Nashville

Yesterday I did some work around the office, then drove home and packed and left for Nashville at around 11:00 EST. I had a good sunny drive down through Knoxville and, because I was in something of a hurry, went through a Wendy's drive-thru at I-40's exit 347 (the Rockwood/Harriman exit). As I sat there looking at the menu board, I suddenly realized that I've been stopping at this exit to eat--most often at Wendy's--during my Nashville comings and goings for some 25 years now. That amazes me.

I arrived in Nashville between 2:30 and 3:00 CST and went to the Doubletree Hotel downtown on 4th Avenue North. The conference of the southeastern association of university writing centers was taking place there, and I was to participate on a panel called "Songwriters in the Writing Center," a panel organized by my friend Rob Russell, a rocker who runs the Writing and Communication Center at ETSU. The six of us on the panel--Rob, another Rob from Roan State Community College, Jill and Sam from the Everybody Fields, a Nashville recording artist and songwriter named Steve (I think) and I--each played a song and told about its composition. The two Robs and I--the "academics" of the group--talked about notions of reflection and collaboration that go on in the writing process, and the other three chimed in well on the topic. We had good questions and comments from the audience of 30 or so.

Later in the evening, after checking in at the Embassy Suites Nashville @ Vanderbilt University, I walked over to West End to meet my good friends Mark and jb at the Blackstone. We had a great meal with some great beer and conversation, staying at the place until almost midnight.

Our conversation, as it often does these days, revolved around politics and religion. My friends are much more well read on these topics than I. And they're much more passionate about them.

Maybe it's because I have so much other stuff to read and write that I'm unable to keep up with these kinds of things. Maybe it's because I don't trust politics or religion to interpret and manage this present world for me. I vote, but politics has more and more become like bad television, like roller derby or professional wrestling. It's flamboyant and noisy, going 'round and 'round without a point, strutting its steroid-enhanced muscle in the ring. Religion has become so divisive that on any scale grander than the individual human heart and its closest compadres, it seems to cancel itself out.

So what do I do? I don't know. but I'm reminded of a few lines near the end of a poem by Robert Penn Warren. I don't remember the exact title, but it's somethink like "An Old-time Childhood in Kentucky." The scene is something like this: three generations of males stand before a rock formation. They are an old man, his son and his grandson. The middle of these three looks at the fossil record embedded in the rock and says something that obviously goes against the idea of creation to which the old man--and through love of the old man, the boy--seems to adhere. When the middle man walks away, the boy says to his grandfather something like, "Well, what do we do now, things being what they are?" The following lines (slashes show the end of lines) are the old man's response:

. . . Love / Your wife, love your get, keep your word, and / If need arises die for what men die for. There aren't / Many choices. / And remember that truth doesn't always live in the number of voices.