Nighthawks, Edward Hopper

I love this painting.

I have always been drawn to its raw aesthetics, but only recently have I discovered the suggestions of life experience that make it so captivating and comfortable. This image seems to capture everything it is about the nightlife that I enjoy. What can I say, I’m a night person, (a Nighthawk if you will)… or at least I like being a night person. For maybe two years of my life I was able to get up early every morning and go to bed at a decent time and it seemed to be appropriate. The rest of my life, including my current life, I long for the night and all the possibilities that come with it.

A quick confession, I just looked up the table of contents of “The seven habits of highly effective people” on amazon.com just to make sure getting up early was not one of them. Its not, moving right along…

I suppose my love of the night started when I was very young. I believe it begins with the prohibition against staying up late. This just entices one to desire the night hours before you even know the possible benefits of being conscience at 1:00 am. Then when you get a little older, your life enjoyment seems to revolve around the number of sleepovers your parents let you have with friends. Playing with Legos, transformers, and making tents out of rope and blankets. It did not get any better than that… and then video games came and it did get better than that. Eyes glazed over and twitching after abusing your pupils with incessant flashing lights until 5:00 am, those were the very best moments of a preadolescent life.

Then in high school a (un)fortunate few get invited into the next echelon of the nightlife, parties. I can’t speak much to that life, because I really wasn’t there. Well sometimes I was, in about the same way a fly on the wall is. I would observe from a safe distance. I didn’t party, but I did do mischief. I was especially prone to the covert ops espionage variety of mischief. Somehow the night brought it out, anything could happen after 2:00 am and we were quite intent on seeing that it did. Most of my adventures ended in the destruction of old refrigerators via pipe bombs. Nothing was better for my mid adolescent full pubescent psyche than watching a flaming appliance go hurtling through the air after the chest compressing explosion of your very own home made incendiary device. And when that was done, we would sit around a fire and begin to discuss everything in the world that was important to us. Somehow the night seemed to make this process of self disclosure just as possible as the violent destruction of home appliances. You could talk about things, anything, and everyone wanted to listen to each other. It was an amazing time for Nighthawks, we could delve into the conversation and follow it out all the way to the end. The end was never really a full end; it was just kind of the point where the discussion became obviously circular. Not circular in a frustrating exasperating way, circular in a complete way. It’s all out and you can connect end to end and if you have been honest, then for that moment you might actually know something about yourself.

I did a lot of this in college, minus the pipe bombs unfortunately. I still do in fact, and those seem to be the moments I look forward to the most and remember with the most fondness. Those two people sitting at that counter are the luckiest people in the world. It’s 2:00 am and they can talk about whatever they want. Anything is fair game and they are prepared to listen, they got nowhere else to be nor would they rather be. Somehow the night is going to bring out an almost lost form of the truth. The truth is a bit sullen; it’s been kept under wraps for a long time. But it’s free at 2:00 am. The truth seems to know it’s safe to come out at night. Whomever you are with at 2:00 am, they mine as well be your friend, if they have stuck out the day and waited through the evening and into the night, then they deserve your friendship and your trust. Anything is possible and it’s worth the wait.

The other guy, he’s alone. But not really, chances are that this is the first time he has been alone with himself all day. His thoughts can come out, they can get unraveled and he can trust them to do so. You can be honest with yourself at 2:00 am, if the mood is right. That diner in the painting, that’s the right mood. I don’t really know what it is about the ambiance, but it summons honesty and transparency, and genuineness and it’s available. You don’t get to go to that kind of a place all that often, but if you are a Nighthawk you spend most of the day longing for it.

Categories: Art