Sitting on porches is something I’ve done a bit of in my life. Something about a porch makes sense. Porches are sturdy and elevated. It’s important I think that they’re elevated because it gives whoever is standing or sitting on them a sense that they are overseeing something. That’s a good feeling in general as long as it doesn’t involve a lot of pressure and most porch experiences I’ve had were fairly scant of pressure. The porch is a place to sit and think and smoke and drink coffee. It’s a place to be with a friend and talk about good times. It’s a place people in the movies go when they’ve just been given bad news and the great thing about that is they always seem to be rescued by someone while they’re on the porch and then everything seems like it’s going to be ok.
It’s springtime in Nashville and porches are in fashion. In the past week I’ve sat on three porches. Here’s a few glimpses of my fairly ‘porchy’ week:
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There are two women sitting at a table on the porch at the 12th South Tap Room. The brunette with long hair keeps getting up to fill her glass with water and I notice she’s wearing green camouflage pants with cowboy boots. It looks wrong but somehow o.k. at the same time. None of the guys who keep chatting to her seem to mind anyway so it must be o.k.
From where I’m standing on this particular porch I can see two more young women playing guitars and a cello and a ukulele (not all at the same time of course) on the stage located inside the bar. These young women are beautiful. They’re singing songs that have obscure meanings I think but which I love. These young women are smart. I know this because I spent a couple of evenings talking to them and their respective boyfriends about music, which I like to think I know a little about, and politics, which I know almost nothing about, and songwriting and America. There were no porches involved but the conversations were still pretty good.
If they weren’t already spoken for I’d probably fall in love with one of them. These are not average girls. These are music-playing, opinionated, independent girls. The high school I attended in South Africa had class rankings. The A class was the really smart people. The B class was the nearly, really smart people and so on. After the D class or so everyone was lumped into ‘mixed ability’ classes which was really just a euphemism for ‘not conventionally bright’. Tristan and Larissa are A class girls. When they play it’s all smiles and passion and swaying hips and head shakes. The head shakes are from the cello player, Larrisa, who does that very cello-esque head shake at particularly intense musical moments. It’s very attractive. The hip sways are from Tristen who sings and sways just so. It’s likewise very attractive. If these two girls aren’t famous in a few years then the world is truly a dorky place.
From where I’m standing on the porch I’m suddenly thinking that Nashville is a pretty cool place and that this is some of the best music I’ve heard since I’ve been here.
you can listen to Tristen and Larissa here:
www.myspace.com/larissamaestro
www.myspace.com/tristentristen
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I’m on another porch about a stone’s throw away from where camo-cowgirl sat last night. I’m drinking a glass of Pig’s Head merlot, writing a very long letter. The letter is a relationship post-mortem addressed to a woman who I was engaged to only a few weeks ago. I don’t think I’ll be sending this letter but I need to write it as much as anything I’ve ever done.
The view on this porch is stunning. It’s full of girls drinking wine and wearing their spring wardrobes. Something about the post-relationship haze combined with the change in weather and accompanying shift in the clothing Nashville is wearing makes every woman I see seem strikingly gorgeous. It’s not so much that the ladies are wearing less, even though they are wearing less. I grew up in a town where it’s always hot. The ladies there wear bikinis a lot and that’s very awesome but you get used to it eventually and don’t think much about it. This winter I appreciated all the ladies wearing their cool coats and bum-hugging jeans and scarves very much. They looked lovely and stunning and chic and cute. Now the seasons are changing and a metamorphosis is taking place. I’m seeing legs again. I must say there are a lot of runners in this town and that makes for a lot of good legs. But I think it’s the change more than anything that’s made me suddenly aware of all the ‘amazingness’ surrounding me. I can’t compare it to butterflies emerging from a cocoon because cocoons are ugly and that’s not what’s happening here. It’s a bit like all the lovely, bum-hugging jeans wearing camp were packed up along with their cool scarves and coats and beanies and shipped off to a colder climate and they’ve been replaced with a whole new set of summer-dress wearing, wine-sipping joggers.
Again I’m struck by the thought that this town is looking quite attractive at present.
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The expansive porch I’m sitting on is full of metal chairs and tables. There’s a not-quite-awesome cappuccino in front of me and I’m reading a book by Chuck Klosterman. The cappuccino is at least in a ceramic coffee cup and I like that a lot. The contents are too milky and more like a latte than a cappuccino. I think a place called Café Coco should know the difference. But I’m not all that upset by the average jo because I’m sitting in the sunshine and there are people chatting quietly around me and I’m reading a book about rock music, musicians and other famous people and I like that a lot.
I think I need to instruct the barrister next time to please make sure my cappuccino is what it’s meant to be, i.e., 3 equal volumes of espresso, steamed milk and foam. Actually I probably won’t instruct the barrister about anything because she seemed nice and I work in the service industry too and I’ve served ‘that guy’ before; the obnoxious, know-it-all who likes exactly half a slice of lemon in his water and absolutely nothing on the plate except the sandwich. I think that guy should relax a little and I probably shouldn’t care so much that my coffee is a little milky today. I still get to sit here and appreciate the day and its wonderment and read this excellent book and that’s all pretty great.
So Nashville, when it’s not freezing my too-small-for-bum-hugging-jeans-that-even-the-guys-are-wearing-these-days bum off, in the springtime, is a pretty cool place for porches and lovers of music and jogger legs and wine sipping…. Oh, and coffee.
