The Florida Man Cometh

There’s no denying the strong relationship between the state of New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen. Even if you’ve never stepped foot in the Garden State, you put on “Born to Run” or “Thunder Road” and a fully formed image of place comes to mind. You conjure a landscape of working class homes and turnpikes. You smell engine fuel and cigarettes. You start to feel an insistent pulse — an urge to blow this “town full of losers” and make something of yourself. 

Springsteen’s music acts as either a mirror or a guidebook depending on where you’re coming from when you press play. For people from Jersey, Springsteen provides an affirming spot to process home. To the outsider, he grants additional material to round out their working knowledge of a place.

When searching for the Florida equivalent of Bruce, you start with quite a long list. Florida has gifted the world with plenty of musical sensations and endowed Flo Rida with his very name. There’s Tallahassee’s T-Pain, Gainesville’s Tom Petty, Miami’s Gloria Estefan, Orlando’s Matchbox 20, and Mr. Worldwide himself — Pitbull. The list goes on with artists who popularized the still influential Miami bass sound like 2 Live Crew, MC ADE, and Jacksonville’s Quad City DJ’s of Space Jam fame.

The vast state musical history aside, Buffett has long been under-recognized as Florida’s equivalent to THE BOSS. What does this mean? Being the ‘Bruce Springsteen’ of a state isn’t synonymous with the “biggest,” “best” or even “most important.” I might ascribe those titles to James William Buffett, but this Springsteen status is particular. It’s a recognition of an artist’s ability to explore a geographic experience and tap into a shared understanding. The details aren’t universal, but the foundational sensibility is recognizable to anyone from that place.

Before the Buffett literalists come out of the woodwork, yes, I know that Jimmy entered this world by way of Mississippi. It’s a moot point. After all, Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges was born in my technical hometown Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, but rose to prominence in Atlanta—now claiming the A as his own. Almost inversely, Kanye West’s birth certificate reads, “Atlanta, Georgia,” but we know him to be a Chicago legend.

And yes, Buffett’s songbook includes plenty of tunes focused on far away locales with nary a Florida reference, but consider Springsteen’s Nebraska or “Sinaloa Cowboys.” The spirit of his music remains intensely tied to Jersey even if another location takes center stage for a while. The same is true for the tie between Buffett and Florida.

There’s a tendency to reduce Florida to a perplexing yet hilarious punchline — a place and a people unknowable, unpredictable and too eccentric to function. Nothing captures this attitude more than the recent Florida Man viral challenge: Google your birth date along with the words “Florida Man” to identify which outlandish, Florida crime embodies you as a person. People love to visit, joke, and hate on Florida, but for a state with such a high profile, there’s a dismissal from both residents and tourists to look any deeper than meme-level. After all, why waste your time mapping out utter chaos? Floridians can attest that “I’m from Florida” works interchangeably as both an excuse and explanation for almost any preference or behavior.

Recently surpassing New York in population, Florida contains a multitude of cultures and beliefs. Buffett’s depiction of the state is hardly one-size-fits-all, but his songs puncture a collective consciousness that hangs in the air like humidity. It’s an identity born out of torrential rain, alligator encounters, tourist invasions, and outsider ridicule. Buffett provides the Floridian and the non-Floridan alike with the recipe for the Sunshine State cocktail: equal parts pleasure and pain with a garnish of nihilism.

There’s no better place to start our journey into Buffett’s Florida than his breakout hit and most successful single to date, “Margaritaville.” Continuing the Springsteen-Buffett comparison, this is Buffett’s “Born to Run.” In place of Springsteen’s kinetic lyrics longing for escape, Buffett’s tale is one of mustering up energy to blend up some mix-n-tequila and shave down the sharp pang of heartbreak to rounded, boozy escapism. “Margaritaville” is what happens when you’re “born to run,” but your fuel tank is now running on empty.

The protagonist in “Born to Run” knows what he feels — and he’s even more acquainted with the visceral stakes of not responding to those impulses:

Baby this town rips the bones from your back

It’s a death trap

It’s a suicide rap

We gotta get out while we’re young

 Meanwhile the principal voice of “Margaritaville” is at a loss to rationalize even the most basic of decisions: “Don’t know the reason, I stayed here all season.” However, this doesn’t mean he’s unable to read his situation — after all, “it’s [his] own damn fault.” He just doesn’t care to assign it any deeper, greater importance than the literal nature of his surroundings. The first chorus is simply a musical inventory of what’s within sight: “Nibblin on sponge cake, watching the sun bake, all of those tourists covered with oil.” He tells us that life is what it is — now let’s drink.

When you’ve already escaped to the edge of the world and still haven’t found fulfillment, where to next? Buffett provides an answer of sorts on his live album, You Had to Be There, when he clarifies,“Margaritaville is a little island that’s nowhere other than in your mind or at the bottom of the Cuervo bottle.” When you live where the rest of the world vacations, you don’t escape physically — you do so emotionally.

