“He heard the rhythmic troubling obscenities of saxophones.” William Faulkner, Soldier’s Pay
I met Wayne Shorter in a dream somewhere in a sunny club, light pouring through the windows, bouncing off the beach, slinging diamonds off each cresting wave. He smiled, picked up his tenor and started playing Footprints, the repetition of the riff becoming a prayer, notes blending with the waves, the rhythm becoming a chant, the shore a sunny temple where laughing monks refused to let me wake.
When was I taught that the world was profane? That a saxophone and the sound of surf pounding wasn’t holy enough? The monks nudged me, saying wake! Embrace the rhythm, the troubling obscenities, the sound of Footprints on the shore. Wayne smiled and began to chant softly, and then I was chanting as I came back to the world, saxophones filling my head, slowly unpacking what I thought was profane.
Gene Hyde lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His writing and photography have appeared in such publications as Appalachian Journal, The Banyan Review, Raven’s Perch, Valley Voices, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene.
