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Live in Pittsburgh, PA 2013

Speech during performance of "The Heart of Life"

This was one of the best experiences I ever had writing a song. It was a Thursday. I was going to dinner in Santa Monica, California. It was back in 2006. And I had just stumbled on this thing, and had to break for dinner, and I couldn't listen to what the guy I was going to dinner with was saying, because I kept thinking about this thing.

And then I was writing. And then I went to the supermarket one day, and on the way into the supermarket I came up with "pain throws your heart to the ground." And I pushed the cart through the supermarket—like a Pavilions or something—and I was actually pushing around an empty cart for literally, like, 15 minutes cause, oh shit, "pain throws your—," what's the other half of that? And then that night, still up: "Love turns the whole thing around." Oh god, now I'm never gonna sleep. [Audience cheers]

And it's so great to be an artist for this many years and have these little tiny pictures you can turn through on a Sunday night, because we all get a little bit extra emotional on a Sunday night. And so we can turn through, oh, I remember that time. Remember where I was driving, what I was thinking.

And it goes like this.