If you grew up in Florida, you learn this through observation. If you fled to Florida at some point, it’s insight gained through firsthand experience.

Let’s say you arrived in Florida on your own volition. Perhaps you were “born to run” out of the post-industrial northeast or the badlands of the Midwest. Or, like 20 percent of Floridians, you immigrated — maybe from Cuba, Haiti, Mexico or Colombia. Whether you sought after the sun, the shore or the absence of state income tax, the promise of a more fulfilling life ultimately brought you to the state. In his song “Floridays,” Buffett describes this magical pull and Florida’s initial promise of renewed purpose:

The dreamers line the state road

Just to watch the runway show…

Focal point of a distant gaze

Lookin for better days

But once you’ve arrived, it’s time to reckon with the fact that perhaps some sources of your discontent were arbitrary. Angst, hurt and loneliness weren’t solely symptoms of your surroundings. There was some personal stuff mixed in too. When it’s time to deal with that, you have options: face it head on and get burned, or lather up some sunscreen and avoid it. It’s just the Margaritaville way!

Buffett further explores the comedown from a life spent escaping in “A Pirate Looks at 40” — and with appropriate nuance. A retrospective that could easily weigh itself down in regret, Buffett takes a uniquely Floridian route fully informed by both pleasure and pain. Mistakes have been made — “[pissing] away” enough drug money to buy Miami, failed relationships with “younger women,” and imbibing to “rock bottom” again and again — but these shortcomings are to be expected when one sets sail in search of an oasis. Paradise is a fleeting state of mind and as Buffett croons, it’s “never meant to last.”

 That doesn’t necessarily discredit the importance of finding a type of paradise, if but for a moment. In “The Weather is Here, I Wish You Were Beautiful,” Buffett tells the story of a man who abandons his Wall Street job, model girlfriend, and trust fund to “start a new life in the palm trees.” When discussing this drastic lifestyle shift, he makes a crucial concession that speaks volumes about the Floridian spirit:

And if it doesn’t work out there’ll never be any doubt

That the pleasure was worth all the pain

In Florida, you don’t run off to paradise. You ride it out like a wave. Realizing this as an adult is one thing — growing up with this understanding is entirely another.

Florida youth come of age in an environment curated by tourists, immigrants, retirees, and “tramps like us” who just ran out of gas. It’s exciting, diverse and, I would argue, beneficial, but no teens are immune to discontent. Floridian angst is informed by observing those who sweat and toil to arrive at the very place you are beginning to resent. “We live where you vacation” could be a brag, but it’s really more of an existential murmur. We live where you want to be — and if we don’t even want to be here, what could possibly be better?? Florida kids internalize the mythical nature of permanent paradise. So if they jump ship, they know to be honest about what it will accomplish.

During live performances, Buffett often includes ‘the lost verse’ of “Margaritaville.” It pointedly captures the Floridian experience of observing the rest of the world at play in their own backyards:

Old men in tank tops cruising the gift shops

Checking out the Chiquitas down by the shore

They dream about weight loss, wish they could be their own boss

Those three day vacations become such a bore

Vacation is not a worthless pursuit, but Floridians understand that it’s a conciliatory one. You opt out of reality for a few days, but your life won’t be changed in any sustainable way. It’s a respite, sure, but not without its casualties.

Vacations are facilitated by labor. Beaches, theme parks and resorts require a large, enthusiastic workforce to ensure that tourists return year after year. However, these essential jobs often offer wages that would place someone well below the poverty line — even with a full time schedule. Arguably the cultural center of Florida tourism, Orlando boasts the lowest hourly wages among the top 50 most populated metropolitan areas in the country. There’s a stark disparity between the fantasy of Central Florida attractions and the reality of low-wage workers. Recently, director Sean Baker captured the rampant poverty literally within fireworks-viewing distance from Disney’s pearly gates in the 2017 film The Florida Project. 

A Florida adolescent crafting their worldview and an adult discovering that paradise is a futile goal are both privy to the same revelations: It rains at the beach…and often. Kids become absolute monsters at Disney World, not princesses and princes. ‘Magic’ is just a euphemism for low-wage jobs. And dreams are what you sell for a healthy bottom line.

Buffett is not a direct advocate for fatalism, but there is a resigned acceptance present in his lyrics. In the same way, a sort of informed detachment pervades the Floridian identity.

Consider 1971’s “Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season.” Buffett describes an afternoon spent anticipating Mother Nature’s worst by napping in a hammock, slinging back Bloody Marys, and strolling down a shore rendered silent by fleeing tourists. He notes that the whiplash of living on the edge of destruction can take a toll, but the pain will eventually pass:

And now I must confess

I could use some rest

I can’t run at this pace very long

Yes it’s quite insane

Think I hurt my brain

But it cleans me out, then I can go on

Buildings can be rebuilt. The storm will weaken until it dies. The power will be restored. And just as relief will arrive, so too will another storm. Maybe not next year, or even the year after, but it will return. Pleasure follows pain follows pleasure etc. 

