nostalgicThere's a good association in my life with that song. In 1998, 1999 and 2000, when I was a writer-reporter in Hermiston, OR, I wrote articles about each year's Relay For Life. I'd attend each Relay for several hours. In 2000, I decided to go more immersive and stay at the Hermiston High School track, where the Relay was taking place, overnight. I did stay up all night and into the morning, willingly letting the loopiness of not-enough-sleep get to me, and to stay awake I walked. Sometimes around the track with enrolled participants, sometimes by myself on the streets around the school.
While at a team campsite next to the track, I talked with late-night walkers, and one of them said that many of them make a point of being the late-night walkers. That triggered it. I'd finally bought that Smashing Pumpkins album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, only months before, and had listened incessantly. And that song came easily to my tired mind. And stayed there until past dawn, the chorus
We only come out at nightin Billy Corgan's quietly bouncy delivery, echoed by the instruments, like the most laid-back "walking theme" of the Sixties: maybe a bit like Peter Gunn on Quaaludes. Maybe. I just know it's a quiet, laid-back song. At least by Nineties Smashing Pumpkins standards. There was me, in the semi-desert summer night, tired and shower-needful, but buoyed by good people doing a good event for a good cause. And with a song I was fond of in gentle reply in my head.
We only come out at night
The days are much too bright
We only come out at night
It was a good night.
