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Purely Hypothetical

from Songs About Lincoln by Adam Tressler

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lyrics

What if you’d lived, Ann?
Where would we be then?
I bet the world woulda turned out different if you hadn’t left it
But when you died, ann
That almost killed him
You took a piece of Lincoln with you that never got filled in

Maybe if she was there to listen he wouldn’t have felt so alone
He might not have been as ambitious if he was happier at home
Maybe Abe would have stayed in a small town, laughing and growing old
With a different wife, different children, a future he could never know
It’s purely hypothetical

You were the first, Ann,
The first love he let in
After he lost his mom and sister he felt abandoned
An informal engagement
Called off by an illness
What if you lived instead of saying goodbye from a deathbed?

Maybe if Ann had gotten better he wouldn’t have studied law
He’d be locked down in his 20s, no time to get political
There’d be no one to find potential, no one to lift him up socially
A simple life in New Salem, something more conventional,
It’s purely hypothetical

They say he walked around talking to himself for days
They hid all of the razor blades
They say mister lincoln very nearly went insane
This wasn’t his only heartbreak, no…

Her death was one of many,
A long list of tragedies
A life that you probably wouldn’t wish on your enemy
And maybe it made no difference in the grand scheme of things
A man that was heading for greatness like it was destiny
But I'm a little skeptical,
it’s something that we’ll never know,
This is purely hypothetical

credits

from Songs About Lincoln, released October 24, 2023

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Adam Tressler Los Angeles, California

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