“After 541 Years in Nashville” (Letter Art Project)

Here’s the result of my Nashville Letter Art Project: “After 541 Years in Nashville.”

I asked folks to send me letters and answer the following question. After so many years in Nashville, what did you learn?

I added up the collective experience you mailed in and it came out to 541 years. I’ve been fascinated how letter writing contrasts usual writing on the web. Letters are one-to-one, intimate and powerful. I wanted to tap into this depth.

I was thinking I’d make a poster, but I wanted all the letters to be easily read in narrative form. All images are Share Alike if you want to use any for your own project. Thanks everyone for the letters!

Check it out.

Dear Nashville, write me letters so I can make you some sweet art?

I dreamed up this Nashville lettering-writing art project and now I need your help!

Coud you write me a letter? I’ll write you back in the form of digital art you can print out and hang on that blank wall in your bathroom. The prompt is:

After [number] years in Nashville, I learned _______.

The above image is a quick example of how I’ll build the art. I’ll add up the years from your sentences to name the work. So it might be called “After 324 Years in Nashville” if y’all decide this work needs some love.

I’ve been thinking of ways to encourage a deeper level of dialogue on the Internet. In the world of sharing for hundreds or thousands at the speed of a tweet, sometimes depth gets lost.

I wanted to engage in something personal, direct and rare: like letter writing. 

Letter writing is the new jam like vinyl. Turn off Facebook for the night, light a candle and feel the creative freedom. When you write in a new way, you’ll learn new things about yourself.

You don’t need to currently live in Nashville, as long as you’ve spent at least a year here. Just tell me something that’s true to you. Write as many of the sentence prompts as you’d like.

It can be personal, dark, funny, general or about whatever you’d like. Below are all the details you need. If you have a question, post it in the comments.

Please and Thank You!

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How to Participate

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1. Write me a letter!

Please send me a stamped letter by Friday 9/30 to participate.

1. Include one or more sentences in this format: 
   
   After NUMBER year(s) in Nashville, I learned _______ .
    
2. Write in your own handwriting on white, line-free paper.
3. Sign your name only as you’d like it to appear publicly.
4. Send your letter to:

Nate Baker
1414 17th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37212

2. Tell others so the art is super sweet.

Please consider re-posting this on your blog and/or sharing this on facebook/twitter/diaspora/qwikster so I have a decent stack of letters, and therefore a sweet looking piece of artwork to share back with y’all. Something like…

RT @nathanTbaker: Dear Nashville, write me letters so I can make you some sweet art? http://natene.ws/letter-art

3. Get digital art.

I’ll license the work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It’ll likely be a poster-sized pdf you can print out.

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UPDATE: Here’s the result of my Nashville Letter Art Project: “After 541 Years in Nashville”

Let’s play irl Four Square on a ship

See this pirate ship thing in Centennial Park? Take a look from the top.



It’s perfect for Four Square—not the social network. NERD. Put that phone in your pocket. It’s time to mingle and sweat in a competitive setting. I’m talking about some In Real Life (irl) Four Square. I’ll bring the chalk and a ball that bounces. You in?

Wednesday’s a great day, as once it gets dark you can walk over to Movies in the Park if you want some more adventure. Here’s how to find the ship in Centennial Park. Meet you at 6 p.m.

RSVP for a good time and if you want to work on your fear of moderately high things.

Nashville’s Belmont University: A Review for Prospective Students

I get emails from parents of prospective Belmont University students fairly regularly. I thought I’d move the conversation online so there’s a place for the conversation to grow.

First, some context…

My Bias: I blow a kiss every time I drive by Belmont since I enjoyed it so much. Be warned my sentiment is overall positive. Some of my peers have other positions. It was a good fit for me, although one factor for my bias is I didn’t pay full price. For instance, I was an in-state student and eligible for a Hope Scholarship so my overall expectations were lower. With this in mind, I don’t have much stake in not being honest about my feelings on Belmont. Here’s one opinion. Seek others.

Some other viewpoints to get you started:

• Critical Facebook group
• Belmont-related posts from popular blog, Nashvillest
• Filter to some of the positive and negative reviews on studentreviews.com
• Belmont Fall Follies comedy troupe videos have a lot of truth in them.
• Journalism students’ The Week At Belmont news videos

Grapevine Concerns: The most common concerns from Belmont students I’ve heard are that Bob “The Builder” Fisher has been growing the school too quickly, issues surrounding the Lisa Howe Controversy, parking and that it’s not worth the money.

Belmont in the News: Within the last year, Belmont has most notably gotten national media attention “when women’s soccer coach Lisa Howe allegedly lost her job at the university because she is a lesbian” and for their men’s basketball NCAA appearance.

Interview

Below is an email conversation from a parent of a prospective Belmont student from 9/2010. It’s edited for length.

I have copied my son who is a Senior on this email. I, too, graduated in Journalism from university so I’m interested what you’re doing now that you’ve graduated. 

