Hurricane Watch

We're deep into the stretch of the year where everybody down here checks the same map too many times a day, so this seems like the moment to talk about "Hurricane Watch."

It isn't a song about a storm. I want to be clear about that, because the title promises weather and the song never delivers any. It's about the three days before — the waiting, which is the actual experience for almost everybody almost every time.

That's a strange stretch of time. The sky is an ordinary blue. Nothing is happening. Meanwhile you're filling jugs, dragging the furniture in off the lanai, standing in a gas line with people you half recognize, and everyone is being calm and useful and a little too polite with each other. Then most of the time it turns, and goes somewhere else, and you put your furniture back and feel faintly guilty about being relieved.

I'd never heard that in a song. Plenty of storm songs. No waiting songs. So I tried one.

It's also the closest I've come to writing something that only fully lands for people who live here, and I've made my peace with that. Some songs are for everybody. Some are for the ones who know what the gas line feels like.

Keep your flashlight somewhere you can find it.