Bert Fondue asks but does not answer the important questions

How many saxophone players world wide you ask?
No idear,
maybe two million.

to properly answer the question one must define terms.
at what point can you call yourself a ‘saxophone player’ anyway?
Is there some magic line you cross?

first you dabble and struggle
with the strange intestinal architecture of the keys
bending your fingers in uncomfortable postures
learning the feeling
of the reed fluttering invisibly in your mouth
you become a student of the saxophone . . .

maybe a better question is how many think they have made the saxophone their bitch only to be laughed at by the true professionals in the saxophone community.

Since this has gotten tangential,
how many sax players worldwide have red hair?
Natural, actual red hair.
Again, don’t have the stats.

what magic property would come with knowing this exact number?
frogs to carrots or carrots to frogs?

a constant tally on the ebb and flow
of red haired saxophone players:
an old alto man in Madagascar they called “the Red One” dies
only to have a child prodigy in Ireland learn his first diminished chord . . .

I have no answer to any of the queries.

But I did play the grooves of your finger,
the tip of your left index finger
Your very fingerprint

on my record player.

Can’t speak about the result without falling short.
would like to say it was a history of the world from your unique perspective,
A diary of every impulse ever run through your filter
A “whole life recording”
A listing of every math problem you ever solved correctly

but it was just nothing.

for a long time

and then occasional static here and there and the sound of running water and a small bird explaining in song the nature of leaves and light and how they interact, his secret, his truth.

after those impulses faded
came a sound I couldn’t identify
a sound that belonged to no word

and then a nasal, disembodied female voice
Asking us
telling us
saying to us
‘Please do not park in the loading zone. Recording 42’
Over and over again

with slight menace in her voice

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