Ellie Goulding

Yesterday, I went to a concert with my best friend. She is visiting me this week, since she is changing offices at the State Department and was able to take some time off. Earlier this year, she showed me a song and said, "this is my favorite song right now," and it was "Lights" by Ellie Goulding, which had come out quite some time ago, but better late than never I suppose. In any case, it was also a song that I had on repeat for a while (some time ago). I had actually been looking for Adele tickets at Madison Square Garden, so I accidentally stumbled upon the Ellie Goulding concert which was that same day. Last minute tickets ended up beig a very good deal, so we dropped all of our plans and got tickets on the floor section!

The seats we had were really good. During the concert, Ellie Goulding asked if anyone came to the concert with their best friend, and played a song that she had written for her best friend. I really liked that, since I think friendship is often underrated in music--everyone  writes songs about lovers, even low ranked lovers (like people they went on one date with or even saw in passing), but I can't think of that many songs that are written about best friends.

After the concert, my best friend wanted us to buy matching sweatshirts. I thought the sweatshirt was just okay, and very overpriced, and I have way too many sweatshirts and I even donated some recently because I had so many, so I said no. "But we need to commemorate this event because we never go to concerts together!!"

"No way," I had said, "we go to concerts together all the time!!" 

"No we never do!"

"We went to see La Roux!" We also went to a house concert together last month.

In any case, she bought two sweatshirts. "Now you have to wear it," she said. "These are our best friend sweatshirts so you can't throw them away, we are going to give them to our children and then our grand children." 

"Okay okay," I said. "Let me pay you back on Venmo."

"No!" She said. "It's more special because I bought it for you, and you thought they were too expensive, so when we look back on this moment and people ask, I'll just say that I care more about our friendship than you do!"

"Okay," I said, "I'll just pay for our next concert tickets. Which will be soon because we go to concerts all the time!"

I think I'm very lucky to have such a best friend, and I had read an article recently about the importance of female friendships, which are often a major source of stability for people. As Ellie Goulding said, "she has been with me through the ups and downs of a lot of relationships, and I don't think she'll ever dump me." 

I remember we met someone recently, who said that he did not have a best friend, and one of us had joked, "wow, you better get on that. Especially at this age, most of the good ones are already taken."

"Yes, maybe you can try going online, I hear there are websites," the other had joked. 

In any case, here is a video from the show: