Lonely Hearts get Lonelier

I’d had Rilo Kiley's "Wires and Waves" since a friend of mine put it on my computer without asking a few years ago, but I didn’t pay any attention to it until the summer of 2007.

My best friend, who I am very much in love with, lives in New Orleans, which is about 1,000 miles from my home. He told me he was going to a Rilo Kiley concert, so I started listening to them seriously. I trust his opinion very much, and also was always eager to share things with him. I liked “Wires and Waves.” I thought it was pretty.

The day he went to the Rilo Kiley concert, we were in the midst of trying to do a long-distance relationship. I was head-over-heels for him, and talking to him every night was the best part of my day. It was the reason I got up in the morning. It was all those clichés, but those felt accurate. The night of the Rilo Kiley concert, he called me when they were playing “Wires and Waves” and held up his phone. I walked around with a smile on my face for the rest of the evening, and felt like I had been there with him.

A few months later, when everything in our relationship had fallen apart and we were no longer talking, Rilo Kiley reminded me of nothing but heartbreak. One day in December, he called me to apologize. He had just turned twenty-three and he missed me. Nevertheless, he still felt that being in a long-distance relationship was too hard.

The next day, I was listening to my iPod and “Wires and Waves” came on. I realized that it was the song of us, down to the details:

There are twelve hours, there’s a day between us
And you called to say you’re sorry in your own way
There are oceans and waves and wires between us
And you called to say you’re getting older.

And sometimes planes they smash up in the sky,
And sometimes lonely hearts they just get lonelier. . .