Lately, Dennis and I have been getting up at 5.30AM (triple-digit desert temps means early starts for construction-guy types). It’s actually pretty lovely once my body remembers how to move in sync with my brain…slowly…so. slowly. I’ve always thought the hours between 4 and 6 are darker and quieter than midnight. Even in NYC, where you can hardly go a step without humans present.

Back in the days/daze of music, I was up to see the sunrise on a fairly regular basis even though the thought of sleeping in the day seized me with panic. A leftover, carried-on, early-instilled work ethic thing that suggested daytime shut-eye was for the lazy (I don’t know where that was picked up from). But that didn’t stop me from watching the sun rise on the regular. Sometimes I’d power through on a cat-nap while eating my favorite high-carb foods like egg sandwiches and cheeseburgers with fries and loads of coffee throughout the day, happy in the knowledge that I’d have an awesome sleep that night.

In my early-adult Cali days, there were a few sun-coming-up moments. Friends and I would go to a club, then end up at the Atomic Cafe, which in my memory stayed open past the 2AM bar-closing time. The only drag was having to operate a motor-vehicle to get home. The one time that went very badly for me was when I was heading back to my apartment in Huntington Beach from LA and while toodling down the freeway in my Toyota, I was not able to turn up the radio any louder to drown out the sound of a pinging coming from the engine area. When I caught sight in my rearview mirror of a flaming thing dropping out the bottom of my car, I knew things were going badly. The car stalled and as I rolled over to the shoulder, a cop pulled up, told me my engine had likely seized, called it in to Triple A and told me to lie down on the front seats in order to avoid being a target for any early-morning predators. Nice.

These in-between hours always felt like a great equalizer. A time when you’d see people who would normally be wearing baseball caps and sunglasses to avoid attention while demanding the removal of all the brown M&Ms from their backstage candy bowl becoming just like us: Confused about where the bathroom or the bottle opener had gotten off to. There was a club in the East VIllage, NYC, Save the Robots, which opened at 4AM and had a speakeasy vibe about getting in (slidey-slot in the metal door, a pair of eyes, if the door latch clicked open, you were golden; if the slot closed and nothing further happened, well…sorry). Whether it was the camaraderie of getting in, the exhaustion of the hour, or maybe because it was NYC where everyone pretended nonchalance, when Bono or the Edge came throug the door, no one fluttered. It may just as easily been a look-alike anyway, so why break the illusion. Or when Prince stepped into Nell’s, a nightclub on W.14th street, at closing time, which naturally meant the place would be staying open til whenever, a buzz did recharge the dozy drunks like us who were slouched in booths. But when we tried to see him, the only visible bit of Prince on the dance floor was a glimpse of the top of his head as he jumped up and down inside a circle of his security detail—all of them extremely tall and he very not. But still. I felt equal to the task of staying out late/early just like him. Just a regular Josephina to his regular Joe.

The star-maker machinery shifted gears in those early-morning hours. When Nick Cave lost his wallet at an after-hours bar following 1994’s Lollapalooza, I bought him a drink and lent small bills&change to the Deal sisters so they could play the jukebox at wherever we were. Blackout shades kept the rising sun from coming in the windows. My favorite place to be when there would be no sleep and the sun was a thing to watch coming over the horizon was from my roof on 14th street between Avenues B&C. Not only could I avoid walking home or taking the subway to get to my bed, but the unobstructed view over toward the East River, fringed by the Con Ed clock tower on 23rd street made for some magical views. (Decades-late apologies to those sixth-floor dwellers in the building who no doubt heard the footsteps and the voices on summer nights.) It’s no lie, as people do say when looking back on things, that that time felt both never-ending, never-changing and also not altogether real. I wasn’t really grounded in any what-the-future-holds thoughts beyond Wow, that egg sandwich and ice coffee are going to taste really good. And as I write about these things, the stored moments flash back. I don’t wish I was reliving them at all. In fact, a little, they make me want to take a nap. But absolutely I can call them up dusted with equal bits flecky magic and silty chaos, both useful.

About a month ago, my dad and I were in his car heading to his house from an emergency room visit at 1.30AM. This is a man who in his 96 years has never spent the night at a hospital (excepting his birth, I suppose). I (as was he, I’ve no doubt) was so relieved to be heading home after our many hours adventure that the electricity of adrenaline had me wide awake. When he said, “I haven’t been up this late in a long time,” I was right there with him. Decades in fact. As we drove through the incredibly quiet streets of Redlands, we came onto Sand Canyon Road—a beautiful two-lane strech through scrub and orange groves—and hanging up in the clear sky was a full moon. It was a bit of shining gold on an otherwise less-than night. He said, “Look at that” and for a minute there was a lovely stillness taking us away from the world. The early morning holding us. Everything would crank back up once the sun chased that moon out of the sky. But for the moment, there was that illumination lighting the way home.