Central Tennessee

It's all of America's soul with none of it's brain, part ghetto, part gilded suburb, two streets of fun and two America's living side by side with mutual respect but not much interest in one another, like a couple married for 22 years that rarely talks but knows what the other is up to, one Oprah's past, the beaten down existence of a black man in a state that sets up just about everything in it's power to keep a man down, and the other Oprah's future, a shiny world of white smiles and and baptist values that deny there is a savage side until you step sideways and see a forked tongue sliver out of someones mouth... it's an amazing thing, the display of a Central Tennessean angry, so different from the caution of honkeys in Memphrica, kind of a wrath of God indignation that put's the S in Surly. And surly is the best way to describe so much of what goes on there.. mollycoddled southern women who are used to having things their way and live in a weird bubble, out of touch with just about anything extra-cultural (they got their own culture, see, ask Paula Dean!), and the surly men who are constantly out of patience tending to this world... saccharine sweet turns to surly lightening quick on those hot summer days, 93 with 100% humidity, when everyone is out pretending to be southern gentry or a country star, the basis of this fantasy usually being one trip in their life to the Rhyman, or an equivalent one days spent doing keg stands at The Steeplechase, as hollow a bar for status as a southern gentleman as can be imagined... Hey is that Faith Hill! I'm wearing the same boots as her! OMG
And on the peripheries the real Nashville.. Musicians with a nose full of blow and 20 bucks in their pocket but enough gigs on the schedule so as not to be bothered.. brothers doing their day job, eatin' garbage food down at the gas station and making sure the CMT offices downtown get mopped at midnight... maybe meat and three every once in a while, or the Bill Frists of the world, Nashville's outside of music hoity toity, motivated by some mean spirited fantasy of ego and greed, that they get theirs but they'll stop you from getting yours in a heartbeat, 10% sales tax for all and tell em it suits em, all with a disarming smile that says "what could possibly be wrong with me?", all chasing some absurd dream of this being better than the small town, while pretending it is a small town when it makes them feel important, or that the music makes it all worth while, or maybe chasin' nothing at all, just livin', like a rattlesnake wanting to be left alone. it don't have to tell you why it wants to be, just leave it be, cause this house is defended by Smith & Wesson...It ain't a place for progress...
Sure, Parnell was a good mayor, and every once in a while you are surprised by what people in Belmont or Green Hills or East Nasty come up with (pretty creative.. sigh.. for Nashville.), but outside of Pelatas, invented in Mexico, just smartly done here, the place is often a derivative pile of seething dung, delivered with a self entitled smile by some caddy pretentious idiot, and to talk to a cop in Nashville is often to be taken aback by how bad they actually are ( I once tried to report an assault there, by a guy who was very dangerous, dangerous on another scale from what people are used to in the US, and the two fat fucks who refused to get out of their vehicle said to me "they must deserve each other.." and drove off... I was stunned. We went to the courthouse to try to get a warrant for the guy, and the judge seemed more interested in berating the victim for wearing a hat as we talked to the judge through bullet proof glass like a cheap liquor store. It took a third cop and 24 hours to even approach what would be considered professional public service).
Sometimes the music delights, and you say 'goddamn, there's some talented people here', and you feel the soul on the dirty pavement of drifting players in an American drama, and you feel a bit of shame to want any more, because in it's most honest moments the 'Ville can be existential bliss, America baring it's melancholy soul, being honest for a change, being open and country strong, like your cranky dad telling you he loves you after all those years, until it hits you... the ass hole could have told me that 20 years ago and I wouldn't have ever had to harbor all this fucking anger that I am releasing now so bitter sweetly in the first place .. that's Nashville in a PBR pint cup! it's the USA challenging you to truly love it, unconditionally, as it blows by on three interstates in 6 directions with nary an explanation why.. your nose running from the smog, your brain wondering why you got such a taste for the unrequited love of such stunning narcissism.. but oh the moments of perfection... Ooh Nash-Vegas, it ain't no place for a poor boy like me..