Day 1. Flew into Nashville airport. There are rocking chairs in the arrivals lounge. Our taxi driver detours to pick up his checkers board. He and the other taxi drivers play checkers together when it's quiet. One, from Somalia, is a checkers champion. Sometimes he wins 10 times in a row. This antagonises the Nigerian taxi drivers, who generally dislike the Somalians.
Day 2. A driving tour of the city. Our Canadian hosts are relieved when we tell them we dislike Nashville. The weird zoning that places a rubbish tip next to a pedestrian bridge next to a football stadium! Vast deserted car parks as the only public space! Mega churches deposited one after another in long strips!
It's a car city, our host tells us. You're nothing without a car. When they'd first arrived in America, they tried to do without a car, he says. They walked and rode the bus everywhere. The buses are great here, he says. You can have great conversations. Everyone talks, he says. But it takes hours to get anywhere, he says. They took up cycling. Everyone thinks you're crazy if you cycle here, he says. People yell at you. But he cycles to work nonetheless, he says.
In the evening, our hosts drive us out to La Hacienda for dinner. We are delighted by the warmth of the waitreseses and the excellence of the food. The only thing for them is to become Mexican, we tell our hosts. Learn Spanish. Learn to Salsa.
Day 3. Downtown Nashville consists largely of car parks. Odd bits of metal stick out of the ground at shin height. This is not a town for pedestrians. The honky tonks distress us with their noise and clamour. A fully outfitted cowboy walks down the street. 'Must be German', says W.
Later that day, lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant. It is delightful to tip a side plate of herbs into my ramen, and then to squeeze lime jouice over it. You'll have to become Vietnamese, we tell our hosts. It's the only way you'll survive here.
The size of the car park outside the restaurant distresses us. Madly, our hosts drives his car round and round in circles. I can't get over the amount of space here!, he says. It's madness!
We visit the full size concrete replica of the Parthenon. It sits vast and unapologetic in the sun. Why is it here? Why here, rather than anywhere else? These questions bewilder us. We are Old Europeans and this is the New World. People here are very proud of the Nashville Parthenon, says our host.
In the evening, he tells us about his project to photograph the old parts of Nashville before they are demolished. There's virtually nothing left of it, he says. It keeps him sane, he says, cycling around old ruins and finding a way to break in and take pictures of what he finds. That night he shows us a slide show of photographs on his laptop and trembles with melancholy. Where did it all go wrong?
Day 4. A trip by Greyhound bus to Memphis. An armed policeman behind the counter in the bus station watches us menacingly. On the way to the station, our taxi driver, a Somalian, tells us the USA is a third world country. That's what we were thinking, we tell him. He tells us about the lack of healthcare and the low wages. People kill themselves all the time, he says. They come to America for a better life, and they end up killing themselves, he says. They want to go to college for a better life and they're working three jobs. And then they kill themselves, he says.
On the bus, we're sitting by the toilet, which was a terrible mistake. Something terrible happened inside. Passengers gasp when they open the door. One brings a portable air freshener, spraying it around her in the sign of the cross. We hold orange skins to our noses. What a smell! It's terrible!
Memphis, unexpectedly, is cold. The tax driver in Memphis tells us the weather doesn't know what it's doing. After lunch, we go to Gap to buy warm clothes. It was the last place we wanted to go, but here we are. The clothes are too cheap! Who made them? In what mess of exploitation are we caught?
Day 5. We're heading to Graceland. Hearing Sal is from Nottingham, our taxi driver says he grew up on Robin Hood. he says he always asks his passengers from Nottingham whether there was a real Robin Hood. It's amalgamates several myths, says W., expertly. The taxi driver's brother rings. I have passengers from Nottingham, says the taxi driver. 'You remember: Robin Hood, his Merry Men and all that'. He and his brother grew up watching the adventures of Robin Hood on the TV, he recalls.
We learn from our taxi driver that Beale Street was almost entirely rebuilt in the 1980s. Back in '68, when Dr King was assassinated, he explains, there were no riots in Memphis, no trouble, but the city authorities took the opportunity to demolish Beale Street, home of the blues, and surrounding areas. At the Civil Rights Museum, sited next to the hotel where Dr King was shot, one woman has kept a 25 year protest against the demolition of black businesses. It's not what Dr King would have wanted, says our taxi driver.
We are quietly moved by Graceland, and wish we'd paid for the VIP tour, which includes the Elvis After Dark exhibit, full access to the aeroplanes and the jumpsuit museum. Sal buys 200 dollars worth of tat, but cannot find the Elvis tie she promised her dad. Discussion of the difference between tat and tack.
Our bus back to Nashville has been delayed for many hours. No one tells us. The lady in front of us was heading to a funeral; she won't make it now. I sit down with W. and tell him Hindu stories. Sal offers Gummi Bears to everyone in the queue. No one wants Gummi Bears. On the bus, which arrives 4 hours late at midnight, one passenger watches The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fitful sleep haunted by screams.
Day 6. In a bar at the Five Points, W. berates the bartender about the poor choice of gin. Bombay Gin is terrible, he tells her. Tanqueray isn't bad, especially with tonic but Bombay Gin is a marketing gimmick. She says her customers like it. W. tells her to get Plymouth Gin. You can buy it in America, he says. Our bartender looks irked. She'll continue to buy what her customers like, she says.
Later, we sit out on our hosts' porch drinking Plymouth Gin. How have they ended up in America, wonders our host. It's a terrible country, he says. The guns! The churches! The poverty! In the evening, we listen to Barbecue Bob and Memphis Minnie (trading licks with Kansas Joe McCoy) and Big Joe Williams (with his nine string guitar) and sip bourbon. Our host makes us listen to the funk guitar style of the Mississippi Sheiks. He points out their sophisticated melodies (it's their microphone technique, he says).
In the string bands, you can find the ultimate blend of melody and rhythm, says our host. He's really an enemy of melody, he says. W. thinks he's gone too far. Fuck melody!, our host says. He hates dead syncopations, he says. He hates drums. Everything goes wrong when drums are brought in, he says. I'm swept up by his argument. Fuck melody!, I shout. Fuck drums!
Our host makes us listen to early John Lee Hooker. He plays electric guitar rhythmically, he says. Rhythm is everything, he says. He puts on Bukka White. The guitar produces the rhythm, says our host.
Day 7. Through Sevier Country to a cabin in the Smokies, listening to rural blues and gospel. Route 441 takes us through the so-called Redneck Riviera -Pigeon Forge. Our host shouts and cries as we pass the mini golf courses, go-carts, water rides, laser games, motels, adverts for The Miracle Theatre and The Comedy Barn and then, finally, The Miracle Theatre which presents a show that includes an aerial battle of angels and a re-enactment of the crucifixion and the Comedy Barn, which presents an award winning family variety show for all the family one after another, one lined up after another. The buildings have been deposited here without sense or order. They are linded up in an endless strip. Kroger's. The Old Time Country Shop. Mini-malls. Huge crosses that loom out over nowhere. Is there no end? We're crushed. There's no room for him, says our host. This is auto-satire. It satirises itself. There's no perspective left from which to laugh. He cries and wails with pain.
Earlier, as we drove, our host and hostess tell us of the Yukon. Of the endless stretches of pristine forests, of deserted lakes where you could pitch your teepee and be undisturbed. Of the close harmony singing that would ring out in the Canadian night. How had they ended up here?
Night falls and we are lost in the mountains. Where's our cabin? Precipitous falls to the left and the right. Our host, the driver is edgy. We get out and walk - the road's too steep for the car. What are we going to do? Then we see it: the cabin. It's almost too late for our host. He's raving. What's he doing here? How did he end up here? He can't drive anymore, he, a non-driver! Not another mile! Later, he collapses on the balcony, still wet from the hot tub: the dying swan, half wrapped in a towel.
Only turnip greens can save us, he decides. He cooks a whole pan of them. Turnip greens!, he says. Plymouth Gin! Rural blues! Barbecue Bob! The Golden Gate Singers! These are the talismans that allow him to survive in the USA.
Day 8. Snow. W. is reading and writing in his notebook. Is he having any thoughts?, I ask him. The others have gone out. W. says his mind is a perfect blank.
That night we drink ourselves into oblivion. Our host's complaints rise to the same magnificent level as our Somalian taxi driver's. It's a third world country!, he says. It's gone mad!, he says. When they first arrived in America, he says, he saw two 12 year old kids held face down by an armed security guard. He was pointing the gun at their heads, he says. Our host went home and didn't come out for days. This country is insane, he says.
Back in Nashville, our host, our driver, falls out of his car. I can't drive anymore! We talk softly to him, and sit out on the porch with Plymouth Gin cut with water. This is yuppie hour, says our host, slowly recovering, when joggers and dog walkers fill the streets. He shows us his tattoo: workers of the world unite, it says.
Day 9. Our host talks movingly of the early blues players. They led such short lives! But life is short! There's not much time! He and our hostess reminisce about Canada. How have they ended up here? I think at night our open-hearted hosts dream of the endless stretches of the Yukon.
Day 10. Our last taxi driver, who is taking us back to the airport, is apocalyptic. In America, your teeth rot in your mouth, he says, because you can't afford healthcare. There's the rich and there's the poor, he says, and the poor have nothing and never will have anything but nothing. We drive through the Projects. There's no minimum wage here, he says. People are paid five - six dollars an hour, that's all.