Hi, my dears,                                                           (Wenn der Newsletter nicht richtig angezeigt wird, klickt einfach hier)

Now this is gonna be a rough one, the roughest one in 20 years of being Mad Matt. But you met him at a concert or at a workshop with me or somewhere else, that´s possibly why you riead this. And like me, you have the right to know it and grow with it alike.

Bruce won´t come back. He has been fighting Leucaemia since auust last year. But all his braveness, his courage and his sang-froid has not been helpful enough in the end to win this fight. He died on 18th of july 2016. Since i received the news that he´d not be here as scheduled for his didgemaking-workshop in 2015, i´ve been chewing heavily on the fact that my beloved friend is sick und fighting for his life. And that i could do so little to help him but mailing or calling him. Everything was like walking and working through syrup. Slower, less vibrant. Less activities with the didgeridoo, less newsletters, less concerts, no 20-years Mad Matt anniversary party - all that was too much of an effort. But his "good-bye" to me via email, and shortly after that the news of his death was quite a serious "wake-up-call" to me. Bruce has done so incredibly much for all the people who love the didgeridoo ! With his music, his concerts, his instruments that where getting even better over all these years and most important: His didgemaking-workshops. With those workshops Bruce succeeded to show all interested people in a loving and friendly way what it means to MAKE a didgeridoo: The deep satisfaction to hold it in your hands after a job well done. Thus showing the most important part of the knowledge, what a didgeridoo is. Of course with the cultural indiginous background it has, the termites and all that jazz. But foremost: The physical experiance. The work of your muscles, the feeling of satisfied exhaustion, the blisters on your hands, the sour muscles and the aching bum from sitting on the log while working it.

This "wake-up-call" means to me to speed up to the max again. The time at hand can be fewer than expected, obviously.

Bruce asked me to buy everything, that still was left in Germany to support him. That was quite a lot of Didgeridoos, raw logs, CDs etc, and at that stage it didn´t really match my financial range, but for Bruce i gladly did it. To give him the opportunity to let go and concentrate on what´s neccessary at the moment - though i´d wished for a different outcome, that´s for sure.

So: Who wants to make a serious didgeridoo and is brave enough to start it without professional instructions can do it now and make a great didge remembering Bruce and the time spent together on the last didgemaking-workshop.

I received the raw logs worked out by Bruce just before we went on summer holidays, but in august i have completely put them online, you´ll find them here. First i sent out the news about the logs to the guys subscribed to the didgemaking-workshop-newsletter, for obvious reasons, and then the guys the subscribed to the raw logs-newsletter. That´s why there´s not much left over, but what you see is still great.

The 10 new didgeridoos by Bruce Rogers i already have sitting here since january (and which i did not advertise or put online in the shop) i´ll not put online. I just don´t feel like dealing with people that are after a "last-call-for-a-Bruce-Rogers-Didgeridoo" - quick get one before it´s too late, as little as i want to blaze abroad the need to make some high and fast buck with Bruce´s passing away. The last of his didges either find a lover or stay with me.

To me, Bruce was the most gifted didgeridoomaker of our time. Since 1998 when i first met him, his didgeridoos constantly went up in quality. All his effort went into getting the last edge of sound out of this raw log to make sure the tree did die for a serious enough reason: To become a great didgeridoo. And to make sure us players have the biggest possible joy playing his instruments. Every year he came back his instruments sounded even better, were more versatile, had a higher bandwith in sounds and harmonics. His passing away is leaving a hughe gap for all didgeridoo-afficionados. Like you and me.

But apart from that Bruce was a great friend over many years, we knew each other since 1998. During those 18 years we spent so much time together business-wise as well as in private. If it was me visiting him and his lovely wife Lynne in Australia and enjoying their hospitaly, or if it was him visiting us here in Germany. We got to know each other really well, und during all this time i was very happy to know a man like him, a man that i deeply trusted. A man with such a high business and personal integrity that we at no point needed more than a verbal agreement on anything to get things going. If we been in touch or not, he always was the same. So loving and caring that just any hour we spent together was a great pleasure, be it talking about the didgeridoo or playing darts with a wheat beer (for better balance of the throwing arm). A pleasure and a reason to look forward to see him coming back next summer. The exchange of ideas and thoughts was like one to one, no filters, no bs applied, most of the time even not needed to even talk about it, as it was clear from the beginning. And if we did talk about it, it was for joy, not because it was needed. We took part in each other´s lives, whatever it was. He enjoyed our family life, our kids, and our descisions in life as well as we did enjoy his. There were too many analogies for words.

And i know many of you who met him during a concert or a workshop experianced pretty much the same.

I miss him, especially in summer, maybe a reason why i write to you only now in autumn and why the whole nesletter is running so late - i simply couldn´t have written this any sooner. My family misses him, they always been very happy to know he´d be about to come in some weeks.

So: Who wants to show Bruce´s wife Lynne and the rest of the world what he or she feels about this news can do that on Bruce´s facebook-site, you´ll find it here.

I know she´s reading up on all of it and she likes to read it. As well as i will send her a translation of what i wrote here. It´s about the living ones, that´s what it brakes down to.

Cheers, and maybe you do what Bruce said with his last two CDs in the titles: "Keep going" and "About Time", i´ll do that likewise, even though it hurts sometimes, but most of the times it even feels more alive than before. Might sound strange, but that´s how it is. Maybe a bit like the difference in appreciation between a normal hot and sunny day in mid sommer (could go on forever - don´t care) and a really hot sunny day in autumn (wow, what a gift, let´s enjoy it)  - just that we don´t know if this particular warm and sunny day today is in mid-summer or autumn. But what the heck, it´s a beautiful warm and sunny day :-)

Yours with all my love

Mad Matt

Matthias Eder von Mad Matt´s Didgeridoos

Ihr habt Euch auf einem Workshop, auf einem Konzert, bei einer Bestellung oder im Internet in Mad Matt´s Workshop-Newsletter eingetragen.

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