Street Art

"There are a few places where the view of the city is great. Most of the best of them are hard to get to. They're most often discovered by accident in the course of a work day. There's the bend in I-65 where the skyline comes into view. Follow the interstate around to the Wedgewood split and it's easy to feel like George Jetson, zipping around the city in an airborne car of the future (circa 1962). Look at the skyline from the second story east-facing window at Oasis Center or the backside of the BMI administration building and the Nashville you'd see would be a version of the city as dreamed up by Philip K. Dick if one of his characters was feeling nostalgic for the old days,

"The finest view, the most magical vantage point,required movement. It was a movie unto itself with you as the star driving down Shelby Avenue at night after a hard rain. The hills and shadows of trees roll by as you pass house after house after house with the occasional church or corner store breaking the yellow home glow of porch lights with the righteousness of neon crosses or the raunch a quick fix of empty calories available for purchase inside or less acceptable responses to emptiness in the parking lot. All of those lights pour onto the street  As you go by, the reflections from every light  from the safety, the sin, the salvation, it all appears as jagged, shattered bits of light spilled into the rain to turn the dull, worn road into something brilliant.

"You crest what has to be the last hill before the river, only it really isn't, and that's when you get your first glimpse of downtown. It starts with the top of the Batman Building and quickly opens into a panorama that includes what is considered the backside of downtown. Nonsense. It's just as pretty as the postcard images. Prettier, really."

Anita sighed and let the candle she was holding drip onto the charcoal and incense. It flared and then sizzled out. She considered going back to the Anglican weeks she'd been reciting before she wandered off into a conversation with James.

Why James? She hadn't thought about him in a while, probably before she veered off into the ill-fitting progression of career choices that somehow led her right back to where she started sometime ago. Years. That meant she hadn't thought about or really talked to James in years. He had missed so much. Some of it she was glad he wasn't around for: 9-11, the Murrah bombing, the weird cultural lurch that made everyone seem to fear and loathe everyone else. There were the things he would have loved if he'd been around to see them: Lady Gaga, the wins for marriage equality, Angels in America, so much, so very much had changed.

James closed his eyes on a world where fun had a body count and the president refused to say the name of the plague or the people carried away by it. The quilt panels they'd worked on were now an historic talking point in college classrooms.

"I'm getting old, James. If I'm wandering around in the past and talking to dead friends, there's no way around it. I am getting old."

What brought this on was what she recognized as an "art moment". She was driving home, driving down Shelby and wondering if the street reminded her more of Leroy Neiman or David Hockney. Then it hit her that it really didn't remind her of either one. It was just an art moment unto itself. Then she remembered another art moment on a road in 1987 in Memphis. Nostalgia? Really? She thought she wasn't prone to that sort of thing. But that time came back...

It was fall and she was in the car with James. Was it really almost three in the morning? Nobody she knew slept back then. She wondered how they did it without chemical assistance. Youth, maybe.

"You have to see this." she managed to get James to ride with her from campus to Poplar Avenue."

As she made the turn from Madison to Poplar, James rolled his eyes. "I think Keifer was kidding when he suggested TP-ing the rich kids at Southwestern."

Anita did a quick survey to see if there was anyone else on the road. Not a soul. She put the car in park in the turning lane and turned to James.

"Look," she said, "This is something really great that I noticed last night when I was driving home. Here's what you have to do. Roll down your windows and, I know it's going to be a challenge, but you need to be quiet and just listen. Okay?"

James nodded his head, "You are my Sherpa. My Memphis Sherpa. Now let's adventure on." He rolled down his window and wriggled against the seat to settle in, then he turned to Anita. "Okay, Sherpa. Lead on."

She put the car into gear and they turned on to Poplar. Just past the corner of Overton Park, Anita saw what she hoped was still as it was. The street was covered in a carpet of yellow leaves. The streetlights, teardrop-shaped mock Victorian lamps, bathed everything in a glow that was halfway between honey and amber.

James started to say something and she shushed him. It started to rain. As she drove slowly down the deserted street, they could hear the sound of the big drops and soft whisper of the tires rolling through the leaves. Anita heard James breathe in as he saw the play of light and sound, but she didn't look at James until they pulled into the parking lot of Squash Blossom.  When she did, he was beaming.

"Call it!" he said.

It came to her immediately.

"Winsor McCay's galloping beds wandering into a Maxfield Parrish painting."

"Yes!" he cheered. "Let's do it again!"

In the present, which was also rainy and pretty, but without James, Anita relit her candle and shifted her beads. She made a silent promise to focus and finish her decades. Before she did, she said goodnight to James.

"There's magic and art afoot. Wish you were here, love."


copyright 2015 Jas Faulkner/Zen Dixie