My name is Nashville. I am the state capital of Tennessee, located right on the Cumberland River. Reese Witherspoon has a home in my Belle Meade neighborhood. Jack White has a club here too, and although his early albums with the White Stripes were a little too punk for my taste, I can’t get enough of the excellent 2012 single “Love Interruption.” I especially admire the line “Stick a knife inside me/And twist it all around.”
I believe in looking out for myself and, even for a handsome “it-city” with an NFL franchise and a massive music industry, that’s no easy task. I use an expensive deep pore cleanser and a fine honey almond exfoliating scrub. And I start my morning routine by absorbing nearly all film and television subsidies allotted for the entire state in order to prop up my universally acclaimed namesake TV show.
Each morning over a cup of coffee at The Frothy Monkey I read the newspaper. Just yesterday, as my labyrinthine mind contemplated things like RCA Studio B, the Hermitage, The Parthenon in Centennial Park, Cheekwood, the Gaylord Entertainment Center, and Yazoo beer, I discovered that, in spite of having terrible jobs, difficult lives, and low access to healthcare, Memphis, that fat, economically devastated city on the Mississippi, is somehow much happier than I am. Now I cannot stop looking west and wondering what else I need to take in order to change this.
There is an idea of Nashville, some kind of abstraction. You can visit the gift shop at my Country Music Hall of Fame and take in a concert at Robert’s Westernwear. You may even get the sense that you know me. But the fact is, no matter what the maps may say, I simply am not there.
