Song Meaning

David Lehman's "February 23" opens with a vivid, fragmented picture of New York City. Light rain falls in Central Park, yet Upper Fifth Avenue enjoys sun and clear skies. Winds gust downtown, while a specific corner remains calm. This immediate juxtaposition highlights the city's simultaneous, varied realities. These localized weather anomalies aren't just atmospheric observations; they subtly introduce a deeper theme of varied experience. The lyrics suggest that reality itself isn't uniform, even within close proximity. This fragmented perception then finds a philosophical anchor in the words of John Ashbery, whose "Crazy Weather" poem is invoked. The narrator appears to find resonance in Ashbery's perspective, using it to frame these initial observations. Ashbery's definition of "genuine weather" is a fascinating pivot. He argues for weather that is "unusually bad, unusually good, or unusually indifferent," explicitly stating "there isn't really any norm." This challenges the very idea of "normal" experience, suggesting that authenticity lies in the extremes or the utterly unremarkable, rather than some imagined middle ground. It reframes the opening weather contrasts not as anomalies, but as precisely what "genuine" weather looks like. The power of this idea is underscored by a simple childhood memory: Ashbery's mother remarking, "Isn't this funny weather?" That seemingly mundane observation, remembered as "one of his earliest memories," reveals how early and profoundly the concept of non-normative experience can shape a worldview. It implies that the extraordinary, the indifferent, and the "funny" are not deviations, but the very fabric of genuine perception, making the poem's initial weather report feel less like a forecast and more like a profound statement on reality.