Songfacts®:

• In his uncomfortable chair in the brightly painted old woodshop attached to his home is where Roger Clyne creates. The chair is deliberately uncomfortable, says Clyne, "because if I get too far into my creative trance, I'll go into my sleep mode."
  
  The hourglass that is the inspiration for this song sits on a table in that room, and is an integral piece of Clyne's songwriting ritual. He turns the hourglass over four times to be sure he will be writing for at least 4 hours. "There have been times," he says, "when I will turn the hourglass over and turn to my guitar to mess with the melody or poetry or cadence or whatever part of the song it will be that day, and I'll look up and the hourglass is empty, and I won't know how long it's been. And that's just a really great feeling." (courtesy: "FuelFriends" by Heather Browne.)
• Although Clyne can write anywhere, he says the best place and time to write is where there are no interruptions from routine things, such as taking the kids to school, checking email, or answering the phone. Those things interrupt the creative process. "I used to be a nighttime creator, but now I find that I work better very early in the morning, like 4 a.m., right out of a sleep. I think it's the pre-clutter clarity." (Get more in our Roger Clyne interview. His website is azpeacemakers.com.)