Mid September, the middle-aged saxophonist was relaxing in his spartan low-budget hotel room on the outskirts of the town of Freiburg. A latesummer had recently kissed the province and as the clock ticked over midnight the air was still warm and most pleasant, he thought to himself. His balcony door was slightly ajar and he was enjoying the last pages of a book arguing that the "Younger Dryas" period of Earth's history some 14,000 years ago was indeed bought about by a severe meteor impact causing catastrophic global flooding. The fact that this event is so widely encoded in world myth resonates with the saxophonist and as he felt his eyelids gradually growing heavier (the last days were taxing on him to say the very least), he pondered just what this impact must have been like so long ago. Tales of galactic precession and long-forgotten ancient star-lore encoded in stone were perhaps just what he needed so as to forget that he was in outback nowhere in a complete dive with the sole toilet on the corridor, no internet, the nivea cream/sweat stench of a youth hostel, and no one at reception by night.
It must have been no longer a few minutes into his first phase of alpha sleep when the screaming began, the kind of ur-cry one could expect from hunter-gatherers if several 2 kilometer wide cosmic rocks would smash through the atmosphere at high speed. Naturally the first thought of the Saxophonist was that he was dreaming. A male voice in the adjoining room was suddenly screaming out as if something was terribly,terribly wrong. There was something demonic in the cries. It sounded like someone was either about to be killed or the screamer would soon be dying himself. As the Saxophonist was jarred awake a chill shot through him. There was nothing comprehensible in the screams but they could well be infernal necromantic incarnations- there was something powerful and immensely unsettling behind them. Then suddenly the cries would stop and spitting sounds, stamping and the smashing of wood could be heard in the room. Then utter silence for some minutes. Then the screaming would begin again, lasting minutes on end even as his voice could be heard cracking and failing. The Saxophonist lay frozen.
The hotel was virtually empty. Around it was a deserted Tennis club with grass growing through the faded clay and some distant hills. The Saxophonist was juggling thoughts of knocking on the door or calling the police as the blood-curdling screams continued with small windows of eerie silence in between. The Saxophonist felt pumped from his recent training and ready to break down a door and a man if need be. But for the first time in years (since stumbling by night into a lion pride in Kenya) he felt the red hairs on his arms stand up and he remembers how the clinically insane can produce almost superhuman strength when pushed. This leads to him immediately ditching the break-down-the-door option. As for the calling-the-police option, he quickly decides against it knowing he will not survive the next day without some sleep at the very least. Sirens and reports lie beyond the Saxophonist's capacity at that moment.
The screams are such that as the Saxophonist lies and stares at the wall separating him from a surreal mental meltdown, half expecting the wall to be smashed down any moment. After some minutes of the darkest of limbos he quietly gets up from the bed and slips on his jeans and a t-shirt. He stretches his neck, flexes his lats and shoulders, splashes some cold water on his face, and opens his door.
Seconds after knocking on the adjacent room number 8 the door is opened and musty air tainted with vodka vapour is immediately released directly into the Saxophonist's face. By the subsequent babbling and sputtering the Saxophonist identifies the man/woman/thing as Finnish. His frame is large, her face pitted, scarred and unshaven, its long blond hair is untidy and greasy, his breasts are huge and imposing, her complexion is pale and seedy, its feet are struggling to balance on back high heels. The Saxophonist is 90% disorientated and dazed and 10% ready to kill. The dreamlike figure begins a monologue in which the phrases are soaked with a heavy Finnish accent "the room- the dark presence- it not leave me alone- it is huge hole- cannot escape- you cannot help- you cannot know how deep is the hole- suck me into the hotel wall- cannot overcome- I have told you now I must not repeat myself- please- I must not"
The Saxophonist upon waking the next day cannot recall how long the figure spoke for, the whole episode smacked of a waking nightmare. The figure itself seemed in its size and appearance straight out of hell and yet in enigmatic ways cried out for empathy. Behind him, room 8 had been turned on its head and utterly trashed. The Saxophonist will later never be entirely sure if the small axe on the bed was a figment of his imagination or not.
The Saxophonist, whether from fear or wisdom or shock, said nothing. His gaze met that of the deranged Finn. No amount of Vodka could possibly dig a rabbit hole this deep, this the Saxophonist knew for sure. Perhaps enough vital information was exchanged between the pairs of eyes, for after the Saxophonist returned to his bed, still dazed but also oddly calm, no more screams were heard that night. Strange knocks, incessant spitting,and the humming of Finnish folk melodies, yes- but no soul-wrenching screams. After lying awake for some time the Saxophonist was troubled to hear his shower suddenly turn itself on, spray water for 20 seconds, and then fall silent.
At the sun-bathed breakfast buffet at 0730 am, the meek receptionist informed the Saxophonist that the "pleasant Finnish businessman in room 8 was always cheerful at breakfast during his one week stay which terminates today". The Saxophonist poked at his eggs and salmon, quickly finished reading about Hilary Clinton's strongly suspected Parkinson's disease, and checked out of the hotel with slightly more urgency than usual.
