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Rating: Van Morrison sings: 'I'm caught one more time up on Cyprus Avenue'. One of those phrases that stick in your mind and never let you go. I don't know if Cyprus Avenue really exists, and I almost hope it doesn't. It's not a physical place, but a place of the heart.
Well, I'm caught, once again, by a love song.
Monk's first name is Thelonious, and his second is Sfera. Which is already quite unusual.
If Mingus spends his life arguing with the world, face to face, Monk, on the other hand, just watches it pass by.
Even when it's cruel. Like that world is, the world in which he lives. As it still is, now that he no longer lives there.
But he does nothing, just watches it go by. And he says nothing. He just stays there, thinking about his own things, a world of his own, which is in his head. And he remains silent.
One day - in a car - he gets stopped by the cops. The car is a luxury car, and there are some black people inside. That would be enough. But more than that, Bud Powell is in the car. High as a kite. With some stuff in his pocket. Monk doesn't say a word. He - truly a unique case - will never use drugs. He steals the drugs from Bud's pocket and throws them out the window. The police see him, they beat him up, they take him in. They ask him whose stuff it is. He - simply - doesn't answer.
Thelonious doesn't speak often. He only speaks when he thinks it's important. And in that case, it isn't. Quite the opposite.
What was special about Nellie, I don't know. I imagine her being silent too. Childlike, brilliant, and complicated, just like him. I imagine them spending days and evenings, silent and close. And occasionally exchanging a word, like the tip of an iceberg, with a whole world beneath.
And they understand each other.
Crepuscule with Nellie begins like this, with Thelonious's piano starting a phrase. But it starts from the middle. And continues. But it doesn't really develop. It goes on like this for a while, as if it were supposed to reach a point, but that point is always there, a step away, and it never arrives. And after a while, you realize that Monk is not alone, but there are some friends (one - for instance - is named John Coltrane) there playing too.
But they do it quietly, because Sfera and Nellie are talking. And they don't want to disturb.
And you feel like - at least I do - pushing, saying come on, say it, get there, as if there was really something you need to hear to say okay, great piece, let's move on. No, it doesn't arrive, it ends.
In the version I propose (the one on Monk's Music (and check out the cover, which already says it all)) as soon as it ends, it starts again. Because there's an alternate take. Brilliant. It lasts 9 seconds longer.
Well, those 9 seconds there, are probably one more word, a sweet extra word. A secret word. Or perhaps an even sweeter and more secret and profound silence.
Between someone called Sfera and his little Nellie.
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