Metro Heart – Nashville

Nashville: The First Fifty Days by Matt

Since I’ve worked ahead a bit in school this weekend and finally have some time, Carrie has commissioned me to write our first blog entry. I’m a little wary…We’ve been here for almost two months now and, for a person who can extend a one-minute interaction into a multi-hour story, an attempt to distill such a vast and varied time into a few paragraphs is going to prove tough.

But in a sense, hard tasks have been the order of the day — academically, socially, and emotionally — since we got here. We left stable employment and irreplaceable friends in a deeply familiar and beloved city for an adventure in the rhinestone-studded Buckle of the Bible Belt. We came here friendless, virtually penniless, and, for our first week, literally bed-less. It’s been a Rialto-steep uphill battle to gain some footing and familiarity in a truly bizarre environment.

The first few weeks — maybe the first entire month — was rough. I am an optimist arguably to the point of stupidity, but it was hard to see how anything good would end up materializing here. We were meeting absolutely no one. The only person other than Carrie who I talked to for more than two minutes over the course of the first 3-4 weeks was a homeless man outside of the laundromat. The major street bordering our house is a giant, ugly vein of cars and trucks at all hours, devoid of pedestrians to the point that you feel like the last person on earth as you walk down the sidewalk at noon on a weekday. Our area of the city was largely built during America’s Ugly Mirrored High-Rise period and seemingly the only areas with actual foot traffic, architectural charm, and commercial density are in the hideous tourist trap that is Broadway, Downtown. And to make matters worse, the bizarre anti-bike harassment dished out by the nighttime denizens of Broadway makes Strip District club-goers sound like Emily Post.

Obviously, I could go on. A month longer here and a healthy dose of self-reflection stops me from doing so. How many times have I heard similar tales of woe from recent, jaded transplants to Pittsburgh? It’s so provincial; it’s dirty; Mark Madden keeps eating my children; there’s nothing to do; I can’t understand what Sophie Masloff is saying. It’s so frustrating to hear these things as a native because you know that they could so easily be disproved if the person uttering them would just step out, meet the right people, and throw themselves willingly into the spirit of the place.

And you can find someone who loves anywhere. At the risk of offending the 12 remaining people of Centralia…12 people still choose to live atop a burning mine in central Pennsylvania. I am in one of America’s most celebrated and fascinating cities. A lot of people love this place. One day it struck me: It’s time to step out, meet the right people, and throw myself willingly into the spirit of this place.

So that’s been the story of the last few weeks: exploration, friends, and fun. Bike rides down the Cumberland; racing pigs at the Tennessee State Fair; Mexican food in East Nashville; Mexican food in South Nashville; Mexican food at the Tennessee State Fair; a hike in Warner Park; home-cooked lasagna and wine at a friend’s apartment; thrifting on Charlotte Ave; Michael Jackson dance parties at the Collective. This weekend things truly began to crystallize, and I realized that I was comfortable here for the first time.

(P.S. The same has largely happened for my work and study habits, but that’s a story for another time.)

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