.........It doesn't take much to fill this room and last Friday

it was packed! People like to see a man blowing down a hollow log. It connects them to the source. After days of rain and dealing with paperwork I hadn't been playing much. Then I ate too much dinner [I had an urge to eat Canneloni that night in North Beach]. After this ill-considered gorging I spaced out on the floor and tried to create physical and psychic space before I had to play. This is a low-pressure gig: no big crowds, no challenging new charts to read [ha ha], no potential sound problems, technically speaking. In short a perfect evening to go deep into the Didjeridu. But I was bummed out about my engorged abdomen. Perhaps I should say that playing the Didge is rooted in fairly extreme diaphragmic energy - challenging after eating....

So the time is now. Time to play. My set-up is simple - maybe deceptively simple: I have several didges, a few items of percussion - shakers, sticks etc. and a conga-like drum [Ngoma] I found in Zambia on a Ra Ra Zoo circus tour in 1985 . I also have a stand to rest the bell end of my Didjeridu on as I play. [I play standing - most people sit while playing. I can't. To play is a dance that takes my whole body, like making love].

I enter the stage and all worries about my gut disappear. Focus, quiet, I acknowledge the audience, maybe I speak, maybe I mutter to myself about what I'm going to do - the point is I don't know.....exactly. I have not made a decision about which instrument to start with. I am free, as a soloist, to go .....wherever, in sound, the muse pulls me. A Didjeridu selects me. That feels good. I am quiet, thoughts are getting lost, I lick my lips, I hesitate - clearing my mind, getting psychically naked, conscious yet unconscious, I look down, I am engaged with...what?...[I don't know in my head].....