Always, I begin with the song itself and the emotional potential of its melodic, harmonic and textural qualities, the play of its words, imagery, mood and meaning. And from this ‘world’ – the story or scene the song presents, and my first conception of it, I travel, impelled by a flood of questions, deeper into the next – the story of its genesis: from the ‘world’ of the song today, to the ‘world’ from whence, yesterday, it came.