It is incredibly difficult to do and requires consciousness of several steps at once, like rubbing your head and patting your stomach while playing hopscotch. I struggled with it but I managed to do it one time and was very happy with that. Michelle was very impressed and said that it took her months to be able to do it and that her husband has been playing 15 years and still can't.

My didge was made by a local Aboriginal artist and harvested from the bush as they've been doing for 1,500 years. It's made from Mallee Eucalyptus, is 5 feet tall, and pretty damn heavy. The outside is decorated with Aboriginal style artwork, with a dingo and other symbols burned into the wood. When this species of tree dies in the wild, the termites climb into into the branches and eat through the heart of the wood and not the exterior, hollowing out the branches. I'm very happy with my new didgeridoo and once I get my breathing technique down I'll be able to start spinning some music magic with it.

As for my 10 day road trip from Melbourne to Perth, it was one of the best experiences of my trip so far, despite several pitfalls to overcome. I'm currently working on typing it up and uploading pictures and it will be up soon. Peace and love from Finch to you.

You may say that I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope that some day you will join us.
Then the world will live as one.