i'm a bluebird free of my cage...thanks to the avett brothers

There are songs that I wish were written about me.

The obvious one is Kathleen, by the forever brilliant Josh Ritter. But today I am drawn in by my favorite Southern gentlemen...The Avett Brothers. Now their recent release, I and Love and You, totally captured me this fall. Especially Head Full of Doubt. Oh it does slay me. But the song that I wish I inspired is actually from their 2006 album, Four Thieves Gone.

Famous Flower of Manhattan... about a Southern country boy moving to the city and finding a girl so beautiful growing from the sharp edges and right angles of the city. And she softens things. And she makes him feel at home, and real, and she fills him with light. I'm sure he's nice for her, too. But when he thinks of taking her back with him, he realizes that part of her beauty lies with where she chooses to live her life. That urge we all have to bottle up wonder and take it on the airplane almost destroys what we want to have in the first place.



I find this song so gorgeous. It's a true love song. The realization that a person never fits just like your Saturday jeans. Part of love is seeing a person for all they are...including how their indescribable beauty comes from parts of life that you may never understand. And to love someone is to let those sides contribute to the whole person...and to let the whole person never have to compromise what makes them truly radiate in a world of weeping, flickering lights.

Crap, I love The Avett Brothers. Will they never cease to make me stare out a foggy window and feel companionable with the voices swimming into the coves in my heart that hold all the endangered feelings of my being? No. They will never cease. I refuse to let them.

And I found a flower in a field
A field of cars and people; rows of concrete, paint, and steel
Manhattan is where it grew

And I thought to cut it from its stem
And take it from the cracks between bricks that it lay in
And save it from city strife
Away from the city life

Then someone they whispered in my ear
A county girl can't be made out of anybody here
Don't touch it, it loves you not
Don’t touch it, it loves you not

Cause blue birds don't fly without their wings
And when we put them in a cage the world can't hear them sing
So selfish when greed sets in
Possession, the king of sin

And people don't ever let you down
Forever find a way to kill whatever life they've found
A heart beat and I want it too
Manhattan is where she grew

So I left and I let the flower be
And yesterday saw the flower on cable TV
Much prettier than here with me
For all of the world to see
Much prettier than here with me

Though I have never lived in Manhattan, I like to think of myself as a flower stretching toward the sunshine in a place maybe only precious to me. And the fact that some things are only lovely to me makes them even more sacred to my publicized thought patterns.

We're all blossoming exactly where we need to blossom. I refuse to be sold for 10.99 at Safeway. Unless it's to the Avett Brothers. Ten minutes in a vase while they practice might be worth it...if not hypocritical.


Famous Flower of Manhattan- The Avett Brothersk