In this creative non-fiction series, staff writer Dean DiLuzio takes you on his journey to Florida, where a chance meeting turned an otherwise ordinary night into a symphony of music and friendship.

Sometimes the words would come from the mouths of others in the form of news podcasts, listened to while staring at the endlessly looping lapis sheet on the Gulf. I’d feel emotions from the stories, I’d have my thoughts provoked. Every once and a while a small kernel of an idea would burrow into my skull, but it would share the same fate as those popcorn kernels you can’t seem to spring to life no matter how much you nuke them in the microwave.

My words, when properly hatched, would string together into stories. There were no intended readers, I closed myself off from the world to open myself to me. I can’t speak for musicians, but I assume the singer songwriter gets the words the same way. What I can’t figure out is where the music comes from. Fortunately, there are people who can. I’m lucky to be able to orbit them.

The first friend I made down there was one made by complete accident. All I did was ask for an American Spirit, but the funny thing is I don’t even really smoke tobacco. I don’t even enjoy nicotine or alcohol for that matter. A karaoke bar is an interesting place to meet people; a kratom karaoke bar is an even more interesting place to meet people.

I had received the suggestion to visit the place from a separate friend of mine, the elevator pitch was it was a place full of other college students. It wasn’t an obnoxious bar, with floors coated in a thick layer of dried beer and unidentifiable body fluids of questionable origins. There was also the added bonus of it having some sort of relaxed outdoor/indoor setting, with an open mic.

As I stated earlier, the people of Florida are interesting people. Each jam night was a weekly occurrence, I’d drift in and out like the high tide I grew to admire during my daily beach constitutionals. There were fire dancers here. New age types with batons doused in whatever fluid they use on Hollywood stuntmen who get too close to flames for money. They’d twirl, they’d bend, and more importantly they’d not catch on fire.

Then the musicians would come with their instruments and their message, and then the poetry readers with their prose and pouring out of the heart. Some were good at what they did, others not so much. My friend in the American scarf, on the other hand, was one of the skilled ones.