Recorded Have You Seen Me Lately? with Paul Samwell-Smith and Frank Filipetti. It was going to be called Happy Birthday when Mike Nichols asked me to take over the scoring of Postcards From The Edge. I wrote the title song: Have You Seen Me Lately? for the movie. Meryl Streep was supposed to sing it and in fact did so beautifully but then it got left on the cutting room floor because it was unacceptable to Carrie Fisher - and perhaps to everyone else except me. The lead track on that album was: Better Not Tell Her for which I made a video that had flamenco dancers. I have always wanted to be a flamenco dancer. In the video I wore a red dress. That was as close as I will probably ever come.

Nora Ephron asked me to score This Is My Life. It became my life for another year and resulted in my recording a "one off" for Reprise Records. The songs: You're The Love Of My Life, Back The Way and The Night Before Christmas were some of our favorites. Teese Gohl, Jimmy Ryan, Will Lee and I all played on the soundtrack. This was a fun one. We recorded most of it during Hurricane Bob, when there was no electricity and only candle light and batteries. It was released in '92.

I was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Kennedy Center to write a family opera. I wrote the libretto of Romulus Hunt with Jake Brackman, long time friend and sometime collaborator. I had at least 500 pages of notes and ideas. Teese Gohl and Jeff Halpern aided me along the way and taught me to write for operatic voices. I also worked closely with Francesca Zambello who's a very well known female director within the opera world. It was a challenge and it got pretty well panned, except by a very nice man in Stereo Review, who said it was the best American opera since Porgy and Bess. This was a man that I had paid a great deal of money to. Frank Filipetti and I produced the soundtrack album of Romulus Hunt which was released by Angel Records. I think it's out of print, but I am very honored to have been asked to write and record it. The work was the farthest I've ever stretched. And I loved a lot of the result.

Began work on Letters Never Sent, a collection of lyrics and songs based upon letters I had written and then locked away. My mother had told me to sleep on letters written in a state of emotional upset or extremes of any kind. Therefore, the collection of letters was large and I set some of them to music after making them lyrics. My mother and Jackie Onassis, who had become very close, died within four months of each other during the writing and recording of this album. I wrote Like A River for my mother and Touched By The Sun for Jackie.

Letters Never Sent was released with Ben doing an intro to Touched By The Sun. There were no radio singles. I prepared to tour.

Rehearsed and went on a summer tour of sixteen cities. I developed a new phobia: hotel rooms and bad beds. I didn't like very much about touring at all, except hanging with a great band (Ricky Morotta, T Bone Wolk, Peter Calo, Curtis King) and Daryl Hall and John Oates and their band, with whom I shared the bill. Came back to the Vineyard on August 25th and rehearsed with James Taylor for three days for a benefit concert on Martha's Vineyard, to raise money for the Agricultural Hall. This was on August 30th. The only reason I mention the date is that I have a T shirt with the date on it. There were helicopters overhead, but no off-island press was allowed. It was quite a big deal.

Signed with Simon & Schuster for two books, the first of which was Midnight Farm, a children's book about a farm coming to life at midnight. In retrospect, this looks like a big theme of mine. Four out of five of the children's books I have written are about nocturnal adventures. And the fifth one, Amy The Dancing Bear ends at the beginning of what promises to be a nocturnal adventure. I must find some kind of therapist to tell this to. Prepared a "best of" boxed set called Clouds In My Coffee for release.

Three CDs worth of material spanning 30 years. Choosing the material was quite a test. What makes it and what doesn't after all this time is partially a matter of where the taste and mood is on the day(s) you have to make the editorial decisions. A few new songs and unreleased material were also included.

Traveled to Santa Fe and discovered the West. Began painting. Was diagnosed with breast cancer in October and after my operation and before chemo started, I went to an island off the coast of Tortola with Ben and Sally. Recorded Film Noir, a collection of songs from movies of that genre. Jimmy Webb and I collaborated on this amazingly fun project. We recorded most of it in NY with an orchestra (Main arrangers were Mr Webb himself, Van Dyke Parks and Torrie Zito.) Jimmy was inspirational. Frank (Filipetti), once again, mixed and Godfathered. Did an AMC special to promote, as well as a short film Songs In Shadow which was shown on AMC.

Set up a studio in my apartment in NY and continued to write songs for an album which is about to be released at the time of writing this. It is to be called: The Bedroom Tapes and it contains eleven songs, most of which were written and recorded in my apartment living room and later on in Sally's old bedroom on Martha's Vineyard. In the middle of all of this, I bought a house in Boston.

I spent most of the year de-constructing and re-constructing - finding mice and rotten stairs, fire places that didn't work and roof decks that were illegal. Chemotherapy paled in comparison to problems with this house. It was a monstrous year. But the songs began to come and I loved recording them myself. I will write more specifically about these songs and this album, but here I'll stop the little bio because everything after this is about these songs and the process.