Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt

Meandering thoughts on 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' 'Flow,' the new Pynch single 'The Supermarket' and finding connection

I’m writing this from a coffee shop. I write all of these from coffee shops.

Every day for the last several months has felt the same. I’ve woken up, walked or drove to a Northeast Minneapolis café, and written a blog or applied for jobs. It’s not a financially responsible schedule when you don’t have a full-time income. These fancy, delicious lattes are expensive.

But it’s been just about my only way to feel human lately. I’ve lived for the 25-second interaction I have every day with a probably-overworked barista.

I’d like a latte. What do you recommend? That sounds great, I’ll get that. Thank you so much. Have a good one.

It’s typically one of the few out-of-the-house conversations I get on any given day. I love it. Scared to turn that small-talk into friendship, but terrified of living without it, on and on and on I’ve gone. In and out of coffee shops with my headphones on, typing away. Alone but not feeling so.

Pynch’s new song is perfect

This yearning for social normalcy is evoked in the newest single from my favorite British DIY band Pynch. It’s the group’s first new song since their 2023 synth-pop masterclass Howling At A Concrete Moon.

Like all the best Pynch songs, this one has the warmth of a bonfire and the shimmer of a mirrorball. With a fuzzy guitar lead and frontman Spencer Enock’s resigned vocals, “The Supermarket” describes the feelings of these last few months with devastating precision.

It’s the sonic equivalent of that little nod and smile to a passerby on a sidewalk. There aren’t enough of those anymore. We’re obsessed with our shoelaces, I guess. I am, too. At least they’re tied.

Enock sets the scene in the first verse.

Gonna go to the supermarket
All I want is to feel normal
’Cause I’ve been wasting all my time
Reading about love online
And the depths of the human soul

The hook gets there with even more specificity.

And it tastes like cheap cocaine
It sounds like an ex’s name
It feels like a warm embrace
I’m half awake, but feeling strange

I don’t want to feel strange anymore

This longing for connection has been a recurring theme for my music listening this year. My most-played song of 2025 so far is Gang of Youths’ “Fear and Trembling.” I recently got a little misty listening to this section of the song while walking over a freezing cold Hennepin Bridge.

I stopped the track and started it over a few times, just to memorize the feeling.

We're at the stumbling phase of the midnight waltz
At a bookend to the weirdest of weeks
Me and Arnold walk, pretty hammered and crying
"Hey, I'll miss you man, when you leave"
Hey, I'll miss you when you leave

'Cause there are feelings that are strong
And there are ones that are mixed
At the dawn of my young life's eclipse
I was a boy once, now I'm a kind-of-adult
Catching up on the cool shit I missed

Where is the cool shit? What is the cool shit? Did I fast-forward past the part of the coming-of-age film where I hit a romantic rock bottom? Or is that still coming?

As I’ve pondered these big old questions, I’ve taken solace in a recent remark from a friend of mine: “People are great,” they concluded sweetly and bluntly, arguing that people are the most unpredictable piece of life’s routine. And I agree with that.

I’ll miss you when you leave. Etc.

I would die for this animated cat

My favorite movie I watched this month was Flow, a wordless animated film about a prehistoric (or maybe post-historic) cat on a diluvial journey.

It had no humans, but it confirmed that central congenial truth — people are great — and moved me quite a bit.

I wrote about Flow on Letterboxd, because that’s what you do when you see movies and want your thoughts about them to live forever. Here’s what I wrote. It will live for as long as you read it and that’s okay.

Greed will leave you alone. Fear will leave you alone. Ambition will leave you alone. Strength will leave you alone. Your things will leave you alone. Tribalism will leave you alone. Community is all you have. We are what you keep.

★★★★

I got a job this week. It’s full-time, five days a week, in-person. And I can feel a palpable weight off my shoulders.

I can’t wait to buy something nice for my girlfriend. I can’t wait to say “drinks on me” next time I’m out at a bar with a friend. I can’t wait to go to the local record store and leave with a haul. I’ll go to Mall of America later today and ride the log ride. It will be one of the best days of the winter. I can’t wait.

editor’s note: rode the log ride

I’m also starting a new part-time job as a wedding DJ. I worked my first wedding this last weekend and almost put tears on the turntables, moved so suddenly by watching two strangers celebrate their love in front of the 300 people deemed most meaningful in their lives.

