Playing a tree like a saxophone

I’ve had a large bifurcated branch lying on our guest room bed for months, attached to an IV. (The IV that belonged to my mother-in-law’ dog, now healed and not requiring the IV.) It’s been an uncanny presence, knowing this branch is lying there in bed like an invalid, paliative or recovering.

My parents are coming for the weekend and so we had to move the branch outside. I understand that branches, as do trees, do quite well outside. I was thinking of the branch as I was playing as a saxophone. I imagined the saxophone that I was playing (a straight soprano) as being like a tree branch. What would it be to play a tree? What would it be to breathe into it, to move my fingers into various positions like the fingerings for notes on a saxophone?

So of course I went outside and recorded myself “playing” the tree branch. Breathing into it. My sappy lungs. My transpiration. Becoming rhizomic. Then I recorded some music on saxophone and added digital accompaniment and barn swallow calls. I should have made the accompaniment out of leaves. Flooded my music room with sunlight and chlorophyll. Increasingly, I’m thinking about the outside of music. The musical environment. Being in a band with birds and trees.