Three A.M.

 

I love 3 A.M.

I was hired as lead guitarist and ended up touring up and down the East Coast with one of Chicago’s best Blues Bands at around 3 A.M. one night in Tucson, Arizona after I won a cutting contest earlier in the evening (in this case, a ‘Cutting Contest’ is when guitarists gather together to out-play each other on the bandstand). I played one of the best shows in my life in front of about ten thousand people at an outdoor music festival in Michigan and took the stage for that show at 2:57 A.M. I suffered my greatest loss at about 3 A.M., which also happens to be about the time of night that my wife and I conceived our daughter.

I got a chance to glimpse behind the veil, to peek behind the façade of this existence that we all generally agree to be reality at around 3 A.M. one night, and that experience changed my understanding of myself and the world in which I lived forever.

I have recorded my best musical work, written my funniest stories, and lived a large portion of my life stumbling around like a lunatic in the middle of the night so that I had something to write about.

My internal clock has always been set for the night shift. When almost everyone else around me for miles is sleeping comfortably, I am up, brain firing on all cylinders, swimming through the darkness like a shark, always moving forward trying to squeeze every ounce of life out of the night before the rest of humanity wakes up and reclaims the world for its nonsense.

In the quiet of a suburban early morning lies the seeds of mischief and the spark of creativity. In the low rumble of cities big enough to never sleep, 3 A.M. is an adventure in secret after-hours bars, jam sessions, drug deals, tired hookers and bad decisions. In some places, you can get anything you want in the early morning if you have the dosh and the connections.

For me, 3 A.M. exists as a completely different world: a world that the majority of people are actually asleep in. Waking up in the morning, most people think their world continues as is, day by day. Not so, for in the wee hours, everything is renewed, replaced, repaired, restocked, or reset by the night occupiers who move more effectively through the gloom when the day dwellers are snug in their beds.

There is no better time to take a peaceful walk. In the still of the winter, the silence of early morning is deafening. In the spring and summer, a walk at 3 A.M. is a priceless gift to the self, especially if you are walking the streets of a small, Mid-Western town to…I don’t know…buy a pack of cigarettes at the only gas station in town that ALSO happens to be open 24 hours and you get stopped by the police:

Police: “Sir! It’s kinda…LATE to be walking around town, don’t you think?”

Me: “Why…Yes SIR, Officer! It is, INDEED, quite late! In fact, if I didn’t need some cigarettes, I would be TUCKED AWAY IN BED, I can tell you!”

Police: “But…you’re NAKED, Sir…and you need to drop the vodka bottle…and the machete…”

Me: “You don’t understand, Officer! If I don’t get cigarettes RIGHT NOW, I’m going to climb up onto the roof of my house with my AK-47 and start picking off the neighbors…”

I don’t remember much after that. I woke up to the sights, sounds, and smells of two huge cops and a janitor beating me on the kidneys with table legs…

If you are of a certain mind, if you cock your head to the side a bit and squint, being about at 3 A.M. almost gives one a sense of invincibility; there is a feeling that if the world did not necessarily belong to you, the time did. What seems like an insurmountable task at 3 in the afternoon becomes an intriguing challenge at 3 in the morning…

Who is up at 3 A.M.? Third shift workers, insomnia sufferers, burglars, and the insane…these are my people!