The Perfect Space – How The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons Taught Me A Lesson

I am one of those people who has an emotional connection to music. If you aren’t one of us, surely you’ve heard of us. In my experience, we’re the super dramatic girls listening to slow Coldplay songs and drinking black coffee. (Who am I kidding, I have to have one sweet-n-low.)

Typically, we’re the “music snobs.” We judge your Taylor Swift CD but, in truth, when we’re alone in our cars we become the freakin’ backup singers of “22.”

And ya know what? I’m callin’ a spade a spade—that music snob, dramatic, coffee drinking gal is me, and I’m content with it, so if you are too, let’s move on.

I was listening to “The Perfect Space” by my boyfriend’s The Avett Brothers two-or-so weeks ago when my life was in shambles (maybe more on that later) and in a soft part of the song, after the energy and instruments had picked up and then faded again, they wrote this idea: “I want to have friends that I can trust, that’ll love me for the man I’ve become, not the man that I was.”

Now, during this melodramatic life-in-shambles week, my friends were pretty upset with me. You would have been too. You, you, my momma, my daddy, that man on the street. I was not making the best decisions. Haters gon’ hate, which is fine. I learned my lesson. In hindsight.

BUT boy at the time I wanted to make that Avett lyric my freakin’ Facebook status. Passive aggressive to the extreme, I know, but I wanted to say LOVE ME FOR THE ME I AM NOW.

I decided against making it my Facebook status and admitted my faults to my friends just in time for us to roadtrip to Guthrie, Oklahoma for the Mumford & Sons Gentlemen of The Road stopover tour, also featuring cool folks like Edward Sharpe and Alabama Shakes, amongst others.

I enjoyed all of the bands at the festival. They were lyrical masterpieces, musical inspirations, but none spoke to me quite like Mumford. I remember them taking the stage just as the sun had completely set. I was twirling in my sundress, kicking up my barefeet, surrounded by 30,000 people, and even though I wasn’t listening to The Avett Brothers, that darn line came back to the forefront of my mind.

I was happy, I was carefree, I had managed to make a lot of wrongs right, and in that moment I realized that for me, in this situation in my life, I am glad my friends didn’t love me for what I had become.

I want to have friends that I can trust to call me on my absolute crap. That’s what I need.

I want to trust that my friends will love me through my messes, but more than that, I want to trust that when I am on the Road That Leads to Destruction, they will be the roadblock.

Because sometimes who we are becoming isn’t as good as who we were.

But rest assured, I’m still a music snob.

That part of me will never change.