August, 1988

I've just joined Ric and Brian in Cincinnati
to pursue music and youthful adventure.
We live not far apart in an old German 
neighbourhood called "Over the Rhine."
It's glutted with angular mid-nineteenth
century brick buildings and beautifully 
dreadful nightime streets.  It's somber,
racially mixed, ethnically diverse and
bless with an abundance of transients,
panhandlers, and assorted misfits.

We'll be doing all of our initial writing and
recording in my third story bedroom
overlooking the activity of Main Street.
Over the Rhine is a poet's dream
neighbourhood in that its imagery is often
so striking: people getting stone on the
steps of St. John's; reticent, toothless smiles
of old women in windows....