But suddenly, with studio time booked, he had to find an album from somewhere: "It was backward: I'm gonna start a label, so I'm gonna make an album, so I'm gonna write songs, so I gotta sing.
"I was knocked backward and I tried to use my foot to get back up and it felt like there was nothing under my foot, like there was a hole in the floor of the Humvee, and I pulled back my foot and I couldn't see it, the way it was hanging.
I was quite backward in lots of ways.
I was moving backward, the gap between my 30-something self and my younger self getting smaller with every block we traveled.
"I was walking backward and stumbled on the stairs and fell," the 46-year-old businessman said through his oxygen mask.
And then I felt like I was moving backward.
Except that I was stepping backward first, dragging him forward.
A few minutes into our breathing exercises, a bag was roughly placed over my head as I was yanked backward.
For the two days after, I felt as if I was falling backward through space with no way to stop myself.
On that first morning, I paused to sharpen my knife, and Elisa stopped what she was doing and stared: I was doing it backward (ergo, I had always been doing it backward).
