I was about halfway through a pot of French press coffee, sitting at a bar on Long Island, waiting for the rain to let up. I remember that I hadn't eaten anything since the previous afternoon. That would account for why I began to feel disoriented.

I reached out for a cocktail napkin and asked the bartender for a pen. The words I began to write were not lyrics. They were questions. I was making a list of questions that suddenly appeared in my head. As I listed them, I grew more anxious and frustrated. It seemed like nonsense at first, but I felt I had to get them on paper, in front of me, to understand them.

Then, looking at my cup of coffee, I remembered the poem Death Fugue by Paul Celan. "Black Milk of morning, we drink you at dusk time." In the context of the poem, there seems to be a connection between the drinking of the "Black Milk" and human suffering. I put my pen down for a moment, and finished my coffee.

I might guess that I came in contact with something that day that was very deeply buried in my mind, something very abstract. Or, I had way too much coffee on an empty stomach.