In The Spring – An Interpretation

In the Spring

Should I sit down
Break the news so softly
Winter always rises up
So cold, so fast
I almost of felt you in my head
Like a flame that cannot last
When a bird is flying past

Fly in the air
Fireflies of yellow
Summer always finds me
In my memories
I can almost taste the water
Like a realistic dream
That is bursting at the seams

Charges of thinking too much
Longing is a selfish thing
I guess I get another chance
Because everything comes in the Spring

Leaves are falling
Noble trees are offering
I always keep you in my birdcage heart
Flutter with your wings so golden
I can’t let you very far
Over oceans I can’t chart

It was 2007 and I was in a class called Music Recording Industry with a professor named Rick Sparks. Mr. Sparks was tall with a deep voice, like if Gandalf had a razor. He was also a DJ from Chicago and obsessed with the Beatles. Almost every day he talked about Paul McCartney and John Lennon like they were from the Bible or some other apocryphal text. One particular day of Music Recording Industry, we listened to Paul McCartney chat about how he came up with Blackbird.

Here’s the clip we watched.

I had just bought an Alvarez guitar with a hardshell case from my roommate for $35 and was tired of writing music that sounded like Dashboard Confessional or The Early November. Fingerpicking was a mysterious shadowy monster hiding behind the trees in the woods. Open chords were the flames from a warm campfire keeping me safe. In the Spring helped me leave the comfort of the fire and destroy the monsters haunting the neighborhood. It opened up a secret world I had only heard in myth.

College was an enormous turning point in my life. Since I’d spent the summers of my high school years away from home, living out of a tent at Scout camp, I was already longing to be far away from the bare mattress on the floor of my decrepit high school home. Ready to be “on my own”. On my own actually meaning with my best friend, Chris, with whom I spent nearly every waking minute.

But I started dating a girl who consumed my soul, and he enlisted. A horrifying juxtaposition. I tried to blame myself for this big mess. I had big feelings and the only thing I knew to do with them was write songs. This pain informed the first three I wrote on the Alvarez: My Friend, In the Spring, Bead of Mercury. They are all about this event and my subsequent crisis of identity as I learned to cope with this new absence.

I buckled down, played a lot of guitar, and finished my music degree.

In the Spring is this culmination of growing up musically and emotionally. This song has endured over the years and I play it almost anytime I get the privilege to perform. I wish growth could happen without the pain that accompanies it, but that isn’t how this life works. I am thankful that Chris and I are still best friends (we are heading out on a big road trip next week). Plus all the people and things that used to consume my soul and identity are slowly fading into the ether of fading lyrics.

Here’s an old version of the song with a tiny stegosaurus looking on.