The spring before I turned 21, I worked the night shift in a bank mailing room.
I’d wake up in the early evening, have breakfast, watch the hockey game (it was playoff time and my team was making a bit of a run) and then head out to work. The shift was midnight to 8:00am.
It was only a two-week temp job, but I emerged from those two weeks with the naïve wisdom and false sense of altered life perspective usually found in those who spend a semester studying abroad. I was like a six-year-old kid who stays up all night and thinks that nobody has ever attempted it before.
But in my defence, it was pretty cool.
It was pretty cool to be heading downtown as everyone else’s night was ending. The office where I was temping was down the street from the hockey arena, so I’d see people who had been at the game and were now heading home; it was a special secret thrill to think that they’d be asleep within the hour, while my day was just beginning.
And it was pretty cool to leave work the next morning, energized by the rising sun, plowing my way upstream through the rush hour traffic that was surging downtown as I left. I wondered if any of the groggy morning commuters were people I’d seen on their way home from the game hours earlier.
The job itself was mind-numbing, especially in the pre-smartphone world. I had no music or podcasts to keep me company, and the people I was working with were…well, eccentric in the way you’d expect people who’d worked the night shift for years to be eccentric.
But it really did change the way I thought about nighttime, about where one day ends and another begins. The night feels different when you’re nocturnal. That feeling is nicely encapsulated by this song, written by the immensely talented Steve Davit.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It begins with the sunset. Or more accurately, it begins with the vibraphone, which is as close to being a sunset as an instrument can get.
2. At 1:20, a family of saxophones comes in, giving the track a rich, deep, midnight sound.
3. At 4:32, a sudden unexpected chord change acts as the sunrise. Everyone blinks at the light, checks their watches, and shuffles home.
Recommended listening activity:
A bedtime bowl of cereal.