Published in the Quad-City Times on Feb. 14, 2024

As I write this, I’ve been in love for 1,121 days, 14 hours and some change. 

Her name is Mia, and I can hear her everywhere. In the hum of a car engine on a city street. In the dull crumpling sound a lush lawn makes when you lay your head upon it. In the silence.

At first, love is a soundtrack. And then later, love is a score.

A thousand days ago, writing about love came easily to me. I did it almost daily, keeping a journal of each development in my feelings for Mia. 

On January 17, 2021, after our second date: She laid on my shoulder on a park bench and I realized that we just fit. 

On July 29, 2021, after a week of walking around northern California: The pain in my back is the only reminder that some memories are meant to be temporary.

By January of 2022, I admitted defeat: I was a much more poetic writer when I was a romantic. Now I’m in love, which is a much happier place to be, but creativity is at a premium here.

I have not done much journaling since.

Three years ago, my feelings for Mia were foreign, yet so tangible that I could hold them in my palm. They emerged from the pores on the nape of my neck like a cactus in the desert. 

I felt like the main character in a rom-com. The soundtrack of our love dulled the outside noise and put blinders on my periphery. Love is a very lyrical thing when you’re first falling, so the words poured out of me. 

Today, my love for Mia is more of an ambient instrumental. It enhances my life without consuming it. It’s more pragmatic, revealing itself in small ways instead of big ones. 

Mia is my favorite person in this world, and our love sounds different than it did a thousand days ago. But still, when I listen closely, I can hear the leitmotifs from the soundtrack that played in Act I of our story.

Considering that “Sounds Good” is the closest thing I have to a journal nowadays, I thought I’d revisit that sound for Valentine’s Day. These are the songs that remind me of falling in love.

Movements – “Daylily”

Mia and I met at our college’s student radio station. In an effort to impress her, I listened to her DJ shifts, and I was entranced by her voice, a near-whisper that moved with soft curiosity on air.

The first time I heard Mia’s show, she stole my heart by playing two of my favorite love songs: “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie, and “Daylily,” by California pop-punk band Movements.

I had no idea then that she’d change my life. At a Seattle DIY venue a year later, I heard Mia belt along to “Daylily” with a ravenous rasp, a far cry from her usual tone. I still don’t know how she mustered the breath. After all, we sprinted five blocks just to get to the venue before Movements’ set started.

“You are the rustling of leaves,” sang vocalist Patrick Miranda. The mosh pit beneath him paused to sing along, and in the back of the room, I held Mia close, her hair nestled underneath my chin.

Bright Eyes – “First Day of My Life”

January 13, 2021: I feel like I just won the Super Bowl. This feels like it could be the first day of the rest of my life. 

Okay, fine. I stole that second line from Bright Eyes songwriter Conor Oberst, whose realizations on “First Day of My Life” are as close to love’s definition as I could get at the time. The song — a rare moment of sweetness on the band’s pensive triumph, “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” — was the first one that Mia and I called “ours.”

In the pages of my life story, there will be a line break in 2021. Life before meeting Mia, and life after. My days of waiting to win the lottery, and my days of working for a paycheck, as Oberst puts it on the second verse. 

Slaughter Beach, Dog – “Phoenix”

The next song we called our own was “Phoenix,” from Philly lo-fi twangers Slaughter Beach, Dog.

Mia and I fell in love in Phoenix. We walked its streets and sweat into its sidewalks and stared into its skyline the night we made our arrangement official. But to us, this song is somehow bigger than the city. 

“At last, we’d see each other in the way that we had dreamed to be seen,” songwriter Jake Ewald sings at the end of the fourth verse, one that I still struggle to get through without a tear or two.

In “Phoenix,” I see our first city, our first shared bedroom, our first date. Flowers are budding on the edges of the cactus, extending beyond its prickly defenses.

Deciding to be in love is kind of like committing to spending your life in an infinite second act. Sure, we’re vulnerable to third act tragedy, but I’m not betting against us. 

Elliott Green – “Goodness”

I don’t know if Seattle singer-songwriter Elliott Green meant for this to be a love song, but I hear it as one. 

“When I think of goodness, I think of you,” she sings on the opening line, a lyric that has echoed in my head since I first heard it last winter. 

Truth be told, it’s hard for me to feel like a good person. I’m perennially self-critical, every corner of my consciousness convinced that I wronged someone or something somewhere. I’m constantly running from my own mistakes, which makes it hard to stay still, as Green puts it on the song’s crushingly cathartic back half. 

But then there’s Mia, a statuette of good. Choosing a life with her was the best decision I ever made. She has put peace within arm’s reach.

Thank you, Mia. I love you. 

Caamp – “Snowshoes”

That whole “opposites attract” bit is overdone but it’s also sort of true.

Our life together is magic because it is balanced. Mia, the introvert; Gannon, the extrovert. Mia, the practical; Gannon, the frivolous. That duality has been sung about thousands of times, but never more simply than on Caamp’s saccharine folk pop ballad “Snowshoes.” 

“I think there might be snow there this time of year,” sings Taylor Meier over peppy strums and a rising string accompaniment. “You bring your snowshoes, and I’ll bring the beer.”

Concert of The Week: Them Coulee Boys at Raccoon Motel

As a side note, if you’re into Caamp, I’ve got great news: there’s a perfect post-Valentine’s Day show for you.

Stomp-clappin’ and banjo-pickin’ folk rockers Them Coulee Boys will be at Raccoon Motel on Thursday night, with tickets selling for $14, and the show starting at 7 p.m. 

On This Daytrotter: Andy Hull on Feb. 13, 2008

I can’t talk about love songs without talking about Andy Hull, one of my favorite songwriters on the planet. Hull’s Daytrotter session released this week in 2008, two years after his band Manchester Orchestra’s debut record. It’s the only place where you can find their song, “Badges and Badges.” 

Years later, Manchester Orchestra released “I Know How To Speak,” a standalone single with an acoustic version that I love even more than the punchier original. Its meaning is purposefully ambiguous, but I hear it as a commitment to the unpredictable third act of both love and life.

“I’m really gonna try this time,” Hull sings, his voice an oceanic current retreating into a whirlpool. “I’m gonna give you my heart in spite of my soul.”

Giving one’s heart isn’t easy. Writing about love isn’t easy. But when I look into Mia’s espresso eyes, I can hear the music.

It’s an instrumental now, but I’m holding a pen, her hand and the promise of another song.