Phil Shapiro ChatGPT Explorations

My songwriting is spurred by many of the tumultuous relationships I never had. I wrote these songs as a way of working out my feelings of not having tumultuous relationships. This was a very challenging time in my life. You see, while others were experiencing heartbreak, betrayal, and the intoxicating highs and devastating lows of love, I was left to endure a cruelly stable existence. No dramatic confrontations in the rain. No tear-streaked apologies on my voicemail. Not even an ambiguously sad Instagram post aimed at me. So, I had to imagine my pain. I would stare longingly at my reflection in café windows, as if reminiscing about the lover I never had. I'd practice wistful sighing on park benches, hoping a stranger might notice and assume I carried the weight of unspoken sorrow. I even tried leaving cryptic notes around my apartment—"We should talk" or "You know what you did"—to at least give myself the illusion of emotional turmoil. But my suffering remained ...

My family's first computer was a black and white abacus. It had a total of six beads on two wires. The wires were a little rusty, so sometimes the beads would get stuck. Whenever that happened to someone else in the family, they would call me over to fix the computer. I used to read magazine articles about color abaci - and I had my eyes on one that had 15 beads and three wires. I begged my parents to buy one, but they said they couldn't afford it. Finally, my family ended up buying a color abacus. My dad sold his beloved fishing pole so we could buy that abacus. The day the color abacus arrived, I could scarcely barely believe my cliches. I stayed up all night sliding the beads left and right. I could not believe the wires were not rusty. That was a totally new experience for me. I ran my fingers over the smooth, brightly colored beads. Red! Blue! Yellow! I had only seen such vivid technology in the pages of Abacus Enthusiast Monthly . I felt like a scientist at the cutting...