Songwriting Feelings: Presenting "Here"

In which I try to explain the big feelings I have about the big feelings I had about sharing a video of me performing a song that I wrote

Apr 03, 2025

What happens when you use a late-model iPhone to take a picture of the ceiling fixture at your Airbnb and—apparently—also what it feels like to post a video on Substack (if you’re me)

Oopsie Doopsie

I tried something new. I clicked “New post > Video post” and then I uploaded a video and wrote an essay about the video. It was weird. So, of course, what follows is a meta essay about that original essay about my feelings about my video performance of my original song.

It is a kind of cosmic correction.

Here’s What Had Happened

A few weeks back, I’d recorded a video of myself performing an original song moments after I’d finished writing its lyrics. I had just barely sorted out the chords to a new bridge. It’s common for me to do this with my audio recording app—the equivalent of a journal of works-in-progress.

But when “Here” was done, I decided to capture video along with the audio. This was a different for me. I was thinking, “Hey, what if I shared a song on Substack?”

But then I watched the video and realized, “Nope. This is just a draft for your notes. This is practice. Do not share this. You didn’t even bother to set up a decent mic.”

And then I forgot about it.

But Then I Went on a Little Baby Vacation

I took a four-day weekend to myself. Daddy needed a mental and physical break. (Don’t worry, Mommy will get one too.)

I didn’t drive far. I spent a few days walking around a small city that I love. And I ate some nice food. And I got a transcendental Abhyanga massage. Here’s an unsolicited plug for Boketto Wellness1: If you’re near Richmond, Virginia, Kayla is exceptional.

I had my ukulele with me. Not at the wellness center—that would have been weird. I mean I had it back at my Airbnb. I sat on an olive green couch under that haunting light fixture and decided I ought to practice that one new song I’d finished the other week—the one without a name. I ought to play through it a few times to iron out the kinks. And then I remembered I had a recording of it for reference.

And Then I Tripped and Started Writing Prose

Before long, I’d written my first video post for Substack and convinced myself that the video was good enough to be the subject of an essay (if not a stellar stand-alone recording).

And Then I Tried to Preview the Post

Emphasis on “tried”.

I tried to get a sense of what it would look like—how it would be experienced by subscribers. There were a lot of settings that had to do with podcasting, linking to YouTube, and some other things in that universe. I’m not a podcaster. I’m not a YouTuber. I set all that stuff to “off” whenever I could. I tried to carefully pick a thumbnail for the video.

The previews showed a basically normal post with a video at the top. I was satisfied—nervous, but satisfied—so I clicked “Send to everyone now” and then bounced my knee a whole bunch, sitting there on the olive green couch. I had a barbecue chip or two.

Then I Opened the Substack App and Yikes

“New post > Video post” is clearly not for me, you guys.

That middle icon with the “play” symbol is something I actively avoid in the Substack app. How had I managed to compartmentalize that when I was drafting my post?

Call me old (I am old), but I have zero interest in an auto-playing video of some jabroni2 loudly “interviewing” people on the street about “the immigrants” or whatever.

And I have equally zero interest in subsequently swiping right to find some overachiever3 in a homemade dress in a homesteader kitchen with a wood-burning stove holding-a-baby-splaining to me how to cook something the correct way when I already have no problem cooking it on my own with or without a baby on my hip, thank you very much.

Fuck all that noise.

And then I clicked the link from the subscriber email I’d just sent out. The app opened and…

There I was. Moving around. Practicing my song like a dodo. Without any context.

I swiped right in horror to make it stop. And then Will Ferrel was doing something. And then I screamed. And then I threw my phone into the James River4.

After My Phone Dried Out

I poked around the app, and depending on how I navigated to the post, I was able to find variations of it with weird, unplanned thumbnails. I scrambled to find the settings to correct them. It was hard. It didn’t always take.

I was also, eventually, able to find more soothing variations. The post was pretty straightforward on the desktop site. It was more like I had imagined—more like the preview.

But I really didn’t like the idea of some stand-in human swiping through video after video of who knows what and then winding up at me singing my understated song for grownups in a wonderfully imperfect recording without any context.

“What does this overachieving jabroni think he’s doing?” they would say.

And then they would swipe right to someone with a hot take on The Semiotics of Tree Sexuality.

And then they would have no idea that there was an essay that I really wanted to share with them.

So That’s Why I’m Doing This Redo

As I was writing the original essay, I was intrigued by the idea of chronicling the laughably, endearingly long and weird birth of a song. I was intrigued by the idea of articulating the complex feelings I have, generally speaking, around sharing my songs with anyone at all—let alone, ostensibly, the world.

That’s what intrigued me, but what I wound up with was a mediocre TouYube post that buried my prose and hurried the audience past what I most wanted to share with them.

