One Hell of a Drug - A Florida Man looks at Taylor Swift's new song: Florida

It was an early morning.

 My alarm rang at 3:45am for a quick up and back to Tampa.  Barely pulling myself together, I notice a text from my good buddy Mark Baldwin.   It was a song.

This is not unique. Mark and I share music back and forth all the time. What was unique was the text came through at like 1:00am, fairly late for my famously early to bed friend. The title of the song: Florida.  I started to respond: Oh yeah, love that Modest Mouse song.   

The four drive south started like hundreds before it - in the fog on US 319, a quiet and largely abandoned highway at that hour.

 You can beat the heat if you beat the charges too...They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true.  And my friends all smell like weed or little babies...And this city reeks of driving myself crazy

There is no coffee until Perry.  Just me and the deer, who turn the dark road into an obstacle course. 

 Little did you know your home's really only...A town you're just a guest in. So you work your life away just to pay...For a time-share down in Destin

Definitely not Modest Mouse, but I’ll admit, the song bops a bit.  I listen to it again.  And again.   

Florida.  Is one hell of a drug 

Taylor Swift’s new song with Florence Welch.  It is good.  And it feels pretty spot on - especially that line.

I listened to it again, and again.  And once the hour was mostly civil, I sent it to several Florida Men and Florida Women whose opinion I respect.  

“Florida has never been so seen” said a friend.  “Really on the nose,” said another, with someone else calling it the perfect “marriage of Carl Hiassan and Jimmy Buffett.”

 “How the hell did she capture Florida so perfectly good gracious” texted another buddy.  

“Closest I ever felt to being John Meyer” responded yet another, referencing Swift’s song indicting her one-time boy friend.

But did she really, as one friend and observer said, “nail the essence of the place.”

Well, let's examine.

Here’s what Swift herself said about the song:  

“I’m always watching Dateline.  People have these crimes that they commit; where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in. I think when you go through a heartbreak, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘I want a new name. I want a new life. I don’t want anyone to know where I’ve been or know me at all.’ And so that was the jumping off point. Where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida.”

Since the first Europeans stepped foot here – and at an accelerated pace, since WWII, Florida has been a destination of escape.  Some 2/3rds of Florida residents were not born here – and roughly a quarter weren’t even born in the United States. 

Some, like my parents, came here to escape the cold.   

For many, we are a lifelong aspiration:  warm climate/low tax reward for a life of productive work somewhere cold and gray – for others, it is the Siren Song of the ocean, a tropical life untempered by the challenges of life in the real world - a place of true escape.

And increasingly, our shores are the modern day Ellis Island, the 21st century version of the “sea-washed sunset gate” of the golden door.  In many ways, Florida is that new New Colossus - the first step into a new life in America. 

When Nikole and I went to Alaska in 2009, someone there described the state as a foreign country that just happened to be populated by American citizens.  To some extent, I think you could say the same thing about Florida. 

In fact, for the first couple hundred years of Florida’s colonization, you had to really want to escape it all to come here, because coming here meant battling swamps, snakes, heat, yellow fever, and malaria,   It wasn’t until John Gorrie bought us air conditioning,  Dr. Porter invented mosquito control, and Henry Flagler brought the railroad that Florida was a place any normal person would want to live.  Or at least any sane one.

But like our much colder brethren to the north, despite these advancements, as well as Eisenhower’s interstates, we continue to draw a population looking to slip away from the norms of life that exist in most places. 

Well, me and my ghosts, wе had a hell of a time. Yes, I'm hauntеd, but I'm feeling just fine…no one asks any questions here…

Bob Graham once said to me the key to understanding Florida is not just to know where they came from, but to know why they came here.  Graham would often point to the mythical couple from Cincinnati - they’ve lived here for a decade, although “they still take the Cincinnati paper” and still care about the place they came from, but they chose Florida because they were tired of being cold, didn’t want to pay income taxes and basically to be left alone to enjoy their retirement. 

I used to think of Florida as a microcosm of America - but over time, I realized that was wrong.  Instead, we are a reflection of all of the places people came from, as well as the hopes and dreams of why people came here – the new life they have established here, and maybe the demons they left behind.  

Little did you know...Your home's really only the town you'll get arrested. So you pack your life away just to wait out...The shitstorm back in Texas

Florida is not a place.  Michigan is a place.  Texas is a place.  New York is a place.  Almost every state is a place.  But not Florida.

