Why? "Because The Night", That's Why.

Salvador Dali's most famous painting, featuring the imagery of melted watches, is titled "The Persistence Of Memory". That is an irony, because memory is flexible, fallible, and often a figment of our own imagination. By the time we conjure a memory, we can't be sure if we are remembering the event itself or our prior memories of that event. That is why there is no such thing as a reliable narrator, even when we are telling our own story to ourselves.

There are songs in our lives that become obsessions. These are the songs we came across at just the right time, in just the right circumstances, to become the backbeat of the metronome by which our hearts pump. If we are lucky, we don't lose that feeling as time wears on, and the list of songs continues to grow. That is by no means guaranteed.

One of the songs that has infected me in such a way is Bruce Springsteen's "Because The Night". Over the years, I have listened to the song countless times, I have watched nearly every live performance the search algorithm would provide me. I made sure to use Springsteen's name, because it is his performances that always struck that chord with me, not the version Patti Smith turned into a hit. Why I found myself in the author of the song and not the most beloved rendition is a question I never gave much thought, but perhaps makes sense in the context of my life. Not including it when I made the list of my ten favorite songs ever now feels like an intentional oversight, because part of me still prefers to ignore what connection exists between Springsteen's music and myself.

There has always been something heart-wrenching about a song that opens with a minor key piano figure, as well as something hypnotic about a circular rhythm and melody such as that of the bridge. The composition of the song centers on the haunting piano line (which would resurface in Creeper's "Midnight", a good song that doesn't have the same mesmerizing appeal), before it erupts in the percussive bursts of the chorus. Within the three minutes of the studio version from "The Promise", the song is cinematic in its own way, part romantic noir and part carnal horror. In the expanded running time of Springsteen's live versions, the extended guitar solo is a drawn-out manifestation of ecstasy, where the key change rises like... well, you can draw your own picture.

"Because the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to lust," Springsteen's studio version of the chorus sings. Though it was meant in different context, the night is indeed when those subjects come to 'life'. In the song's story, attraction becomes a physical timekeeper as each thrust counts off the increments before the day will surely come. For some of us, night is when we are left to our thoughts and dreams, and we can create a world more accepting of ourselves than the one we live in. Is this why I have never been a night owl? Perhaps. Is it why I have written much of my own centered on the idea of preferring the dreaming state, because that is the only place love exists? Absolutely.

While I often joke that love is a 'four-letter word', it comes from a very real place that exists somewhere between the conscious and subconscious. My family never said that word to each other, and I was once given the dead-serious advice to never seek it out, which combined with my psychological wiring to convince me that my dreams were all I would ever have. So far, that lack of faith has paid off. When I talk about music being my 'currency of thought', this is what I am referring to. Springsteen (and Patti Smith) did not intend the song to mean this, but I found in the words a way of explaining the mental drains my thoughts swirl around. Songs like this one allow me to understand what the chemicals in my head are doing as they poison the well.

I have known all these years how much "Because The Night" haunts my thoughts and echoes in my subconscious. What I did not realize until recently was how my memory had failed me. It was not Springsteen who brought this song into my life, nor was it Patti Smith. It was... 10,000 Maniacs.

Hearing their name come up in a joking context recently spurred my memory, and gave me back the first experience I had with a favorite song. The band covered "Because The Night" on their MTV Unplugged performance, which became their biggest hit. It is that live version that I remember hearing emanate from the car speakers on a summer day as we drove past the lake. It is that interpretation that I remember seeing again and again on tv when music videos were still what their programming consisted of. It is Natalie Merchant's voice that burrowed into my mind in ways I am only now remembering.

Her lilting tone is utterly unique, and matched precisely for the haunting presence of the song. Whereas Springsteen's performance of the song is that of a man exhausted of everything but the fuel for love, Merchant's performance is that of someone weary of living only for the night. The vulnerability of her voice has an undertone in which we realize that love is more than passion, and that whether we are awake or asleep, the dream only lasts for so long.

Even if it is a mere moment in time, it is one I am still trying to inhabit, one I am trying to stretch the way Dali skewed and distorted the watches in his painting. Love is something we cannot live without, but we cannot control. We try to hold onto it when it comes, because we never know if it will come again. Of course, that's if it ever came at all. Until that day, we still have our dreams, "because the night" belongs to those of us who crave the connection.