I never changed my major although it’s quite common to change your major a few times. I studied journalism, but I work in an Internet Technology company now, Sitemason [Now I work at Raven Internet Marketing Tools]. I designed websites on the side and my current job is more related to the business I started while at Belmont. Belmont has a great entrepreneur program that supported me. For instance, they have a few shared community work spaces or hatcheries where you can get a key and work at a computer, in a quiet space, with a printer, etc.

The journalism degree has helped me with the small amount of marketing I do at my current job and has given me a foundation to go into marketing if I’d like. So even though I’m not in the same field as my major, I’m more attractive to potential employers. I’ve become a better writer because of my major as well, which has helped with my long term goal of becoming a fiction author.

More about me: http://nathanbaker.com

I’m sure my son will have other questions for you regarding Belmont but I’ll start with a few:

What’s the best characteristic, from a student’s perspective, about Belmont?

It was a very creative school. Since half the students are music or music business majors, there is a whole lot of creative energy which I live for. It’s the type of energy you may feel if you have ever gone to a school specializing in the arts. If you want to get involved in a video project or find people to play music with, it’s there.

How would you describe campus life at Belmont? Does the campus feel small and local or cosmopolitan or something other than that?

It’s a small-town, comfortable, small, rural feeling campus. It’s pretty close to things though so it’s not constricting. Nashville has a fantastic park system so there are always places to find open space. You usually run into a lot of your friends by just walking campus.

Did you participate in any international studies while attending Belmont? If so, can you elaborate on your experience with that?

Not studies, but I did lead a mission trip to Mexico one summer and also went to Honduras for a journalism trip another summer. The international offerings are pretty standard for any established university.

Since Belmont is pretty entrenched in music they have campuses on the West and East coast music scenes as well.

Did you know anyone in the Music/Music Industries area of study and/or do you know much about Belmont’s music as an area of study?

Yes. My roommate of two years studied music business. It took him a while but he’s now working at a music artist management company. I have a lot of friends in the music industry. It’s hard work because of the competition, but Nashville will sharpen you because there is so much talent here.

My dad could connect you to a cousin who graduated from Belmont that is more entrenched in the music scene if you have more specific music questions.

Thanks, Nate. Hope you’re doing well in this tough economy.

Yes! Blessed to be doing well for a 25-year-old and blessed to be doing so well compared to the average global citizen.

Let me know what questions you have or if I can connect you with anyone at Belmont. Feel free to ask harder questions too.

Being a Baptist College, how prevalent is “Christian Atmosphere” at Belmont? (not in terms of whether or not good people attend, but formalization of religion and openness to alternative views). 

Is the approach laid back or more fundamentalist? 

Belmont used to be a Baptist school, but it’s now no longer affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention:

They still market themselves as Christian though:

“Belmont University is a student-centered Christian community providing an academically challenging education that empowers men and women of diverse backgrounds to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage and faith.”

It’s fairly laid back. The religious requirements when I went were:

1. A portion of convocation are faith develop sessions.

2. Two religious classes were required. eg. new and old testament or new and old together plus a Jesus and film class.

Chapel or church wasn’t mandatory.

[Oh if you go to Belmont and you’re into Jesus, check out Belmont RUF. Great teaching and community.] 

Are there any unique campus restrictions like dorm curfews or alcohol bans?

In dorms you have to sign in people of the opposite sex. In on campus apartments people just don’t sign in. Officially the campus is a dry campus and there are checks once or twice a semester, but there are ways to get around this.

Also, where did your roommate intern and then where did he get a job?

I forget the name of his company actually and where he interned.

If a stranger visited the campus would you even recognize it as a Baptist College or would it seem pretty much like any other college campus?

It would seem like a normal campus.

The Conversation

Current Belmont Students: Feel free to weight in with how things are changing and if something I said doesn’t ring true for you. A lot changes in four years. Leave a comment.

Prospective Students & Parents: Feel free to ask me additional questions in the comments or email me directly if you don’t mind me adding your question to this post.

Photos from my Belmont Flickr Photo Set.

It took a robbery for me to meet my neighbor

My house was robbed over Thanksgiving. They caught the alleged robber, so this morning I’m going to court to testify.

Here’s an edited excerpt of what I wrote some friends after I was robbed:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I’m thankful I finally met my first neighbor, Willy.
That I get to spend time with my family.
That I don’t have to work till Monday.
That I’m not defined by the things I own.

So I got robbed last night. Someone broke into my bedroom window. It was surreal walking into my room and realizing the curtains were moving in the wind.

Why are my curtains moving > How can wind get into my room > Why is my window open > oh…. it’s broken. Someone was here. Where I sleep.

My phone’s battery was low so I plugged it into my running car. I knew I would need to continue to contact folks.

While my family ate Thanksgiving lunch, I boarded up my bedroom window, moved some expensive stuff into my car and worked with an investigator who dusted for prints.

When It was time to go, I turned my car key a full turn and it wouldn’t start. I left my car running too long.

I went across the street and asked a neighbor to help me jump the car. William was the first neighbor I had more than a 5 minute conversation with in my neighborhood. He got my car running.

