In the song futile devices Sufjan Stevens finds it hard to say “I love you out loud”. So instead he shows or feels affection through watching his loved one play the guitar or simply watching them across the room and feeling overwhelming comfortable around them.
Someone once explained the difference between a million and a billion using time: 1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, but 1 billion seconds is about 31.7 years. My brain just short-circuits trying to conceptualize numbers like that in real life.