Choose to Feel

If you enjoy hauntingly beautiful music that takes you to unexpected places, I highly recommend that you join Steve Daniel's email list, where he sends his didgeridoo upcoming events.

My husband Keith and I drove out to Bastrop State Park last weekend. There's a place outside the Austin city limits where the landscape transforms. Scrub mesquite and grasses give way to elm trees and pecan trees and tall pines. Bastrop State Park is in the middle of these tall trees.

Eighty feet high or more, this stretch of pine trees is probably the tallest group of trees you'll find in Central Texas. They're named the Lost Pines because they are "hidden away" in between the Hill Country brush land of Austin and the swamps of Beaumont and Louisiana.

I noticed a bumper sticker on a car during our ride: "Choose to Feel," it suggested.

I liked the sentiment. In a society plagued with distractions, feeling is something we must decide to do.... and that takes some courage. It turns out, there's a very good reason we slip into distractions: it can be uncomfortable to feel.

I wondered what the driver would look like. Keith sped up, and I looked at the neighboring driver.

He had a friendly, relaxed face... and then, I noticed he was didgeridoo player Steve Daniel!

"Choose to Feel," indeed.

The bumper sticker made sense. If you ever wanted to choose to feel and needed a little encouragement, or someone to help you to do that, listening to Steve Daniel play the didg is a good thing to do. He approaches everything from saying hello to blowing the voice of the didgeridoo, with presence, gentleness, and heart.

Steve's didg playing is all about opening and connection. The deep, percussive sound of the didg moves through listeners, taking them deeper and deeper into something very familiar. At least that's how I experience it. Listening to Steve is like a journey inward, yet even more familiar, even more primal, than the journey within. It's the journey back to something we all know, perhaps.

He makes his own didges, often out of hollowed-out agave stalks. At even given moment, he has several didges with him, each with a unique voice.

Steve's didges are surprisingly light. He brought one to a recent Best Resources Night Walking class. Whenever it was time to walk, he just propped a didg against his shoulder and took off.

But that's a story for another day.