Well, it's done - my move to Nashville is complete.
Although exciting and filled with possibility, it's also a little sad and disjointing. Part of the stresses of this move is the fact that I sold or gave away nearly all of my possessions and fit the remainder of them in my station wagon. The seasons and weather help reflect this, I suppose, but it's difficult not to become reflective when a familiar place is in your rear view mirror (er, no pun intended). My life changed a great deal in my three and a half years in Quincy, Illinois, and although some of those changes were tinged with heartbreak, I can honestly say that I wouldn't be the artist - or the person - that I am today had I never gone there. I owe Quincy a debt of gratitude, and I'll always be grateful for my time there, even though the town and I aren't really a perfect fit. I always felt like Sully in
Nobody's Fool. I can only dream of being even as remotely charming as Paul Newman, though. Heh.
I'm still getting my legs under me here in Music City USA, a town of perplexing paradoxes. So far, though, I like it. It feels like an eastern city, and there is also some relief to the landscape, which I have missed while living in the midwest the last six years. Some of it has a nice grit patina to it, although it is overall a very nice looking and relatively clean city. The country music stigma that so many of my friends have cooed about just isn't really there, or at least I am choosing to successfully ignore it. I think there is a northern insecurity to appreciating country music and it's associated sub-genres, and it's probably more annoying dealing with archaic prejudices than it is with the actual music itself. Downtown, on "Lower Broad", all of the touristy old bars and western shops are alive with people and music, and truth be told it really is a fun place to hang out. Among my many musical tastes, blue grass and old time country and western are favorites of mine, and you hear that music played here in earnest. On the other hand, I live literally a half mile from the "new" Opry and the associated "compound" - site of the defunct "Opryland USA" amusement park, and a smorgasbord of cheesy theme restaurants and tourist traps, campgrounds and wax museums surrounding a large shopping mall, the very posh (if somewhat out of place) Gaylord Hotel, and, of course, the Opry itself. I drove around it yesterday, which should tell you something. You don't walk around and look at this monstrosity, you drive around and ogle at it. You patiently wait at crosswalks for enormous folks from Alberta to Albany waddle out of "family style" restaurants and back to their chartered motorcoaches. It is a queer and confusing place to me, and now that my initial scouting mission is over, I don't think I'll be going back any time soon. Well, maybe for the Thai restaurant/gocart track. That looks pretty awesome.
Back on my side of the Cumberland River, life is a little simpler and a lot less flashy. I live in an area called Inglewood, an old suburb from the 40's and 50's that despite it's lack of good pedestrian aids is still a charming and pleasant place to be. There are tall trees and lots of cute pre-war bungalows that have been well cared for, although I live in a tiny 1950's brick half-Cape. We're part of the larger area - East Nashville - which has been on a comeback for over a decade now. We (and I mean me and my friend Brad, who is graciously letting me and Murray stay with him) are reasonably close to the epicenter of the neighborhood, the Five Points. Five Points is a concentration of funky restaurants, boutiques, bars, coffee shops, galleries, and hipster hangouts, and it reminds me a bit of Westcott in Syracuse or 39th Street/Volker in Kansas City. The hipsters are a little obnoxious, but that's to be expected, and it's usually non-threatening. There seems to be a decent art community here, which is what's really important to me. It doesn't seem to have the breadth of Kansas City's, but I think it's healthy and vibrant in it's own right.
As one would suspect, musicians abound here. Luckily, not everything is 'pop country', and there is a great diversity to what you can find in the numerous honky tonks and dumpy bars, from punk to rockabilly, new wave to pop folk, rock and roll to fusion hip hop, and everything else in between. I've decided on a new project indirectly related to the music scene here, but I'll reveal it once I get past the planning stage. It has something to do with dumpsters. I won't be diving into them, though.
For a city this size, there is a lot to do and see, too. This past weekend I had the opportunity to see John Irving speak at the Ryman (for free!) and a free admission day at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts which is currently showing a very nice Rodin collection of bronzes and a wonderful Eastman House collection (of which I have seen before in Rochester, but is still a treat none-the-less). We haven't even scraped the surface of other neighborhoods in the city, like Germantown or Vanderbilt, among others.
As far as transportation in concerned, you realize pretty quickly that you're in the south. Mass transit is expensive and often times inconvenient. Pedestrian amenities in some areas leave a lot to be desired. Cycling infrastructure, while improving, still has a ways to go. Actually, though, I was surprised to see that some cycling routes and infrastructure have recently been built. I live near a very large park with numerous cycling pathways and even a large suspension bridge expressly for bike and ped traffic that was recently built to cross the river. It seems that the metropolitan government has a reasonable commitment to creating a real transportation cycling system, but it still has a ways to go before it even resembles a system similar to that in Portland or even Chicago.
Well, there is my rambling brain droppings of my first week in my new city. I'm getting a makeshift studio up and running, and hopefully in the near future I can some how get my hands on a camera in order to photograph new work. Stay tuned...
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