The Thing About Us #1
- Anne
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
The questions nobody escapes.
Because music is never really just about music.
This first edition of The Thing About Us #1 brings together Alex Amen, Sylvan Esso, Graham Hunt, Carlotta Schmidt and The Healing Power of Horses, five artists wrestling with the same persistent questions:
Who are we becoming? What do we hold onto?
And what happens when certainty disappears?
People spend an alarming amount of time pretending. Pretending to know where they're going. Pretending to have a plan. Pretending they don't care what other people think. Maybe adulthood is just a long-running agreement not to mention that nobody knows what they're doing. Everyone acts as if certainty is normal. As if confidence arrives naturally. As if identity is something people discover once and keep forever. Most of the time, it's just guesswork wearing a convincing outfit.
People talk about change as if it arrives dramatically.
A breakup.
A move.
A diagnosis.
A resignation letter.
In reality, most change happens quietly. You wake up one day and realise the person arguing so fiercely with reality has become exhausted. Not defeated. Just tired of treating every uncertainty like an enemy.
The world rarely notices these moments. There is no ceremony for letting go. No applause for accepting what cannot be controlled.
Yet entire lives are often redirected by decisions so small they barely feel like decisions at all.
"Changes"
The first instinct is almost always to pretend nothing has changed.
To carry on as normal.
To tell yourself you're still the same person.
That the old routines still fit.
That the version of yourself you've carefully constructed remains intact.
Modern life rewards this performance.
Confidence looks convincing. Certainty looks attractive. Nobody gets praised for admitting they're confused, overwhelmed or quietly reinventing themselves. So people become experts at maintaining appearances. Not because they're dishonest. Because uncertainty is uncomfortable, and control feels safer than chaos. The problem is that eventually the performance starts demanding more energy than the truth. And sometimes the most honest thing a person can do is stop pretending to have everything under control.
"Hot Slob"
Sooner or later, most people realize certainty was never part of the deal.
Not in relationships.
Not in careers.
Not in friendships.
Not even in the stories people tell themselves about who they are.
For a while, uncertainty feels temporary. Something to solve.
Something to outgrow.
Something that will disappear once the right opportunity arrives, the right person appears, or the right decision finally presents itself. Then years pass. The questions change. The uncertainty doesn't. What nobody tells you is that meaning rarely arrives fully formed. Most people build it from fragments. A routine. A conversation. A memory. A place that still feels like home long after you've left it behind.
The search never really ends.
The trouble begins when other people start telling you who you're supposed to be.
Most of the time, they don't even realize they're doing it.
It happens gradually.
Through expectations.
Through assumptions.
Through the quiet pressure to become someone easier to understand.
Someone easier to explain.
Someone easier to accept.
For a while, it can feel easier to cooperate. To edit parts of yourself. To soften edges. To stay silent about things that might make other people uncomfortable. The problem is that every compromise leaves a trace. And eventually a strange question begins to emerge: How much of your life belongs to you, and how much of it was built to satisfy someone else's expectations? Some people spend years avoiding that question.
Others decide they can't anymore.
Not everything worth becoming fits neatly into a category.
People like labels. They make things easier.
Easier to organize.
Easier to explain.
Easier to sell.
But most meaningful things resist definition.
Grief doesn't arrive in a single form.
Healing rarely follows a straight line.
Love can feel like faith.
Faith can feel like memory.
And some experiences refuse to become language at all. Maybe that's why people keep making art. Not to provide answers. Not to settle uncertainty. But to create space for things that don't fit anywhere else.
Some feelings cannot be explained. Only recognized.
People spend an alarming amount of time pretending. Pretending to know where they're going. Pretending to have a plan. Pretending they don't care what other people think. Maybe that's inevitable. Maybe uncertainty is simply the price of being alive. What matters is what happens next. Whether we keep performing certainty. Or learn to live with questions that never fully disappear. This week's five releases don't offer answers. They don't need to. Sometimes recognition is enough.
Not every conversation fits inside a single article. Explore more of our current selections through On This Track, Three Track Week and the INDIENOXZINE | Selections Playlist.
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