The Nashville that welcomed me still held a sweetness, an innocence, an idealism that was as iconic and familiar to any American as the Woody Guthrie anthem “This Land is Your Land.” The big sky made things feel possible there. The rock formations along the freeways are a sight to behold. Beautiful Tennessee limestone stands at attention jutting from the earth in all directions. The state is bookended out east by The Great Smoky Mountains and Dolly Parton, and out west by the mighty Mississippi and Elvis. It has the greatest grouping of surrounding states in the whole of America; Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri all cradle it. The interstates 24, 40 and 65 convene in Nashville, right smack in the middle of Middle Tennessee. And the town is set up like a wagon wheel, with downtown at its center and the 44O Parkway encircling the city and bracing the continuously expanding pikes. Tennessee is a majestic state and Nashville is the junction at the center of it all; bustling alongside the meandering Cumberland River.
Nashville was a plain town when you first looked at it; mostly brick. Its architectural jewel was the “AT&T Building”- a 33-story “skyscraper” finished in 1994, 2 years before my arrival. They would speak of it with pride because it was the tallest building in the skyline. Nashville Skyline and Harvest were recorded in Nashville. Willie wrote “Hello Walls” in Nashville. Roy Orbison recorded “Only the Lonely” in Nashville. The Grand Ole Opry broadcasted Hank, Elvis, Johnny, Porter and Patsy forever weaving them into the fabric of the American psyche.
Even as a young west coast girl I knew their songs. The Country Music Hall of Fame was anchored at the very end of Music Row. The facade is made of colored glass panels that run up to a soaring roof line whose perimeter, broken in six parts, implies both a church and a barn, like it’s catching the Holy Spirit of the “everyman.” The entryway runs between ornamental trees and a fountain which greets visitors, domestic and international. They come to see for themselves the stories they’d imagined in song.
Love took me there and I was suddenly caught up in someone else’s world, tumbling through time in the middle of the music scene. Music Row was popping. I was pulled into a whirlwind of parties, concerts and entertaining — and being entertained; new people, new landscape, new foods, new customs. After the culture shock wore off, I got back to work, cooking, and picked up my camera again. I chose to use a Lomo. It was the first of the Burning Man years and my friend from high school was hired by Outside Magazine to document the gathering. He later showed me the photos he took with his “personal” camera and it was love at first sight. The camera exaggerated color, creating “painterly” images rather than standard snapshots. I ordered my Lomo from B&H Photo in New York. It was made in Russia. Because the lens “focuses on zones” rather than particular spots and because I never used the flash, the lens had to stay open to catch the light, tracking movement and intensifying saturation. To a passerby, the images might be presumed “blurry” but I see them as suggestive and elusive, like a memory. To me, the Lomo was the perfect instrument to accompany me through my dynamic new home of bright lights and big songs. Musicians used a guitar or drums, I metered time with a camera.
I didn’t bother to look through the viewfinder. I just carried the Lomo with me like a non-judgmental companion. It’s small. It fit in my hand and it’s so low-fi that no one even really noticed it. I’d find myself captivated by a circumstance and think, “This is interesting…” and I’d sneak the camera out of my bag or my coat pocket. I could set it on the table and take pictures as somebody was telling me a story. I could snap a shot left-handed or right-handed, at my chest or shoot from my hip. But after a while, I noticed that the camera was capturing its own version of things. I had no control over the choice of subject; light decided that. This made picking up my film as exciting as Christmas morning. I counted the days between dropping film and retrieving it. I’d leave Clayton Avenue, go down to 12th Avenue South, cruise down some pretty side street like Halcyon or Gilmore or South Douglas, past Zanie’s, left at Douglas Corner onto 8th all the way down to Lafayette to Dury’s where I’d pick up those blue and white envelopes with anticipation. Did I get that weird dude barking at the Tennessee State Fair? Or beautiful Lesley under that cool tiki lantern? Or that firework rocket at Bob Goldstone’s bonfire? Or Sheila B giving me “the eye” right before cracking a joke and us laughing for 10 minutes?
Sometimes I would end up with entire rolls of nothing.
But as I ran through the prints there would usually be at least one that clicked. Could have been a row of trees on the Belmont campus near the tennis courts, covered in snow. Could have been a backstage vignette at 12th and Porter or lovers in a crowd at the Exit/In, a songwriter telling a story at an “in the round” at the Bluebird or a friend surrounded by a “halo” of light at a local restaurant. The images that caught my eye fell into the traditional essentials of photography; composition, lighting and subject matter but they were more and they excited me with their saturated color, sense of mystery and peculiarity. I’d remember being there but what I was seeing in the photos was either different or more extreme than my memory of the experience. It was like the camera didn’t grab a moment in time but rather recorded a happening, illuminating the magic in a situation hidden from my mortal view.
My Lomo captured space, motion and time. A video camera would have been too literal, too intrusive, too obvious, making others self-conscious. With the Lomo people were in the room with me, not a camera. Does it matter that you can’t make out the drumsticks of a drummer? Or is the motion of his hands telling you that he’s in the throws of a groove? I wasn’t capturing a particular person but rather witnessing an act of joy. A musician fully exalted while playing a song is jubilant and infectious. Beats in time, drift, atmosphere, that’s what I see in these images.
I have come to realize that the outward simplicity of the landscape and architecture in Nashville was the blank page which allowed so many stories to be told from this single source – this hub in the middle of Middle Tennessee. Where a city as spectacular as San Francisco or New Orleans pushed its way into a story, Nashville itself didn’t boast. It was intimate. The songs and stories written in Nashville were personal, internal and private; written under canopies of trees, in simple homes alone; or often between only 1 or 2 other people, as in a co-writing session. So the stories and songs generated and told in Nashville were about humans and their relationships to one another. Likewise, my images are focused on people and the spark between them; that which happens when people are together. And of course, they reflect my love of eccentrics, creators, those that conspire to make the world more marvelous and interesting; the colorful, the outcasts.
Some of these people came through my life in an instant. Some for months. Others I still speak with everyday. Tech nerd, editor, cook, teacher, cantor, author, producer, father, mother, daughter, son, singer, guitar player, bass player, drummer, genius, newborn, artist, sculptor, booze-hound, stoner, star, songwriter, lover, friend. They’re all here. Mostly still.