June 18, 2011 - In Ft. Nelson, British Columbia. Heading home on the long drive. The Alaska Highway before me. There is a place in the middle - a moment when you are at your most lucid and most creative. Balanced, as on a knife's edge - eternal and momentary. There was a time when I felt this feeling and I would relish it and consider all that I would create now. Savoring it, I would let it pass. Gradually I learned that when I felt it, it was important to have the tools of the trade nearby - a guitar on or near the bed, a pen at hand.... But more often than not I would find a distraction instead - resolving to write, I'd head for the nearest coffee shop, only to pick up the advertising newspaper instead. Or read the history of a restaurant on a menu, or, more recently, check political news on my I phone. There is a discipline to creativity that must be cultivated, or the creative moment slips away. Lost forever. Most of my best songs were written when I tapped that experience - at least those that were not coerced by a flirtation or discovered in a line scratched down in the past, finally liberated to form a song like an archaeological ruin unearthed and imagined in its beauty. But these are thoughts from the declining end of a knife's edge experience. The road beckons, as does my home...