Textbooks

Breakups & Breaking Points

Verse 1

Been thinking should be working

Another wasted night

Controlling all the urges

While I wait for the reply

And I know you’re not around

I’m better by myself

But these days man I’ve been missing someone else

Verse 2

You showed me how to love you

But I wouldn’t try my best

I said sorry ‘cause I had to

While you’d clean up all my mess

And I know that it’s just lazy

I’m not one for absolutes

I think it’s crazy that you let me off the hook

Pre-Chorus 1

And I know so I’ve been told

To make things last you need the drive to carry on

Was it so the times I fold

I just pretend I didn’t like it after all

Chorus 1

Need to take on all these lessons

Said I’d work upon my health

Even when I make the effort

Still can’t tell if it’s gone well

There always seems to be some mess-up

And I’m trying to get help

Said I’ve been reading all the textbooks

But I’m just lying to myself

Said I’ve been reading all the textbooks

But I’m just lying to myself

Verse 3

I’m waiting for somebody

But don’t know exactly who

Maybe on the screen in front me

So I’ll stay here in my room

And I thought that I had fought back

But guess I haven’t changed

I switched the format but the content’s still the same

Pre-Chorus 2

And I know so I’ve been told

To focus on the things you have the most control

Was it so the times I fold

I just pretend that I forgot about before

Chorus 2

Need to take on all these lessons

Said I’d work upon my health

Even when I make the effort

Still can’t tell if it’s gone well

There always seems to be some mess-up

And I’m trying to get help

Said I’ve been reading all the textbooks

But I’m just lying to myself

Said I’ve been reading all the textbooks

But I’m just lying to myself

I’ve been reading all the textbooks

But I’m just lying to myself

Textbooks was a song that I planned on holding back for a while, releasing it with a bunch of other songs I had lined up to be ready for this year or next. I felt like I was never happy with the final mix of it, and with a little more dedication, I might eventually get there. But recently, my feelings towards it have changed, and now it felt like the right time to let it go.

Last month I broke my right arm in a silly arm wrestle, and as a result of pushing as hard as I could against a friend who was obviously bigger than me, my humerus snapped, and now I have a titanium plate to commemorate the occasion. Recovery has started, but I have a long way to go to get my arm fully moving again. Three months of rehabilitation are waiting for me: no upper body workouts, no guitar strumming, no writing on a blackboard. I’ve been thrown into a left-arm world where basic tasks feel like I do them with an A2 level of fluency.

At least life has slowed down a little; everything takes about 1.5x longer than it did before, and thanks to the holidays, I got to relax with friends and family despite the break happening a week before I was meant to be in the UK for Christmas. Luckily, with the hard work of the Japanese doctors and surgeons, from the moment of the break to leaving the hospital after surgery only took five days. So, feeling grateful, I popped some painkillers and took the flight back home.

I thought a lot about Textbooks during my trip home. Whilst I was back, I showed the fifth, and now final, version of the song to family and friends, and I even got to do a nostalgic performance of the song at an open mic with my band, Sprue. It felt noticeably strange to be singing without playing a guitar; I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my hands, but thanks to my incompetence at arm wrestling, this awkward feeling only felt half as intense.

The song as it stands now is a band song, meant to be played with multiple guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist, and performed as a duet, where the lyrics make it feel like both sides are offloading their thoughts and regrets over a past relationship.

But as much as it has now become a collaborative song with a punchy bassline, an aggressive rock guitar chorus, and a duet that brought in some nice vocal harmonies, originally it was much smaller; just a lonely song I wrote in a student bedroom over three years ago. It was played solo with one acoustic guitar, and at the time, its reason for existing was just the result of feeling frustrated, fresh out of a long-term relationship, combined with procrastinating over a lab report that was due during the final year of a Biochemistry degree.

It would only be around two years later that I’d revisit the song, and together with bandmates Frankie and Shennon, make it into something that sounded listenable. We’d try recording a version of it, but to me, it never felt right; when you really like a song, you can’t help but want to do it justice, make the perfect version, mix and master it to the best of your ability. Wanting perfection stopped me from ever releasing it. After every edit, I was always holding onto the idea that it could be better, if only I pushed just a little harder.

But breaking my arm changed that. It would be the first time in my life where a direct physical consequence came from sticking to this kind of philosophy. Pushing yourself as hard as possible in everything you do can, and perhaps inevitably will, have negative consequences. This kind of mentality came to define me during the “self-improvement phase” I went through after my breakup in 2022. Working as hard as possible to make up for all the laziness and procrastination I did during my undergraduate years and relationship, not taking breaks, pushing in the gym every rep till failure, spending unnecessary hours grinding for a Japanese exam I already knew I’d studied adequately for, spending hours mixing a song that was already good enough, pushing my body literally to breaking point in an arm wrestle. Somebody definitely said, “Working hard is good, but know your limits.”

So maybe this year, 2026, is a time to let that philosophy waver a little. It’s time to relax, not take things too seriously, and break the spell by finally releasing a song that I’m genuinely excited for you to listen to.

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