For The Record- 05. July. 2025

Bad driving, closing doors, and the sometimes serendipitous nature of scale.

If you know nothing else about Madison, you should know this: 1. This place punches above its weight when it comes to restaurants. 2. No one in this god forsaken town knows how to merge.

And so it was that friend of the page

Sean Patrick Little

found himself taking the long way home (heh) from a local bookstore on Monroe Street. And through a bit of happenstance and a series of random decisions (and left turns) found himself at a restaurant on the other side of the metro area.

Getting ready to “house a chicken burrito,’" a song he’d never heard before began to play overhead that caught his ear. Thinking it was a new song by an emerging band, he was shocked to learn they’d been around for some time- something we can all likely relate to (take a bow, Doves).

My point here isn't to give a lesson on Dane County geography- just trust me when I tell you he was far afield and the route he took would make your GPS plead for mercy.

Rather, my point is this: in a world of nonstop social media blitzkriegs, PR people that never stop “just following up” and vanity metrics, sometimes discovery still happens the old-fashioned way- by a series of worlds colliding and universes lining up at the just the right time.

I won't put the words in his mouth, but I can almost guarantee finding the song this way meant more than if he’d found it doom scrolling.

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