Why Do I

For years, I remembered Why Do I as having pride of place in my old songbook.

Apparently, it didn't.

I've just opened the book for the first time in years and discovered it lurking somewhere around eighth place. So much for the reliability of memory. Somewhere over the intervening decades, I had apparently promoted it.

Perhaps that's because, in my head at least, Why Do I has always felt like one of the first songs where I began to recognise something of myself as a songwriter.

I was young, heartbroken and — judging by some of the other songs I've just rediscovered in the same book — spectacularly earnest about the whole business.

There are songs in there about finding the girl, songs about love conquering everything, songs about friendship, faith and the certainty that somewhere out there was a woman with whom I would presumably live happily ever after.

I was not a complicated young man.

Why Do I was different.

It came from an actual hurt. My first serious relationship had ended, enough time had supposedly passed, and everybody's favourite piece of post-breakup wisdom had been deployed:

Time heals.

Except it hadn't.

I could get on with life perfectly well until some stupid little thing brought her back into my head. Then suddenly the distance disappeared and the question returned: if this is over, why do I still feel this?

That became the song.

Looking at the original handwritten page now is quite strange. The chords are there. The words are there. Even the slightly overwrought young man who wrote them is still fairly easy to find between the lines.

And I remember the tune.

After all these years, I can still pick up a guitar and sing it.

There are probably better songs in that book. There are certainly more sophisticated ones that came later. But Why Do I survived in a way many of the others didn't.

Perhaps that's why my memory quietly moved it to the front.

It wasn't the first song in the book.

It was just one of the first that stayed with me.