I want to share with you all a letter that I just got on Facebook from a fan. Ive read this letter 10 times over now and it had me in tears. THIS right here is why keep making music. The money, the fame, it all fades, but this stuff lasts forever. This is why I will keep making music until I cant anymore. Hey mate, Ive been a fan of yours on FB for some time, but actually have a minute to introduce myself and say hi and thank you for what youve given me. Its a weird way to introduce oneself, but I figured maybe youd appreciate knowing how you postively impacted a life out there. I found EDM while sitting in a record shop in S. Florida waiting for my 3 sisters to stop listening to the CDs they were going to buy. Every time they took their headphones off, and everybody else at the little headphone bar, heads would start bobbing to the music on the overhead speakers. I laughed and realized I was doing the same thing subconsciously. A short conversation with an English desk clerk later (what do you mean, Whos John Digweed?!) I bought his Sydney 006 GU album. That was 1998 I think. That second disk, with Stargazer, had the whole shop thumping, and I never looked back. A year later in college, I bought my own turntables and Stargazer was the first LP I bought. Ive been bedroom DJing ever since. A few years later, in 2004, I came home from a 15 month deployment in Iraq with the US Army as a tank and then scout platoon leader with the 1st Armored Division. Im proud of what I did and more importantly, Im proud of my guys and how they performed, regardless of the politics. My job was to bring them home alive to their families, and I did. You can imagine that those stresses build up quite a bit, and I had a really rough time of it for a while. Coming to grips with highs and lows most people cant imagine took a long time. That first night I got back home to my base in Germany, I got really drunk, put my headphones on, and listened to some of the sets I made. Just staring out the window remembering the good memories from college when I found the genre. I cried my eyes out alone on my living room couch in the dark that night from overload. Grateful to have made it home and able to remember that there were better times in the past and more that I could look forward to. I discovered snowboarding in 2005, and its probably like you with music, but time disappears and my whole being is wrapped up in those mountains and their sublime nature. While hiking ridgelines in Austria and France to get to untracked powder, your music and influence were there, probably providing courage to drop into runs I wouldnt have dared to try otherwise. Ive continued to follow the music, head bopping on chairlifts, ever since. In 2008 I got divorced. Rough times and under impressively unfavorable circumstances. At one point I had the barrel of a gun in my mouth, wondering how I could make it look like an accident so family might be able to get some insurance out of it at least. I was completely lost. I remembered those snowy ridgelines and how the world moved under my feet, and how the cold bit at my skin. I remembered how good it felt to sit and tinker with sets made for friends and families late at night until they are just right and you cant help but smile. Those thoughts pulled the oiled steel from my mouth. There was far more life to live, and from adversity comes opportunity. It has. I remarried in 2012 to an incredible woman I whom I met only a year before. When you know, you know. Easiest decision I ever made. A woman who would go boarding with me in all over the world and can hold my hand in the car with her head bobbing to a the first breaks set I made that included your input to make Lost in the Moment, and who understands that sometimes my brain needs an escape and that Ive found it in good music when not in the snow. We are expecting our first child next Feb, and you can be sure there will be some Tempest, Stargazer, Lost in the Moment, In Silico, and a million other great tunes on the headphones attached to that womans belly in the coming months. So its been a long ride, and probably more than you cared to read, but I am grateful to you. Thank you for making the music that you do, for pouring yourself into it, for some truly incredible sets, and for helping some of us either amp up, chill out, or both. Its been a priceless contribution to my life, and I look forward to hearing what the future brings. Ridge lines are earned, and the reward from the top is priceless. Take care, thanks again, best of luck, and keep it up. -A Fan
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 01:18:11 +0000