SPELLBOUND
The real black magic of my youth? The music
from the ‘phonograph,’ the medium of the séance…
lights all lowered for atmosphere, the campy
ember-burn of the vacuum tubes casting their
gypsy candleglow upon the wall behind… and
me, sitting there in the dark all by my little
lonesome, letting the instruments and voices
snake-charm me down into those midnight
grooves right into someone else’s jealousy…
letting them conjure up in me somebody
else’s pain and blues… letting them possess me
with someone else’s yearning… and then, well…
I’d find myself in somebody else’s skin… in
somebody else’s emotional blue suede shoes…
in somebody else…
so yeah, small fry
though I was, it was always
really me giving Peggy Lee that
Fe-ver… in the morning, yeah…
fever all through the night…