Guest post written by I Loved You In Another Life author David Arnold
David Arnold is the New York Times bestselling author of Mosquitoland, I Loved You in Another Life, The Electric Kingdom, Kids of Appetite, and The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik. He has won the Southern Book Prize and the Great Lakes Book Award, and was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for his debut. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife and son. Learn more about David, his books, and new music at davidarnoldbooks.com and follow him on Instagram @iamdavidarnold.
I Loved You In Another Life releases on October 10th and it’s a poignant love story about two teens whose souls come together time and again through the ages—for fans of Nina LaCour and Matt Haig.
I’d like you to think of your favorite song. Hum it in your head, sing it if you have to. Sit with it a moment. It’s a special kind of magic when the stories of our lives intersect with the story of a song, and whatever its mechanics, just holding it in our hands feels like a delicate miracle, like a small bird that might fly away at any moment. Maybe this music showed up at a time when we needed it most; maybe it was passed down like a family heirloom. But lately, I’ve been thinking about a different kind of music, the kind that moves me for no discernable reason. You know what I mean. You’re cooking, your mind elsewhere, and a song comes out of nowhere, takes your breath away. A song comes on while you’re driving, and now you’re steering through tears. What sets these songs apart from the rest? It’s tempting to take a favorite piece of art, lump it onto a pile of personal preference, and call it a day. But I have this theory that like has nothing to do with it. I think, with the best music, it doesn’t matter if we like it—it matters if we believe it.
If you’d asked young David what he would be when he grew up, he was one-hundred-percent going to be a rock star. I grew up in a musical home, played multiple instruments, and right out of college, moved to Nashville. For years, I played in bands and worked as a freelance musician and producer; I’d disappear into my attic studio for hours on end, building songs from the ground up. Music taught me about perseverance in the arts, the importance of developing a thick skin while maintaining a soft heart. Music taught me the value of a trustworthy critique, the irrelevance of an untrustworthy one, and how to spot the difference between the two. In the acknowledgments of my first novel, Mosquitoland, I thank Elliott Smith for teaching me that an honest voice is more compelling than a pretty one, and of all the things music taught me, this is the most lasting: that technical excellence, while worthwhile, is not the finish line.
My pivot from writing music to writing novels wasn’t so much a conscious choice as it was an inevitability. My wife and I were expecting a baby, and the plan was for me to be a stay-at-home dad. But making music is an inherently noise-based endeavor: you’re either making noise, or you need complete silence, neither of which is happening with a baby in the room. And so, my hours in the attic studio dwindled, and I turned my attention to a novel I was sure no one would ever read or care about. (The only noise inherent to novel-writing is the noise in your own head.) For two years, my life revolved around taking care of our baby and working on a book called Mosquitoland. I soon found myself thinking less about that empty attic studio, and more about the characters in my head. It wasn’t easy, saying goodbye to music; there were bitter days to be sure, but looking back, those two years were among the most precious of my life. Learning to be a dad, learning to write a book, learning to let go of one dream in pursuit of another. For the next ten years, music was an afterthought.
A few years ago, I had an idea for a book about two strangers who hear the same songs out of thin air. And something stirred in the darker corners of my mind, a question: what if I wrote those songs? And just as my pivot away from music had felt inevitable, so too was the pivot back. In a book about love, art and past lives, what better way to integrate the artistic pursuits of my own past life into the art of my current one? During the two years it took to write I Loved You in Another Life, the songs took shape along with the book, so that the end result is (hopefully) a single, cohesive project. My music and my novel—my past life and this one—neither existing without the other.
I like to listen to music while I write. And I try to harness the feeling of a great song, that delicate miracle that could fly away at any moment. Fingers on keyboard, I take a breath, and remember what music taught me—how to persevere, how to listen, how to give up on perfect, go for real. I think of my favorite song. Hum it in my head. Who cares if they like it? Do they believe it?
