Killing Us Softly With His Song

We've been keeping the windows open most of the time lately so the breeze will flow through the apartment and we won't have to turn on the AC. It's pretty nice actually. When we first moved here, we couldn't imagine leaving the windows open because none of them have screens. We couldn't imagine that we could keep birds, flies, and bats, (spelled with one "t"; the kind that fly) out of the house. So far,none of these things has been a problem. The only problem we have is "sound drift" from the surrounding apartments that also have their windows open. We hear a phone ring and can't tell if it is our's or a neighbor's. Was that our doorbell or someone else's?

Well, our latest sound drift has been a saxophone. Ever since this started, we have been trying to figure out just where the noise music was coming from. Normally I sort of like the sax. I even bought a Kenny G or two back in the day, but this saxophone is NOT being played by Kenny G. My best bet is a 5th or 6th grader.
As best we can tell, he is working on the melodic scale and the first two lines of "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess. (It's never been a real favorite anyway, and the addition of squeaks and flat notes don't help a bit.) Who would have ever imagined that "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" was not the most annoying song in the world for beginning musicians?

Last night the offender musician got brave. The sound was much louder and we were pretty sure he was out on his balcony. Maybe his mother made him go out there to practice and shut (or locked) the door behind him. We stared out our window long enough to see that other people were also coming to their windows to try to determine the source of the pain sound. One guy was even in the middle of brushing his teeth when he went to his window. We never did figure it out, but after 30 or 40 minutes, it was over. I will say that by the end of last night's session he actually got through the lines of "Summertime" hitting all the right notes and had cut the squeaks considerably.

Who knows? Maybe there is a budding Clarence Clemons right here in our neighborhood; or maybe we are going to have to start using the AC.