Songfacts®:

• "Looking For Space" came out of John Denver's involvement with Werner Erhard's Erhard Seminars Training (EST), a self-improvement program that was popular in the early '70s. Denver went through the training, which stresses responsibility and integrity, in 1973 and found it transformative. The song's lyrics reflect the clarity he achieved through the program:
  
  All alone in the universe
  Sometimes that's how it seems
  I get lost in the sadness and the screams
  Then I look in the center
  Suddenly everything's clear
  
  A lot of the EST training Denver went through helped him reconcile a feeling of emptiness despite his tremendous success - he was one of the most popular entertainers in America, but still felt unfulfilled on many levels.
• In EST, "looking for space" is a concept used to deal with negative influences and pressures in life. The idea is, if something attack you, you can run away from it, let it hit you and play the victim, battle it, or look for space to get around it, which is what the program teaches. You just accept it and take responsibility for what you've been avoiding.
• When John Denver guest hosted The Tonight Show in 1977, he had Werner Erhard on as a guest and talked about going through the EST program. "I found the time that I spent in this training seminar one of the most exciting and interesting experiences of my life," he said.
• Denver's producer, Milt Okun, shared his thoughts on this song in the liner notes to the John Denver Definitive All-Time Greatest Hits album: "I remember having breakfast with John one day in New York and him telling me about doing the EST thing which was teaching him responsibility and straightforwardness – qualities he always had. I remember saying, 'John, if you're anything it's overly responsible.' I remember when his time with the Chad Mitchell Trio was winding down, the group ran up a $63,000 debt to American Express. John insisted on paying it off personally even though he was not individually responsible. He was that kind of guy."
  
  The Chad Mitchell Trio was Denver's group before he went solo.
• "Looking For Space" was a modest hit for Denver, charting at #30 but going to #1 on the Adult Contemporary tally. It's part of Denver's 1975 Windsong album, which includes the #1 hit "I'm Sorry." The following year, he started a record label called Windsong that had the Starland Vocal Band of "Afternoon Delight" fame on their roster.