The Origins of my Songwriting

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 theoretical. No one ghosted me. No one accused me of "changing" or "never really seeing them." I had no personal experience with betrayal, so I had to read the betrayal sections of classic novels just to get the right tone in my lyrics. The library staff eventually asked me to stop sobbing in the fiction aisle.


Despite this emotional adversity—or rather, lack of it—I persevered. I penned songs about the pain of love lost, despite never having possessed it. I wrote an entire album titled Shattered Echoes of a Love That Never Was. Critics praised its raw emotion. My fans wept at the lyrics. One person even messaged me to say, "It's like you've been through exactly what I have."


And in a way, I had. Just... very hypothetically.


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Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
https://pairsmathgame.com
https://philshapirochatgptexplorations.blogspot.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/philshapiro.bsky.social

He/Him/His

"Wisdom begins with wonder." - Socrates
"Learning happens thru gentleness."
"We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options."  David Suzuki

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