It's in our shared shortcomings..
This is actually a live recordings review, but I love this band with such intencity and I felt so many things evoked from what was written I had to share. To listen to the music they are talking about go here: http://www.daytrotter.com/#!/concert/mumford-and-sons-and-friends/20056077-37383275&playerLoadAndPlayTrack=49096877®isteredEmail=barefootinthefog@gmail.com
The things that everyone can understand and appreciate, when considering other people - strangers or friends, are shortcomings. It's in them where we're able to see each other as more alike than we are different. It's in our shared shortcomings - because when we face them, they're almost all identical - that we're able to show ourselves as the most human, the most empathetic, the most noble and the most compassionate people we'll ever be. It's when someone loses a loved one to some heartbreaking disease, or simply to the arms of another - when things have not turned out right, for one reason or another, that we lower our voices, loosen our heartstrings and put an arm around a fellow aching body.
These are the people we are when we listen to Mumford & Sons songs. These are the people who write those songs - Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall and Ted Dwane. They are the framers of a compassion that encourages other wounded and wandering souls not to give up on love, but to be wary of it as well - to learn from it. They encourage others to stand tall and to pick themselves up from the ground, dust all of the shit from themselves to get to that upright and venting/marveling at the brightness of a night's moon again. They are a troop of never-say-die-ers, willing to go back into the trenches with the hands and the fire they were born with, along with the people that they know they will always love.
The folks that these men sing about present their burdens and their woes and they then raise a glass to overcoming them all, in heroic fashion. They are determined to not lead dim lives. They are determined to stir up as much energy and life, happiness and occasional sadness, all in the name of the richness and sweet complexity of existence that they've always felt they should have if they were only to get one thing. Mumford, the head of the hopeless wanderers guild, sings on "Not With Haste," "Do not let my fickle flesh go to waste/As it keeps my heart and soul in its place/And I will love with urgency/But not with haste." With those words, Mumford & Sons have cast themselves as men of distinction - those who will burn all nights completely, who will always kiss with their eyes close when they decide to kiss and who will lose many fights, but will never lose the battle.
