Nashville Part Two
I met my former supervisor from IVCF at Sitar off of West End Avenue tonight. I drove the 1.7 miles as I did not have time to walk it.
My 14 months in Nashville happened 21 years ago. I dated someone who lived off of West End Avenue and my job with Lex Brodie was off of West End, so travelled it fairly often. Tonight, nothing triggered a memory. I liken it to a dementia: The name of the street sounds familiar, but I recognize zero landmarks. Disoriented, I follow the voice of Siri, guiding me around the crosshatches demarcating blocks until I find the now diminutive building that holds Sitar.
“Siri, are you sure this is West End Avenue?”
“Yes, Kara, don’t you remember?”
No, Siri, I don’t.
On the 1.7 miles back, I made a wrong turn and ended up on Music Row. For about a block, the Nashville of my memory flooded my eyes. The early to mid-19th century homes, neatly lined side-by-side with their muted colors trimmed in white. Across from these homes, the perpetually-empty, chain-linked-fenced lot dances in the corners of my memory, but is now replaced with something more commercial, something to feed the stomach or eyes or empty places within us all.
Even Siri missed that Chet Atkins Way no longer goes straight through to 18th Avenue South as construction on a new several-stories-high condo/loft/apartment building blocks its path. Maybe Siri is having her own dementia issues. Maybe ChatGPT will be her guide as she slowly fades away.
The Nashville of 20 years ago wasn’t inherently better or worse than the Nashville of today. Just as the Nashville of the mid-19th century Music Row wasn’t inherently better or worse compared to 20 years ago. I simply miss the familiarity and how certain places in their particular situation (the buildings, the streets, the green spaces, etc.) hold the familiarity and return it to me in an embrace. I see the place, and the place sees me, and we tell each other the secrets we share.
When the space changes as drastically as West End Avenue has and is changing (and can anything that has taken 20 + years to change be called drastic? But work with me.), it turns cold: an old lover whose reinvention resembles nothing I found attractive in the first place.
And so, Nashville will be easier to leave, easier to release in my heart, easier to forget in my mind. . . maybe. I still hold the secrets after all, and somewhere the city holds them, too.
