February102012
“Often, Johnny would compose lying down. Stretched across a bed or along a couch with his eyes closed, Mercer would cycle words and images through his mind all without the help of paper and pen. It looked like sleeping to those who saw it, and indeed earned him the epithet lazy, but anyone who knew of Mercer’s prolificacy had to have thought it less like snoozing than dreaming. Sometimes he’d surface with a fractured image that he’d take down with him the next time he submerged, and sometimes he’d come up with a lyric in full, a deep sea diver with a sack of gold.”
Sam Wasson, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.