In 2006’s “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On”, Buffett penned what could easily be considered the Parrothead translation of the Serenity Prayer: 

If a hurricane doesn’t leave you dead

It will make you strong

Don’t try to explain it just nod your head

Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On

Buffett confirms that “trying to reason with hurricane season” will cause nothing but grief. Surviving in Florida requires a keen eye for discerning what is controllable and worthy of attention. It’s just too damn hot for anything else. This framework, employed to rationalize living in the path of natural destruction, influences the approach to practically every problem in the state — especially politics.

Any casual observer of Sunshine State politics knows that it’s a landscape rife with recounts, compromised candidates, and gerrymandered districts that rival the absurdity of any Florida Man meme. The state has become the happiest place on earth for politicians acting in blessed assurance that all criminality or wrongdoing will be forgiven — given that you’re rich enough to blast the airwaves with ads. “When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” is a nice piece of advice for elementary school children. In Florida, it pulls double duty as a rallying cry for mediocre (often white) men with means. Resistance can seem as futile as riding out a Category 4 hurricane on a pontoon boat.

In many ways, the most magical, fantastical story out of Florida is the political deaths and baffling resurrections of one Charles “Charlie” Joseph Crist Jr. In the past decade alone, Crist has been known to Florida as a one-term Republican governor, a failed independent senate candidate, an unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate and a current Democratic representative for the state’s 13th Congressional District.

And then there’s Rick Scott, an executive who made his fortune defrauding Medicare and Medicaid — only to later decry government spending and Medicaid expansion as a two-term Tea Party governor and current US Senator.

Believe it or not, these two Florida men faced off in the 2014 gubernatorial election. Jeb Lund, writing for Rolling Stone, gave a blistering depiction of the situation: “This is the kind of grand political spectrum Florida and the nation offers its citizens, and this is your future.” Indeed, apart from progressive candidates like Andrew Gillum and Anna Eskamani, Floridians are consistently offered the same names and faces with slightly used packaging.

How does this happen? Most of the blame lands on money, privilege and existing power structures, but there’s also a sociopolitical landscape to consider. If a state sees pleasure and pain as unavoidable phases, will the population approach elections differently? Does a Margaritaville sensibility convince us to hobble back home for that proverbial “booze in the blender” rather than reason with Hurricane Charley — or Hurricane Charlie Crist? The Floridian consciousness is not ignorant acceptance, but perhaps it is characterized by an over-informed exhaustion.

By dismissing Buffett as dad rock and Florida as an enigma, we make a collective stop at the end of the first verse of “Margaritaville.” We shrug our shoulders, declaring to both the progressive gains of the state and its inequality, miscarriages of justice, and eccentric crimes: “It’s nobody’s fault.” We’ll keep on posting our Florida Man memes, emptying our pockets to Big Mouse, and electing the likes of Rick Scott and Charlie Crist. Because if there’s no cause and no explanation — why would there be a probable solution?

Buffett’s Florida will always contain pleasure and pain, but could the proverbial “frozen concoction that helps [us] hang on” be altered? The “Florida is crazy” narrative allows us to dodge the added work of parsing an ingredient list, but it also robs us of the opportunity to distill any social, political, or economic gains into something we can add threefold to the mix. To borrow from Buffett’s lexicon, we need the taste that will bring about less “son of a bitches,” and more “good times” and “riches”…for the masses.

Bruce Springsteen opens his autobiography, Born to Run, exploring the relationship between person and place, remarking — “I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I.” Even if you don’t actively dip your toes into the main current of your hometown, it still permeates your existence. It’s in the air. It gets in your blood.

There is not a uniform Floridian experience, but there is a shared understanding that comes from inhabiting a place saturated with attractions, meteorological war and peace, and troubling political theatre. Buffett’s insight has been so heavily ornamented with tailgates, merchandise and restaurants that you might miss the substance at first glance. But isn’t that appropriate for a state whose true character is also concealed under memes, jokes, and extremities?

Springsteen sings the plight of the working man and Buffett sings for the Florida Man — a character cut from the same cloth, but fashioned into an entirely different silhouette. 

In “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” Buffett remarks that he “can’t look back for too long” at his past and transitively, neither should we. There’s simply no use in ruminating on our past dismissal of Buffett’s hits. 

So, to my fellow Floridians: lean back in your chair, pour something “tall and strong,” and turn up Margaritaville Radio a little higher. Jimmy Buffett is not only allowing us the chance to know the Florida Man — he’s giving us the chance to know ourselves.