Worlds away from the "Sport FC" Hotel of Freiburg the Saxophonist completes a residency in a Cistercian Abbey in the heart of France. Surrounding the abbey grounds were seemingly endless fields of dying sunflowers, their darkened heads hanging listlessly and gently swaying in the cold breeze. Autumn had hit the prefecture of Berry swiftly and the Saxophonist enjoyed the visceral sensation of his energy returning, he had always considered himself a creature born of cold. Four days of singing overtones beneath white cupolas of the Monastery were more than enough to make him forget the incident with the Finn and he found a new friend in the form of a white owl who had nested on one of the higher arches in the abbey and often liked to engage in a strange singing dialogue with the harmonics produced by the Saxophonist, sometimes swooping in a low trajectory through the monumental interior, defecating out of joy on the stone floor in the process. Alongside the owl, the Saxophonist delighted in submerging himself into the consciousness of bees as it was his particular appointment to create music to accompany their sounds. After meticulously collecting all manner of sources, from the delicate beating of wings to cool the hive in summer to the last cry of the dying queen, the Saxophonist was more than happy to lose himself in a world natural intent and beauty that left him blissfully detached from the world of security checks, airports, and the drudgery and stench of traveling in the age of petroleum. After a small but ecstatic group of elderly locals had warmly received his final presentation in the Abbey he boarded a train to Paris on the following morning. Upon arriving in Gare Austerlitz he elected to take the Metro number 5 to Gare du Nord. It was in one of the many underground connecting tunnels beneath the later station, the ones he likes to curse at whilst lugging his bags up all of their many stairs, when he was suddenly thrown back violently to the nighttime Operetta of Freiburg.
In between the posters of French comedians and American Blockbusters a photo had been crudely taped to the wall. To the Saxophonist's utter astonishment, the portrait was a striking resemblance of the Finnish Transsexual. The figure which had confronted the Saxophonist was several years older and his face had been viscously beaten by time, weather, and the bottle, but it was without a doubt the same man. The Saxophonist immediately made a photo of the photo, perhaps so as to prove to himself later that he was not going mad. As he was framing the shot with one hand, his other hand was carefully wrapped out of habit around his Saxophone case and suitcase. It was precisely in that moment of digital capture that he remembered something odd from the days preceding the midnight encounter which had, from the enduring shock of the encounter, slipped entirely from his memory. Some days leading to the nighttime incident the Saxophonist had used his balcony to construct a small "mesa" adorned with incense, rose water, and a small candle. A side note on the "mesa" : Some 12 years ago the Saxophonist had found himself in the mountains of Colorado supporting the building of a Buddhist Stupa with his music. As alcohol was strictly prohibited in the Buddhist community the Saxophonist had walked miles with his guitar to search for any kind of Inn or the like. Upon finding a roadside dive he then imbibed in some wine and was buoyed enough by the fermented sugar to play some of his original country songs guitar on his bar stool next to the pool table. The staff were ecstatic and encouraged the Saxophonist to return that same Friday to "play a real gig for our local crowd", an offer which the Saxophonist with his dubious skills on the guitar accepted, thinking in the main of the free wine. Needless to say , the full and boisterous Friday night Mid-west crowd gave the Saxophonist with his limited skills and no microphone a hostile reception and the "gig" was swiftly terminated by the bar staff spraying juice and Cola on the Saxophonist and his guitar with two of their serving pistols. Wet, sticky, and demoralized, the Saxophonist elected to take his remaining bags and walk as far away as he could, leaving behind him the Buddhists and the Cowboys. It was then, shortly after that he stumbled across a Peruvian Shaman guiding a group through the mountains of Colorado to build "energetic transmitter stations" he termed "Mesas" consisting of cloths laid on the ground covered with stones, feathers, and activated by song. The Saxophonist was encouraged to join the group with his music which he did, albeit still sticky from the cola and juice. In the following days the Saxophonist listened carefully to the teaching of this mysterious Peruvian without thinking much more of it. It was 11 years after that when the Saxophonist was guided back by invisible hands to rekindle the Peruvian wisdom tradition. Watching with horror as he perceived the world slipping back into the old patterns of war and mindless destruction he was inside desperate to do anything he could to save the earth below his feet which day by day was becoming more venerated to him but at the same time more endangered of senseless destruction. Even he was forced to admit that the breathy sounds from his saxophone and vocal cords could not, on their own, save the planet. And so it was that the teachings of the Peruvian came back to him and he began to take a small cloth with him on his travels, laying it down in hotels and whenever he could, lighting incense and giving simple offerings in the form of song to "Pachamama", in other words doing everything possible to honor and even save this beautiful spinning orb.
And so it was on the balcony of room 7 on the three days leading to the nighttime encounter the Saxophonist had begun to sing and light aromatic woods including "Palo Santo". And each time, as the Saxophonist whilst looking at the shocking photo portrait now recalled, he remembered hearing moaning sounds from the adjoining room- as if someone was suffering under the weight of spirit the Saxophonist was "calling in". At the time he thought nothing of it but now, amongst the din of the Paris underground, they came back to him. They were the subdued cries of a tormented soul, a traumatized bundle of paradox who must have been, as is often the case, extremely sensitive to subtle changes in the energetic field surrounding the "Sport FC" hotel. Were these shifts in the field invoked by utterance, flame, and scent responsible for the Finn's severe breakdown by night? The Saxophonist, swiftly walking down the dirty passage way of Gare du Nord, was content to never know the answer.