People are great. Etc.

Unstuck in time

To celebrate my new job this week, I did what I have been doing. But this time: sort of guilt-free.

I went to a coffee shop, and I sat with my headphones on. I read Slaughterhouse-Five — the signature novel from author Kurt Vonnegut — for the first time and loved it.

The short of the book is this: A World War II veteran named Billy Pilgrim has become “unstuck in time” due to a debatably-real alien abduction. These aliens see time as a dimension where free will doesn’t exist and everything that has happened and will happen just is. Billy Pilgrim drifts in and out of war memories and reflects on tragedy and atrocity with this alien apathy.

“So it goes,” he remarks after every death.

About halfway through the book, there’s a full-page illustration of a headstone with an epitaph that reads: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” The sketch has become iconic now. It would make a great tattoo.

It’s a fairly unserious epitaph for the life of a character who, in this novel (spoiler alert): witnessed the bombing of Dresden, suffered from undiagnosed PTSD, fell into a semi-coma after being the only survivor of a plane crash and witnessed the deaths of most of his loved ones.

But there’s something endearing about it.

I’ve been thinking about this quote and how I reflect on some of the worst or weirdest times of my life. Whenever they’re approaching an end — and miraculously, they always do seem to end — there’s a certain schmaltz about the whole thing, as if I didn’t feel stuck underneath ice for the last several months. As if I didn’t wonder, several times: is this the bottom?

The early-pandemic days of 2020 were the previous record-holder in the sport of Most Disorienting Period of My Life. Like these last couple of months without work, that era was also lonely, aimless and sudden.

But I also look back on it sort of fondly now.

I wrote a song back then, one of the last songs I wrote. It was about the ominous fear that the end of a bad time in my life would only give way to a different beast. A monster so wicked that I might just miss the nomadism of the pacified present.

This song was called “The Current.” It went like this.

It will live for as long as you read it and that’s okay.

What will you do when tomorrow laughs at yesterday?
For they are wearing the same clothes
But the latter’s been laid to waste
What will you say when snowy peaks mock you in the distance?
For they feel the cold wind
That you have only written

When these ferris wheel Sundays turn into dust
And you pray that one day your love will be lust
Will these rolling hills lead you to shore?

What will you do when the current rips you to sea?
And there’s a mile of uncertainty
Below your feet
Will you shed a tear for the grass you grew today?
Is blue brighter than green?
Can you carry the weight?

Logging off, hopefully

I don’t know what the next few months will bring with new jobs and new opportunities. I’ll have more money but less time for coffee. Funny how that works.

I might be writing less, too. I apologize for that, if so.

But I know that a major goal of mine is to get offline as much as I can. Lately, I look away from the various social media apps — all of which are controlled by outwardly right-wing oligarchs now, by the way — feeling less and less of that People Are Great feeling. The relationships I maintain through social media are synthetic. They are closer, yet somehow less fulfilling, than my 30-second coffee order today.

That’s because friendships are not meant to be streamlined and mediated. They are meant to be unpredictable and inconvenient and warm. And as much as I love you, watching your Instagram story makes me feel cold. And posting one of my own makes me feel even colder.

I’m a pretty staunch convenience-tech skeptic — pro-call, anti-text, ethically at odds with AI — and would like to follow those principles in practice and not just word. In a perfect world, I’d use Sounds Great as my main tool of staying in touch instead of Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.

I’ll stop today’s blog somewhere shy of preachy. But all I’m trying to say is this: Give me a call sometime. I think you’re great. Let’s get coffee.

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Can I get an encore?

I made a playlist this week of songs that I consider to be in the certified Pitchfork Fetch The Bolt Cutters Review, Simone Biles 2016, Holy Shit Blake Griffin Jumped Over That Car tier of music. We’re talking 10/10’s.

These 10’s range from the ironic (the glorious vapidness of Camila Cabello’s “I LUV IT” makes the cut, and so do several Lonely Island songs) to the obvious objective greats (“Purple Rain,” “Fast Car,” “Landslide,” etc.)

It should also be noted that I am morally opposed to several artists on this playlist but put their songs on here because a 10/10 playlist wouldn’t feel comprehensive without “All of The Lights,” “Wake Up,” etc. Feel free to skip those. Thankfully, there are almost 2,000 others to pick from, because there’s a lot of great music.

Let me know what I missed.