Dirk and I used to hang out in the same area near Antwerp when we were young lads, and we played in the same rock band, where he played the trumpet and was the singer (not simultaneously!). We enjoyed singing in close harmony, and we were certainly big fans of the French chanson style. Occasionally we wrote songs together and one of these was called «On voudrait vivre sans problèmes». We used it in a musical (which was never produced) and wrote a large bunch of other pieces to accompany the story of a chap who wanted to sail through life without problems. One sequence of that musical had seven variations on the «On voudrait vivre» melody, and the Midnight Variation is one of those. It just refuses to leave my head …. In the meantime, Dirk is retired but is still the driving force behind a charity that keeps the memory alive of some of his famous ancestors (Frans Mortelmans, the painter, and Lodewijk Mortelmans, the composer).