everything is happening today

The song “Everything is Happening Today” from the 2016 Flock of Dimes album, If You See Me Say Yes has had a stranglehold on me for years now. I’ve been a huge fan of Jenn Wasner since I saw Wye Oak open for the Dirty Projectors in 2012. I was 20 years old and completely captivated by her voice, her lyrics. I felt so connected to the sounds she was making, even when I couldn’t fully make out the words - and once I spent time pouring over the lyrics of Civilian back at home, I knew she would be a favorite songwriter of mine for the rest of my life. She writes in this way that almost feels too specific to relate to, but somehow she always takes it further into something greater than the sum of its parts and the feelings always loop back around to universality. When that first Flock of Dimes album came out, I couldn’t put it down. I felt deeply understood and emotional and inspired, especially by this concept of cyclical time she introduces in “Everything is Happening Today.”

I wake up
My eyes are playing tricks on me
And through the dust
So much of my life has already come to be

So I watch the sun go up
And I watch the sun go down
And the horizon hovering like a missing piece
That can never be found

And as the seasons lie in wait
Like a secret you already know
Winter is behind us now
It is ahead of us also

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to Seattle to catch the current Flock of Dimes tour. Her most recent album, The Life You Save, is a favorite of mine from this year. I have actually had to keep it a bit at arms length however, as some of the subject matter has felt a little too close to home. It is a deeply personal and beautiful album exploring boundaries and grief around loving someone suffering from some sort of addiction. She played a lot of new stuff during the show, but she closed with “Everything is Happening Today.”

I was traveling with my friend Dani who was very present during my divorce in 2018, and we were attending the show with my ex-husband, Jory. Jory and I have become friends since the end of our romantic relationship, and try to catch up a couple times a year. In every breakup I’ve ever had, losing the friendship of the person has always felt more devastating to me than anything else, and excluding harmful circumstances, there is something so sad to me about ending a romance and never speaking to each other again. I understand that romance can really bring volatility out in the best of us, but I think that when breakups are amicable and the desire for friendship is authentic, I think there is something so deeply beautiful about allowing the shape of our love for one another to change as time moves along after enough time has passed. Friendship and romance have always felt so deeply intertwined to me. Love and intimacy are so complicated and I just think it’s so brave and beautiful when two people can say “hey, this connection between us didn’t work in this way, but I still love who you are as a person and want you in my life.”

Being in Seattle with these two friends was such a new vision of the place. Jory and I lived there in 2014 and 2015 right after we met. We both lived and worked within a 2 block radius in Ballard and didn’t explore much of the city outside of our neighborhood. Whenever I go back it feels familiar as if from a dream. Like I have technically been there before, but I can’t pinpoint what feels familiar about it.

While riding in the back of a Lyft with Dani (and the tallest Jor squished into shotgun of the tiny compact), I was showing her pictures of Jory and I when we lived there and before she knew us. Fresh-faced babies - broke and in love and trying something completely new. I had a couple friends in the city and Jory’s brother lived there, but at the time, it felt like we really only had each other. I remember only joy and exploration and comfort about this time.

When I met Jory in Utah, I was barely 21 and about to graduate from college. It was September of my second to last semester, and I was planning on moving to Seattle after I graduated in the spring. I didn’t have a plan other than I wanted out of my hometown. When we started dating, I was up front about the fact that I wanted to leave soon and didn’t know what that really meant for any relationship, but being in our early twenties we sort of both said “fuck it,” and fell in love. He moved with me just 8 months after we started dating. I never had a second thought. Jory was immediately my home. He brought me so much comfort and consistency that I desperately needed at the time. I remember celebrating our first anniversary in Seattle and my coworkers at the animal hospital I worked at being shocked that it had only been a year. The way we relied on and cared for and understood each other was something I thought was only reserved for couples that had been married fifty years already.

Since our split seven years ago, Jory and I have been to a handful of shows together. He comes back to Utah sometimes to catch certain tours outside of the big city and see friends. So seeing Flock of Dimes last week with him wasn’t the first time we’ve been in a crowd together since we’ve been apart. But it was the first time we were at a show in Seattle together since we lived there a decade ago now. We were in the basement venue, Barboza. We saw a handful of shows there in 2014/2015. I think we saw Kevin Morby there and Lady Lamb the Beekeeper.

At this Flock of Dimes show last week when Jenn Wasner was singing “winter is behind us now, It is ahead of us also,” I didn’t even realize that big, fat, gushing tears had started streaming down my face. To be so different, in the same place with the same people a decade later. In new shoes and cells with none of the same worries. To be so filled with a different kind of love. To know where you have been and feel where you are now and still know the shape of old pain but to know why it no longer hurts, and to hope for continued patience and understanding with all of the versions of one another that we all get to love. I’m still crying about it. I think I will forever. I think that that’s good.

So if here is really there
And if you are really mine
My fear, it is a circle
My joy, it is the infinite line

But the limits of words were with us
Since we learned to talk
So I give my longing a name
And I hold its hand and take a walk

I’m writing this on my 34th birthday. 33 was my favorite age that I’ve ever been. Thank you for being here.

I got to chat with my friend Teri about some favorite songs of 2025 over on Moths and Giraffes. I saw the movie Sentimental Value on Sunday and I can’t stop thinking about it. I think it is a masterpiece. I recently read the book Loneliness & Company by Charley Dyroff that I also can’t stop thinking about. Jordan and Andrew and I are knee-deep in making this new record and I can’t wait to share more of it with you.