Midnight at the Cotton Club

To you, arriving at midnight,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. This letter is posted from a New York night in 1929. The title on the envelope is crammed like a marquee over a theater door, and cream and brick-red stripes jump to the drumbeat. The doorway is an angular silhouette, and in the corner lies an embossed club ticket; your thumb will read it better than your eyes.

Night on Lenox Avenue is still long. More than three hundred years ago, a duke on another stage gave his musicians their orders: "If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it." — William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1623)

The music onstage belongs to the people who make it, and we like to remember their names. Take a seat near the back, hear this one number through, and then write to us.

See you at the late show,

Storm Post Office

1929 · New York

P.S. The ink is blue-black. Midnight is the best hour to read it.