(Author's Note: At the time of publication, I have lived in Nashville, Tennessee for roughly six weeks; I make no pretense to "know Nashville."--After three and a half years in Boston, I would make no such claim about that city.-- The following are merely first impressions. Please forgive my mistaken interpretations, and feel free to disabuse me of them.)

The Nashville skyline consists of a small cluster of "skyscrapers," out of place and in competition with the surrounding hills, so that, often, one cannot see downtown from within the city. It looks rather like a snow-globe rendition of a city's downtown scaled up to life size. The view is dominated by the AT&T (formerly Bellsouth) Tower, also known as "the Batman building" and "Optimus Prime." The mean looking spires atop the AT&T building irresistibly attract the eye, especially at night,  illuminated in blue, and might discourage one from looking up at all.

After the surprisingly diminutive size of Nashville's skyline and the slightly uncomfortable confrontation of the AT&T Tower, one finds the cranes. Chances are that wherever you are in Nashville, you can see a crane. Online listings for condominiums that showcase the homes' views invariably feature the sight of a crane in the distance, probably building another set of condominiums or expanding a college's something-or-other facilities.

(Above: The view from Bernard Road, the walking route from my house to Belmont Boulevard, where we go for Thai food on the cheap from the International Market, or for egg biscuits and high-octane, counter-cultural coffee from Bongo Java. Far right is the AT&T Tower, left of which, if you look closely, are a pair of cranes. Far left is the William R. Snodgrass Tennessee Tower [no kidding], where one CANNOT obtain a new driver's license after moving from out of state.)

Below: From the corner of my block, a crane at Belmont University, expanding their something-or-other facility.)

The cranes, rising up among historic estates and landmarks, are ultimately a symbol of Nashville's sense of continual, almost haphazard, renovation. Neighborhoods are updated and developed suddenly and often without explanation or regard for urban planning or (apparently) zoning restriction, creating a bizarre patchwork of commercial, industrial, and socioeconomic swatches all immediately abutted and unclearly marked. Neighborhoods change, literally, from one side of the street to the other. In this way, one really cannot judge the character of an area of Nashville proper from the map. On the edge of historic Germantown, which measures roughly four blocks, square, Tristan and I went into a Kroger where, along with one store employee who gave us a knowing nod, we were literally the only white people. Dollar General has a store on Eighth Avenue South, among generations-old antique stores.  There is a large Jewish seminary and estate in the middle of rich-as-sin, Baptist, Belle Meade. We saw John Prine shopping at our local grocery store.

"Keep Nashville Weird."

The geographical mishmash of Nashville, with its cockeyed intersections (the insult comes not from the fact that the roads are obviously old horse paths, originally connecting vast estates with the small urban center on the Cumberland, but from the fact that they have the gall to number these streets and issue them North/South/East/West demarcations, as if there were an overarching pattern) and businesses housed in former single family homes, reflects its generally confusing, hybrid attitudes of progress and tradition, deregulation and strict expectation. Judging by the bumper stickers and yard signs, Nashville was dead set on a presidential race between Ron Paul and Barrack Obama. White culture is striated from Old Money, to "new money, no taste," to Whole Foods, SUV driving liberals, to trying-too-hard subculturists, who ride their heavily modded bicycles to the artists' minidistricts, tattoo parlors and coffee shops, to the down-and-out poverty of the semi-rural American South (which is not unlike my native Appalachian Ohio).

Econopolitical contradictions come in all shapes and sizes. There is no Tennessee minimum wage or state income tax. However, entry level work pays significantly more than in Ohio, which just upped its minimum wage, and the sales tax in Nashville (applied to everything) is a staggering 9.25%. As a new resident of Tennessee, I am required to obtain a new driver's license within 30 days. However, I have not been able to satisfactorily demonstrate my residency in the month and a half since I moved here. Working in a wine shop, I have been alerted to policies of the Alcoholic Beverage Commission that evoke emotional, sometimes debilitating, responses from my deep-seeded compassionate rationalism.

(Below: In the Key West Lounge of The 1804 House, our kick-ass rental, doing some paperwork that unmistakably did not result in the issuance of a Tennessee driver license to me.)

Oh, and the music. The town is full of legendary musicians, folks who really understand and care about their art and who also make a living painting by number, so to speak, on creatively destitute pop-country tunes intended to dupe the masses and hopefully sell some cars or tortilla chips or whatever. So, if you're a singer or a "writer" or a player, you can definitely find your place in the industry. But if you consider yourself an artist in a sense that doesn't relate to commercial success, you can find a home among vastly talented and truly friendly people, too.

To sum it up, anything goes, here, as long as you're nice and aren't in violation of any apparently completely arbitrary laws or mores. Confusing, right? I know.

Nashville is weird. Not in terms of the collective sense of individual freedom and rejection of the status quo for which, say, Portland, Oregon is known. But it's definitely weird, all the same. I like it here. A lot.

HD