The town exhales

There's a week in September where you can feel Sarasota let its shoulders down.

The traffic on the bridge thins. You can get a table. The guy at the counter has time to talk again, and he does, because for a few months he hasn't. The beach parking lot has spaces in it at four in the afternoon, which in March would be a rumour.

I like this town in season. The energy is real and it pays everybody's bills. But this — the quiet stretch, when the light goes long and gold and there's nobody on the sand but locals and a couple of herons — this is the version I'd keep if I could only have one.

I wrote a song called "Off-Season" about exactly this feeling and I still don't think I quite caught it. It's a hard thing to put in three minutes, because nothing happens. That's the whole content. The absence is the event. Songs want a story and this is the opposite of a story; it's a town resting.

Maybe that's why I keep circling back to it in different songs instead of landing it in one.

If you live here, you know the week I mean. It usually shows up right about now. Go stand on the beach at six and notice how quiet it's gotten.

That's the good part. It doesn't last, and that's fine too.