For that reason, I’m going to un-publish the original video post and recreate it nested within this more straightforward text post. I think I’ll feel better about it this way in the long run.

In the short run, my apologies to my subscribers—I shouldn’t be sending out first drafts, but this one was a learning curve with a learning curve.

Thank you for your patience. Bless you for your existence.

Silver lining? I think the essay about the essay about the song elevates all of them.

What Follows is the Video in Question

And what follows that is the original essay, unedited but for the correction of a few typos. I’ve also updated the title of the whole shebang with “Songwriting Feelings” as a category.

Why? Because there’s a huge well to tap into here. What I mean to say is, there’s way more than one essay in the emotional burlap sack with “Paul’s Feelings about Doing Music” stitched onto it.

As the original essay notes below, I’ve written a lot of songs that very few people have ever heard.

What it doesn’t say is that I have terrible stage fright. What it doesn’t say is that I have Axl Rose Syndrome (ARS) on top of my Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ARS is an insidious, progressive disease. And in my layman’s estimation, there is a high comorbidity between ARS and ASD. Research pending.

When I was young, I overshared quick and dirty home recordings of original songs. Dozens of them. With everyone I could think to share them with. Unfortunately, this was before most of the songs themselves had gotten very good.

At some point, I became obsessed with being my own engineer and my own producer. At some point, I stopped feeling comfortable giving away lofi recordings.

I had also become terribly afraid of doing open mics and that kind of thing after a few bad experiences. It started to feel like there would never be an outlet for my music. Anywhere. Not unless and until I “got it right” myself in a basement studio.

That would be the way. If I could just make an ideal recording, then I could share my music digitally even if I couldn’t get on a stage. And if enough people liked the recordings, maybe I’d feel brave enough to get back on a stage.

I’ve been obsessed with getting the right gear together to record my songs all by myself. A lot of work has gone into that over the years—getting everything into place to get everything into place.

This hasn’t happened, perhaps obviously. It’s hard to find the time these days. Plus, ARS, you guys. Though I do have an awful lot of well-organized gear.

Given all of the above, sending out a video of a performance that I knew was rough was a really off-brand move for me. It was scary as fuck.

But I really like the idea of wrapping a scared little song in the warm blanket of an essay. I like the idea of presenting the song as an imperfect thing that I love—presenting it with tenderness and context and self-reflection. To me, this feels like a safe way to share something that I’ve long been scared to share—and a clever way to bypass my ARS.

That said, I’d like to keep at this. Every once in a while, I think I’ll share an imperfect recording of a song that I’m otherwise really proud of. I think that gently forcing myself to create prose around my songwriting process and around my insecurities could make for some truly engaging reading. And, yes, it would be nice if it could alleviate my ARS at the same time.

I like the idea of harnessing an art form where I currently feel very confident and wielding it to nurture an art form where I currently have a ton of nerves.

I hope you enjoy the original essay. I hope you enjoy the song.

“Here”

By Paul Zaic

I’ve Been Writing Songs since I Was Pretty Newly Seventeen

That was when I inherited a classical guitar from my dad—the same inheritance that came with a wooden statue of Don Quixote.

That was twenty-five years ago! And in twenty-five years, I’ve written a lot of songs that very few people have ever heard.

Songwriting Was First

It’s what I was determined to do before I tripped and fell into a creative writing class in college and started writing stories. And it was way, way before I tripped and fell into Substack and started writing personal essays.

One thing I’ve noticed? I wrote some pretty amazing music between the ages of seventeen and, let’s say, twenty-seven. However, the lyrics that I wrote were almost exclusively trash because they were written by a child i.e. me between the ages of seventeen and, let’s say, twenty-seven5.

I’ve gotten much better at writing lyrics as I’ve gotten older. I don’t think this is bragging. I think it would be true of literally anyone if literally anyone gave writing lyrics the old college try once when they were young and then again when they were old.

But my musical creativity (chord progressions, melodies, harmonies—that sort of thing) has gotten really fussy over the years. It’s still here. I can still sit down at a keyboard or pick up a guitar and go into a flow state for hours. The trouble is that I stay there. In the flow state. For hours.

The Flow State Has Become the Goal

It’s no longer exclusively a path to making songs. I don’t know exactly why this is happening as I age, but I have a few ideas.

For starters, a few hours in a flow state might sound like a lot, but historically that’s rarely been enough time for me to transition into songwriting mode. When I was young and dumb, I could chase a feeling or an idea all night if I wanted to. And I often did.

And then there’s the fact that now I’m old and anxious and I could really, honestly use a flow state most nights—much more than I could use a new song. My poor old brain wants me to stay in the part where my hands are just doing music and the world disappears. Who could blame it?

