Spring nights are the salvation of the sleepless. I don’t mind being awake when the nights stay warm early into the morning, or when a warm front arrives in the evening and everything feels suddenly tropical. Here’s one for the insomniacs and sleep-deprived, those who find themselves unable to sleep because their minds are too bright with something else. It’s Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of ‘Black Coffee’, a bluesy little song to help anyone through the night.
I’m feeling mighty lonesome
Haven’t slept a wink
I walk the floor and watch the door
And in between I drink
Black coffee
Love’s a hand me down brew
I’ll never know a Sunday
In this weekday room
Their’s something noirish in the underside of this music, lying just beneath the surface, insidious like the disappearing tail of a cigarette’s smoky trail. A diabolical piece of music that seeps into the darkest corner of the night – shadow of shadow of shadow…
I’m talking to the shadows
1 o’clock to 4
And Lord, how slow the moments go
When all I do is pour
Black coffee
Since the blues caught my eye
I’m hanging out on Monday
My Sunday dreams to dry
Scary music, not the silly stuff of Halloween, something more sinister, slinking through the spring like a snake, slip-slip-lisp-slip snake-talk…
Now a man is born to go a lovin’
A woman’s born to weep and fret
To stay at home and tend her oven
And drown her past regrets
In coffee and cigarettes
A cup of cold coffee sits on the table in the cold light of morning. Gray and muted, a different kind of noirish, and a more menacing one, because the morning is always the more menacing.
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