As he put it, usually he had to torture himself in order to write. But with “Iris” it did not happen that way. He had broken two strings on his guitar, began tuning the remaining ones up and down in strange arrangements, and the song almost came out on its own. He described it as a gift, as something that came to him unexpectedly. In another version of the story, it is also said that, after watching a screening of the film, he went to his hotel room and wrote it quickly on a guitar that only had four strings. What matters is that the song arrived in a moment of personal crisis and came out with unusual immediacy.