Songwriting mode may be adjacent to flow state, but it’s not flow state. Not purely. It’s hard work. And life is hard enough. And I have a day job.

But in Spite of Myself

I still manage to write a new song from start to finish once in a while. Yeah! It still happens! And it feels really great when it does!

But what a shame—I sometimes think—to once upon a time have strung so many wince-inducing lyrics along the branches of dozens of perfectly good songs—songs that I worked my ass off to write when I was young and beautiful and dumb.

Twenty-two-year-old me. Just look at this beautiful dumb-dumb. So beautiful. So dumb.

But then I remember that I am not a famous songwriter and that literally no one will care if I excavate a song that I “finished” when I was twenty-two, strip off its lyrics, and laugh and laugh and laugh as I spray them down the drain of the kitchen sink with the garbage disposal on.

So, in That Spirit

Here is a new song called “Here” that I finished a few weeks ago. All told, it took me about twenty years to write.

And since this is a blog, and since this is a place ostensibly primarily for prose, I feel a little weird sharing a video of me singing a song without also offering some inside baseball.

I honestly don’t know what my subscribers (bless all twenty-three of you) feel like you signed up for, but the thought of sharing a song with you here gives me robust, aching “guy who brought his acoustic guitar to a party” anxiety.

So here’s some more prose:

Look!

I’m socializing diligently before I get the guitar out of its case and manage to attract only one other person into my orbit, and it is also a guy, and he has also brought an acoustic guitar, and now we are a binary star system—each star in its own right is massive and inward-looking enough to quickly spend all of its nuclear fuel and collapse into a black hole so that before the party has ended, the other acoustic guitar man and I will become binary black holes, singing fruitlessly out toward our individual event horizons, unable to see or hear even one another, let alone whatever the party was and whoever was there.

The First Thing You May Notice of This Video Is That

I’m not playing a guitar or a keyboard—I’m playing a ukulele. This isn’t an affectation. I own, play, and love guitars and keyboards.

But I also own a ukulele.

And I’m old. And I’m busy. And I have a bad back. And, frankly, it’s the easiest instrument to pick up and play a lot of the time.

But it also just so happens that the proto-song I decided to cannibalize was written on a ukulele twenty years ago6, which, interestingly, was an affectation. (It was the early oughts—ukuleles were falling out of the trees and hitting indie rock kids on the head like so many coconuts.)

Anyway, the first thing I had to do to cannibalize the proto-song was reverse engineer how to play it on a ukulele. If you were thinking young Paul might have written it down, you were wrong.

Then I had to change the key to suit my current register. That took a little while, but it was worth it, I think.

Affectation of a twenty-two-year-old ding-dong or no, the ukulele was something that forty-two-year-old me thought actually worked rather well to set the mood for this particular song.

That brings me to the performance in the video itself.

First of All, That’s Me

Hi.

I’m Paul.

Zaic.

I set up in the laundry room / stairwell nook near my garage because it had the best combination I could find of “pleasant enough acoustics” and “shelf to prop up my phone”. Which is to say, this is nothing more than a phone recording—it’s scrappy.

I both love and hate how lilting and stop-and-start this performance is. You can see it on my face. There are moments when I’m trying to remember the 2025 lyrics I’d written down twenty minutes earlier—where I’m trying hard not to accidentally sing the 2003 beautiful dumb-dumb lyrics.

There's a moment where I might as well be saying, “Oh fuck,” out loud because I’m blanking on the next chord in the bridge. It comes to me—mercifully—before everything falls apart. I find it in the back of my head. I play it. It doesn’t come across as a near disaster in the video, but let me tell you, the rollercoaster in my mind would’ve been shut down for inspection.

I love lo-fi recordings. I love raw performances. I especially love those things when it’s someone else. I even love those things when it’s me until the moment I click send and then I think, Jesus Christ, Paul. You couldn’t have combed your hair before you went to the job interview? Put on a clean shirt? You own microphones. Nice microphones. You could have used one of the nice microphones.

But all that just is what it is.

So What’s Old and What’s New?

The chords of the verses and chorus are almost exactly the same as they were twenty years ago. The only difference is that now I’m a better player. And, for better or worse, the playing style is a little more noodley (because middle-aged guitar men be noodlin’ (even if technically they’re playing ukuleles because their backs hurt)).

The melody is almost exactly the same too.

The bridge, on the other hand, is entirely new.

“There was a time / When we were young”

That part. The old song didn’t have a bridge. It didn’t need one because it wasn’t smart enough to have benefited from one.

Finally, all of the lyrics were written by forty-two-year-old Paul. Twenty-two-year-old Paul’s lyrics went straight into the garbage disposal.

Go ahead, twenty-two-year-old Paul.

Cry yourself to sleep.

You beautiful dumb-dumb.

If This Is an Emergency

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