they were written for and joan baez to sing because i was producing her record. she showed up with eight songs and i brought out some songs. eight songs is not enough for a record. she said no, you are going to ride the rest of it. so i started writing songs. i did not really think about it. meanwhile, my dad was really ill, and he passed away before we finished the record, between the time we recorded the tracks and the time we mixed it. when i got ready to make my own record, i kept writing songs over the course of the year, and i wrote all this stuff that i was getting out of this sort of existential zone that i do not normally get into. i don't know, i was just writing different than i had in a long time. i had finished the book by that time, and i suddenly realized that maybe that is what the connection was, the whole idea -- i watched my dad go through what he went through and passing away, and he was terrified. it is really fighting for breath and he was really scared, and it was really hard. a friend of mine died at woodstock, and he had cancer. it was to