You Stay Here

"You Stay Here," is a song about refugees fleeing Sarajevo. What prompted that jewel to come to fruition? "It's a mysterious process. I wrote that lyric 'You stay here and I'll go look for wood,' one night when I was here in Buenos Aires. I was going to sleep and left a piece of paper and a pen on the night table as is my custom and just as I was going to sleep, I was thinking in my head "you stay here, and I'll go look for wood." I turned the light back on and wrote it down and then went to sleep. Woke up the next morning and found this thing and there was no context for it at all. No idea who "you" or "I" were, or what the wood was about or where they really were. No context, just a phrase - a bunch of words strung together. I think I had been reading something about the Sarajevo situation and the refugees in the hills around Sarajevo and the two things just came together. All of sudden these words were put into the mouths of somebody who was fleeing the violence. Once I realized who was talking, it was really easy to write the song. That's the thing about writing songs, when you get a voice, when you find out who is singing, you get a very clear idea of their identity, the song writes itself."