Are you captivated by the didgeridoo? Can’t do without this drug anymore? Good news, I have THE recipe that is sure to break your addiction, lead you to quit your habit or at least develop an aversion to the didgeridoo. This method is extremely effective. It worked for me. Follow it to the letter, and you will quit the didgeridoo (or music) within a few years! So are you ready to end your didgeridoo addiction? Results guaranteed!
First step: strive for recognition
Gratitude. Everyone wants it. We all chase after it, from kindergarten to retirement. Who doesn’t crave recognition for what they do? But playing for recognition is forgetting the pleasure of playing, of sharing your music. How many showbiz stars have shown us what a loss it is to seek recognition from colleagues and the public?
At the beginning of my didgeridoo years, I played for the sheer pleasure of playing. I was having fun with my didgeridoo. Nothing stopped me, I played and played. It got to the point that my friends ended up complaining that they never saw me anymore during the evenings. Rest assured, that wasn’t nearly enough to make me quit the habit!
I was like a bellows, blowing all the time, and I loved it.
Obviously, with all those hours spent on my didgeridoo, I progressed very quickly. Then I found a group of other players, and I started to be spotted. Then, slowly, but surely, I began to play for others, gradually forgetting myself. I began to yearn to be seen… And little by little, an expectation of compliments replaced the pure pleasure of playing.
It is the first step towards the future aversion: sacrifice the pleasure of playing to seduce the audience.
Rest assured: at this point, you will not notice anything.
It is very subtle, painless and odorless.
Then isolate yourself in a world of technique
Working on your didgeridoo relentlessly and working on technique over and over again. This is the next step and I did not miss it! When I was in Darwin, Australia I used to go to Bob Druett. I worked on my didgeridoo four hours a day. Four hours a day, stopwatch in hand. I concentrated on Mark Robinson’s technique: straightforward and dry tongue attacks.
Needless to say that I returned to France with impeccable, clean, almost perfect attacks. They were amazing. I proudly displayed them on stage. I had lost a little more of the pleasure of playing to striving to gain in technique, precision and power.
Anyway, I had made great strides with everything but joy.
What a mistake !
Well… I hear the laziest people already say: “There, you see, I told you that technique by itself is useless. “. You will understand, that is not quite the point. Work, yes, but with pleasure.
At this point, you will already be well advanced in developing an aversion to the instrument, but there is still a hook that keeps you from stopping.
That is why the next step is essential in this method; don’t neglect it.
Now kill the enthusiasm through overwork
In 2008, I returned from Australia and turned professional. What a victory for me! I was finally going to earn my living with the didgeridoo. I was finally going to be able to say that I make a living from my music. I’m done with delivering pizzas, distributing “La redoute” catalogs, installing drywall, selling Christmas trees in Paris parking lots, and so on … (yes, before living off your music you have to pay the rent! :-).
In short, I was going to live from my didgeridoo, and I was happy. It was a terrific feeling of liberation.
But I wasn’t attuned to the fact that work eats away at passion. What a delicate matter to mix the two and find the right balance. At this point, it’s still easy to switch between pleasure and work. By a mechanism I still can’t fathom, it often happens that we lose pleasure when our passion becomes our work. We then stick the label “work” on our didgeridoo. The word “work” connotes hard work, something difficult.
Thus, without realizing it, I continued to develop my great program “How to lose your passion in four easy steps”. And it wasn’t just a little label that I stuck on my didg. It was a sign the size of a billboard! Obviously, it’s more difficult to play …
So yes, I became a professional didgeridoo player. And I had everything one could want to be happy. I lived off my passion and other players gave me credit for being one of the most influential European didgeridoo players. But I wasn’t playing anymore, I was working.
So to do it right, add this particular trap to the previous two and you’ll finish the job in style. You will only have one last thing left …
Fight to hold on to “top dog” status
Now it gets more subtle. Seeking recognition is one thing, finding it is another. That comes with the fear of losing it… By finding this recognition by others, I made sure to acquire it like an object. And I was afraid of having it stolen from me, like losing a smartphone to a pickpocket!
The rich man is afraid of being robbed. It’s the same thing with recognition. And for good reason, it did not belong to me. I had given all the power to those who followed in my footsteps. I was incredibly demanding with myself. And I let some criticism get to my heart.
So yes I achieved recognized. But I was not happy. At that time, Zalem and I were the two French players who were much talked about. From the outside, it sounded pretty good. It was even classy, I admit. But what a fear I had of being thrown from the podium!
It had become an obsession.
This fear of losing a top spot reinforced in me the need to work on my instrument to keep my place. I was only thinking about that. I got tired. I drained some of the life from my heart. I was like being dead on the inside.
If you’ve reached this milestone, you’ve hit the jackpot! Now you can finally let go of your didgeridoo addiction. And you can attack the next phase: withdrawal.
Two years without a didgeridoo
By 2011, I am exhausted, angry and I can no longer face the world of the didgeridoo. I play little better than an automaton on stage. That is, all technique and no soul. My heart is overcome with fear, anger and bitterness and has a hard time expressing itself.
In July of the same year, I publish my didgeridoo method which took me several years of work (now you can check my online didgeridoo lesson available in English) and I perform my last concert at the Italian didgeridoo festival.
One of the pieces played in Forlimpopoli during the Italian festival
Then I decide to stop everything.
All of it.
I sell my house that I had just bought two years earlier. I go to India for five months. I try to find myself. I hardly touch my didgeridoo for two years. That’s a long time when you were used to playing daily.
But all that did me a lot of good.
Moreover, I remember very well once in India, while listening by chance to the didgeridoo, I said to myself: “Cripes, the didgeridoo sounds really weird. No wonder people are surprised by it.“ I was starting to rediscover my beginner’s ear …
At that point, I was fully weaned and ready to breathe some life into the didg.
And now, as you know, I’m back at it. Gradually, I started playing again. Day after day, like an accident victim does his rehabilitation exercises. Today I am happy again to play my didgeridoo. I learned that enthusiasm is what drives progress. That music is beautiful only when it is played with the heart and soul. That the most valuable recognition comes from within and that smiles and thanks are a bonus. I learned that everyone has their place and that everything was offered to us.
Playing music is a precious path. So take care of it. Listen to yourself and play with your heart.
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