I just found some old photos. Here’s a picture of me in Hopi clown makeup, courtesy of my friend Margaret. Margaret had stumbled across a book on Hopi clowns and she thought it would be an interesting thing to do to my head as artwork for a CD I was working on at the time. This was about 11 years ago, right after I had completely wrecked a disc in my lower back and spent a number of months in bed healing. I had just moved into a shabby house in a not-so-good section of Phoenixville. The deal I cut with the landlord was that I would help with the house remodeling in exchange for reduced rent.
What seemed like a good idea turned into a summer of hell as I spent most of my time lying in bed, watching horrible TV and listening to the somewhat frequent police activity occurring outside the house. I could get up here and there to fix some microwaveable dinners, shower and go to the bathroom, but I could only manage five or ten minutes at a time. The living room had roofing material laid out on the floor, and there was an old car seat that I would use as a resting place between the kitchen and the stairway to the second floor. The only room that had been completed was the bedroom.
Needless to say, since I spent a lot of time lying in bed, I wound up writing a lot of songs in that house. There was nothing else to do there.