Most states in America conjure up an archetype —the steel worker in Pennsylvania, the farmer in Iowa, the outdoorsman of Colorado, the gold-covered gambler in Nevada, or just the New Yorker.  

Florida is more of a geographic distinction - an oddly shaped piece of land that captures 22 million or so people from all walks of life under a single flag – but in many ways, that is about all that connects us.   Places like Liberty County and Dade County are so culturally different they might as well be on two separate continents, if not planets.   Even driving across Florida’s famed I-4 corridor, the state can feel very different in just 10 or 20 miles.

Part of this is a function of how people got here.  The old saying in Florida is to go south, you go north.  Midwesterners tended to move down I-75 and end up on the west coast.  East coasters did the same down I-95.   Puerto Ricans flocked to Orlando to fill service jobs, creating a pipeline that continues to reshape the community to this day.  And Miami, well, it's Miami. 

But what do you think of when you think of Florida?

Florida Man. 

No doubt, if Swift got the inspiration from Dateline, she definitely had Florida Man on her mind when writing the lyrics.

But what’s interesting about Florida Man - Florida Man isn’t a uniquely Florida thing.  Keep in mind, as mentioned earlier, most people here came from elsewhere.  Florida Man, more than likely, was your neighbor in Kankakee, IL, or Alpena, Michigan.  He just ended up here.  And that is what we are - what we have largely ever been:  a collection of the other…a collection of the escaped.

Put 22 million or so people inside of a state that still has a fair amount of wilderness, marry it with heat and alcohol, and  there will be ‘interesting’ interactions between wildlife, gators, bears, pythons, etc., and people.  Also, just put 22 million people anywhere, and you are going to have characters – but put 22 million people in a state where people seek to escape – and well, you get the picture.

(*Add to it Florida’s robust public records laws, and everyone will know about said incidents)

I need to forget, so take me to Florida...I've got some regrets, I'll bury them in Florida. Tell me I'm despicable, say it's unforgivable.  

What a crash, what a rush, fuck me up, Florida

If you think about the above and why people come here, the state has a healthy libertarian streak.  The state’s first flag, a ghastly thing that was so ugly it only lasted about 2 hours before the legislature adopted a new flag had a small American flag in the corner, and 5 bars – blue, orange, red, white, and green, was adorned with the words “Let us Alone.”    

It is in the vein that the state has also had more than its fair share of charlatans and scam artists, thieves and felons, frauds, and imposters, quacks and felons.  After all, this is the state where a Russian mobster turned Miami strip club owner conspired with a high end car and boat dealer – introduced to him by the rapper Vanilla Ice – scammed Pablo Escobar into thinking he was buying a Russian sub.  

The line between fact and fiction can be blurry in the Sunshine State.

You can hide here. You can live here.  You can reinvent yourself here.

You can be anonymous here.  You can be a star here. 

You can chase dreams here.  You can hide from nightmares - or find new ones.

People have been burying regrets here since Ponce De Leon landed here in the 1500s.   It is a place where you can start anew.  

No one cares.  

Florida...Is one hell of a drug

I love this state because it is never dull.  It is in a constant state of dynamism - with a population that is both growing, and changing.  Part of the fun of Florida is you can never know it – it never stops long enough to allow one to master it.  It is a storyteller’s dream.

The population evolves and reloads.  Communities in places like Broward that even just two decades ago were nothing but retirees are now home to the adult children of first generation immigrants.   Downtown Tampa, a wasteland just a decade ago, is now one of the robust communities in America.  Jacksonville, the once tough, rusty and gritty city of my youth, is now one of the fastest growing job markets in America, and ranked one of the best places for young professionals to live.  

And the state is only getting more diverse every day, adding to the uniqueness of America’s most unique state.  I do hate how Florida has become a political symbol, and I hope over time that changes - not because of my political affiliation - but because part of what makes this place something is that is a place of dreams, of hope, of refuge, and has been for a long time for americans of all stripes.  As we seemingly lose everything into political corners, I truly hope we don’t lose this. 

Though I suspect like many a Florida fad, this too shall pass. But what won’t are the reasons people keep coming here.  She hasn’t slowed down since the first real post-war booms, and shows no signs of tiring.

Florida, she is, after all, one hell of a drug.