Well it's not quite London or the south of France
Or an Asian island or a second chance....
Those are some of the lyrics to a song called "Nashville" that I first heard about six months before I moved to Nashville back in 2005. That song's writer David Mead became one of the musicians I would become a fan of during my time there, and in true Nashville form, ended up hanging out on his porch one Saturday for a yard sale that wasn't his. Typical.
Anyway, my friend Emily and I semi-spontaneously decided to road trip to Nash-vegas for Labor Day weekend. We stopped in Knoxville on the way down to see The Dirty Guv'nahs perform a hometown show:
Amazingly fun band with a very dynamic lead singer who has some Jagger-esque moves on stage
But I digress. On to Nashville...You're a distant memory, you're an exit sign....
It had been four years since I had been back to Nashville and you know that weird mix of sensory memory and some other kind of memory that enables you to drive on auto pilot to work and suddenly think "how did I get here?" - well, I had that as soon as we got to town. Things were familiar but evasive. But it was good to be back.
We of course ate at my favorite restaurant where lunch for 3 people was only $15. And I showed Emily the appropriate amounts of downtown Nashville and Broadway, including my favorite honky tonk, Robert's Western World:
We also had a great time reconnecting (or just connecting I guess for Emily) with some of my friends in Nashville over meals. Lots of laughs and lots of catching up on life. My favorite times are always spent with a good mixture of both of those.
What I was so glad to come away with from the weekend was two-fold:
1) Even more of an appreciation for my friendship with Emily. She's a fantastic person, sister in Christ, and friend and a guaranteed good time even for hours in a car.
2) A new perspective on Nashville. I love that town and am glad I could see it with new eyes this trip. I am now even more thankful for the nearly 2 years I spent there and even though it wasn't a perfect fit, since God wanted me in Arlington, I can now see that the hardest things for me about being in Nashville would have been true wherever I had been. And David Mead's song, which has meant different things to me at different times over the past 6 years since I first heard it, took on yet another meaning for me because of this trip. Oh, Nashville. Your songwriters really are incredibly talented.
Going back to Nashville, thinking about the whole thing
Guess you gotta run sometimes
Maybe I'm a fast train rolling down the mountain
Watching all my life go by
Going back to Nashville, laughing at a bad break
What's the use in wondering why
Maybe I'm a storm front rolling through the valley
Tearing up a good July....
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