Rites of Spring

In Atlanta it has been sleeting and raining and freezing and thawing and cold and damp and grey.

And then today the sun came out and the temperature went up to fifty all of a sudden. And I can’t stop listening to music and singing at the top of my lungs and not understanding how everyone isn’t simply shocked into paroxyms of wild glee at this day.

Of course, this also has to do with the fact that my roommate and my friend Dirk and I went out and got espresso & ice cream milkshakes.

It’s Indian Spring.

(Why the term “Indian Summer,” anyway? Is it akin to “Indian giver,” some horrible idea that the Indians were the ones who gave the white folks things and then took them back and not the other way around?)

On these days when the sun comes out and declares winter dead without first bothering to hold up a mirror to its icy nose (and is always wrong) —I think this band—The New Pornographers-- is the exactest match and the best, especially if you are also in your car. The New Pornographers specialize in cold catchy pop with exacting, complicated lyrics. They’re not selling spring quite yet, but its doppelganger, this weather that can and will turn around and bite you in the ass.


Other seasons have their exact records, too. This is how I’ve got it figured:

Early Summer Always was and always will be Last Splash by the Breeders. Says pack up the car, let’s go to the beach and hey, kiss me with those gritty, sandy, sunblocked lips.

Late Summer Exile on Main Street-Rolling Stones. This album was nostalgic the moment it was recorded, and even if you’ve never sat around drinking Red Dog beer on a back porch on a North Carolina August night, it’ll still bring that to mind.

Fall Impasse By Richard Buckner. It’s about the beginnings-of-endings. It reminds me of Halloween.

Winter Harvest by Mister Neil Young. “Are You Ready for the Country?” will always make me think of a bunch of bearded woodsman out in some Yukon beerhall. I have no reason for this.