Fool After Midnight

A wise adviser once advised me this way:

"Don’t  move your mouth 

Till you've got something to say;

Talk in the morning, but when the Moon comes up,

Take my advice boy and Keep Your Mouth Shut."

Late at night when I'm feeling Divine,

I make the same mistakes Every Time.

I make myself promises that I always forget;

I talk too much, do stupid things

I always regret.

I’m just a Fool after Midnight,

My senses fade after daylight.

I’m just a fool.

Note:  This is another in a series "illustrating" song lyrics by Kevin Ayers.  Fool After Midnight, a really magical, wistful, depressive Kevin song (I apologize for the tautology)  appeared on the Kevin Ayers/Ollie Halsall collaboration album As Close As You Think,  released on the Illuminated label in the UK in 1987. You can listen to the recording by visiting This Link and searching for the record, song and "play" button at the lower right.  As Close As You Think was recorded at the home studio of former King Crimson/Bad Company bassist Boz Burrell, and, as I hope you will hear, is delightful, but definitely more on the order of a very good demo (Kevin's a highly resourceful and sophisticated recordist) than a polished master version, which would, no doubt, have featured real drums and a fewer synthesized sounds.  I'm sorry Kevin has never revisited the song, but maybe the mood and inclination didn't last.  I post it here partly because it brings back some Fool After Midnight memories of time spent running around with with Kevin and sometimes Ollie several years earlier than the song in Manhattan, Brooklyn and on Long Island.  I hope the various King Arthur legend illustrations I have chosen suit the lyric and do not seem irrelevant or superfluous.  If they do, the song paints its own, vivid mental pictures.


ILLUSTRATION KEY:

1. Aubrey Beardsley, Merlin and Nimue, 1893.

2.  William Morris, King Arthur and Sir Lancelot,  1862.

3.  Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Lancelot and Guinivere, 1874.

4.  Gustave Dore, Guinivere, 1877 (illustration to Tennyson's Idylls of the King).