Rabbit on the Moon Wants to Make Love a Little Harder to Erase
Punk Head: You once translated love songs for her. Now you're writing the love songs. When did you realize you had crossed that line?
Rabbit on the Moon: I realized it the first time I played “Amor” for my wife, before translating it to her.
There’s a part of the song that talks about those nights when I would translate love songs for her, and as that part started playing in front of her, it suddenly hit me: I was about to do it again. Except this time, I wasn’t translating someone else’s words to tell her how I felt. These were my words. It was a love song I had written for her myself.
I think that was the moment I realized I had crossed that line. After all those years of using other people’s songs to help me tell her how much I loved her, I had finally started writing the songs I once would have translated for her.
Punk Head: The song is built around "Te necesito" and "No me dejes." After more than 20 years together, why did vulnerability still feel like the right emotional language?
Rabbit on the Moon: Because the whole reason for writing Amor was to express how much I love her and what she means to me in a unique way that would actually make her feel it. I wanted it to be heartfelt and personal, something deeper than simply saying, “I love you.”
For me, the strange thing is that the more years that pass, the more attached I feel to her, not less. The more life I experience with her, the more important she becomes to my life. And along with that love comes the fear of ever losing her. It feels like the more time I spend with her, the more I need her.
That’s where “Te necesito” and “No me dejes” come from.
That’s why at first listen, Amor might sound like someone begging a person they love not to leave them, as if the relationship is ending. But that isn’t what the song is about at all. She isn’t leaving me.
It’s an expression of vulnerability from someone who has spent more than 20 years loving the same person and has realized just how much of their world has become intertwined with hers.
“Amor” is my way of expressing love through contrast. Instead of only telling her how wonderful my life is because I met her, because she became my wife, and because I get to share this life with her, I imagined the opposite: What would my life feel like if she weren’t in it?
And the answer is miserable.
So in a strange way, I’m telling her how happy I am to have her by showing her how empty my world would feel without her. The fear and sadness in the song aren’t there because something is wrong between us. They exist because of how much is right.
That’s what “No me dejes” really means to me. It isn’t about her walking out the door. It’s another way of saying, I love you and this life with you so much that I never want to know what it feels like without you. I love you that much.
Punk Head: There's something beautifully circular about translating someone else's love song for your future wife, then eventually making your own. Does Amor feel like the closing of a loop?
Rabbit on the Moon: Most certainly. It feels like this beautiful, happy, colorful loop being closed.
But there’s something bittersweet about it too, because Amor takes me back to some of my favorite memories of my life with her, moments I wish I could somehow go back and relive over and over again, even though I know I can’t.
I remember us being younger, sitting there together while I translated those love songs for her because I wanted her to understand what they were saying and, through someone else’s words, understand what I was trying to tell her.
There’s a sweetness in remembering those moments, but also a little sadness in knowing that no matter how much I would love to return to them, we only get to live them once. I think that’s part of what makes those memories so precious to me now. But back then, I never imagined that years later I would be sitting beside her, playing her a love song that I wrote for her myself.
So yes, “Amor” closes that loop. But maybe it also starts another one, years from now, they may become the songs that take us back to this part of our lives.
Punk Head: At what point does documenting a relationship become its own form of romance?
Rabbit on the Moon: I love romantic music, and I am a hopeless romantic. But more than anything, I truly love my girl, my wife.
There have been so many nights with her like the ones I talk about in “Amor” when I would translate love songs for her, and somehow I would feel like I was falling even more in love with her all over again.
Then one night, I felt this overwhelming desire to make her understand how deeply I loved her. Not just tell her. I wanted to create something for her. I wanted her to feel seen, cherished, and remembered. And, in some crazy way, I wanted the world to know how much this girl means to me.
That’s when I thought about the Taj Mahal and the love story behind it. Hundreds of years later, people all over the world still know that someone loved another person enough to create something extraordinary in her honor. The people are gone, but the expression of that love is still here.
I’m obviously not building a Taj Mahal. I’m writing songs. But the feeling behind it is what stayed with me.
That’s what I want Rabbit on the Moon to become: my own expression of love for my wife that time can’t easily erase.
Punk Head: Do you think you're writing songs for your wife, or are you also writing them for the two of you to hear years from now?
Rabbit on the Moon: I hadn’t really pictured us years from now, older and sitting together listening to these songs. I hadn’t thought about what that might feel like until you asked me that question.
The truth is, I wrote them for her to hear now.
I don’t like spending too much time imagining the day when one of us is gone and these years have become something the other can only miss. We’re both here now. We have today. And I want to appreciate that while we have it.
I want her to hear these songs now and feel, without any doubt, how deeply she is loved by me. I don’t want her to have to look back someday and wonder how I felt about her. I want her to know it while I’m still here to tell her.
Maybe years from now we’ll listen to these songs together and they’ll remind us of this part of our lives. But that wasn’t why I wrote them. I wrote them because I love her today, and I want her to feel all of that love today.
What surprised you when you started turning specific memories from 2005 into songs?
What surprised me was how easy it was to find things to write about, the memories, the details, the emotions, the substance behind the songs. But at the same time, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, because she has always made it easy for me to express how I feel about her.
She has always been easy for me to be sweet to, to compliment, to say beautiful things to, and most of all, to love. It was like that from the very first day I met her.
I remember meeting her in 2005 and suddenly hearing all these sweet things coming out of my mouth almost effortlessly. I couldn't stop. She actually accused me of having “good game.” She thought I probably talked like that to every girl.
The funny thing was, I didn't. I had never been able to talk to anyone that way before. It was only her. There was just something about her that brought that out of me.
And more than 20 years later, I realized the same thing was happening when I started writing these songs. I wasn't struggling to invent romantic things to say or searching for stories to write about. They were already there.
Our love story has given me so much material because we've experienced things together that still sound a little crazy when I say them out loud. We didn't just get married and then renew our vows four times. I literally proposed to her five separate times. She said yes to me five times, and we went to five different chapels and got married all over again each time.
Every proposal came from a real moment when I felt so overwhelmed with love for her that asking her to marry me again was how I wanted to express it. And because I wanted her to know how much I meant it, every time I proposed, we actually had another wedding.
So I think that's what surprised me most about turning these memories into songs. I discovered that I don't have to manufacture the romance or search hard for something to write about. I just have to remember.
She has been giving me something to write about since the day I met her.