We need to have you guys over sometime, I said.
Yeah that’d be great, he said.
Again, thanks so much—was it William, I said.
My friends call me Willy, he said.

I’m really glad I met Willy. There will always be idiots, like people who don’t wear gloves while robbing homes. But there are people willing to help their neighbors too. Sometimes it just takes a bit of a crisis to get people working towards something.

Wherever I live, it will always be my home and my neighborhood. Idiots will sometimes brush by our bedroom windows, yet, Willy and I aren’t going to let this stop us from working to create something beautiful in our community. Hell no.

Hell no.

Tumblr was down when I launched my Internet venture

Monday I launched City Crossword.

It’s the first city-powered crossword experience where players can win prizes from local businesses and artists.

I began testing the idea over a year ago and it’s ready to move forward with some frequency.

Each month I’ll be responding to feedback and making the game stronger. I hope you’ll join in on the fun.

So, RSVP for Nashville’s first City Crossword January 1!

Dixie Downturn: New Nashville Blog For Broke 20-Somethings

There’s a new Nashville blog in town by and for broke 20-somethings called Dixie Downturn. The broke 20-somethings are Lance Conzett and Michelle Korn.

I’m excited to have more eyes on the side streets of Nashville. So far, they’ve been urban art crawling to local graffiti spots and sharing the art of drinking free beer.

If you’re a devote reader of my blog, you may remember me describing Lance as one of two kids who’ll change the Nashville music scene, or leave it. (He’s the guy running in an indie-cool way to the right there.)

In the same post I created an award and gave it away (in true Generation Y guru style) and also said “he’s a critic living in the sweaty, loud basement venues of our city and he knows things.”

Looking back, I’m a bit ashamed by how Gen Y my post was, but I stand by my words about Lance, who also helped launch The Week At Belmont, an amazing and often-satirical Belmont video news show.

So, I’ll be supporting this blogging venture as much as I can, because of The History Of Awesome Rule. (THOAR).

Won’t you give Dixie Downturn some love with me? We need more bloggers who say pithy and local things like the following:

“Have you ever contemplated getting the Exit/In stamp tattooed on your hand so you’d get into shows for free? We’re right there with you.”

Photo by Kendra Krantz

EDIT: Dixie Downturn is by Lance Conzett and Michelle Korn (Not Kendra Krantz, who took the awesome bio photo).

Painting Over The Vandal’s Graffiti

I recently saw WKRN’s story, “Local painter works hard to beat graffiti vandals,” and I felt compelled to respond.

Let me start by saying I respect this man. He’s found a creative way to use his skills to help out. When he removes graffiti from places like store fronts, our community becomes more beautiful.

And as news this is solid, especially for a less than two minute segment.

Well, the lead-in is a bit unsupported: “Graffiti is a problem all across Nashville. It can lead to dangerous gang activity and it’s very costly to clean up.”

WKRN cited a source for cleaning costs, but the piece doesn’t touch on how graffiti can lead to dangerous gang activity. I’d prefer if they had said “Graffiti, handkerchiefs, tattoos, poverty, books, the Internet, a constant feeling of being misrepresented and talked down to, and the need for a sense of family can all lead to dangerous gang activity.”

But sarcasm aside, the media is just people representing complex stories the best they can in the time they have. The whole picture is never there. Our job is to fill in the story where we can.

The Voice of A Vandal

So for the sake of a fuller story, let me explore what a vandal may say about this. You are now sitting on a couch next to a vandal. The story just ran, and you look to your left.

“I’m just trying to imagine the walls by the train tracks without graffiti. That’s the only thing adding visual interest to that whole story,” the vandal says.

“Look, if someone painted a Big Bird or some tag on my car, I’d be pissed. I’d want this man to come paint my car for free. For sure.”

“In fact let’s email the painter guy and waylay the kid that’s been tagging up West End with that little figure that’s popping up all over in the last month. I’d gladly help kick that kid’s ass.”

“Either that or mentor the poor kid. He can come practice behind my wall till he understands what art is and that putting something on a stop sign doesn’t make it art.”

“But that’s the real problem with this story—pass the chips—I’m a graffiti artist and I agree with what this other painter is doing, mostly. Unless he painted graffiti out from underneath that bridge in the story.”

“I agree, maybe some of my friends wouldn’t, but my point is you can’t hear the voices of any demographic when it’s painted over with such a large brush—whatever you like metaphors, or puns, or whatever that was.”

“Like, we all don’t wear hoodies and pack heat. A lot of us have jobs, and own businesses and respect each other’s walls. I have a kid. And no guns. And hoodies are lame. They’ve gone the way of fedoras. Once something is sold in a department store they’re not cool anymore, in my opinion. But what do I know, I’m a vandal.”

“So of course they’re not going to interview a graffiti artist painting up the back of a store. Good thing we’re visual communicators, so folks can just walk down a side alley to see what we are saying to them. —Oh right! People don’t go to graffiti to listen.”

“Are there truer messages on our billboards, or is a white picket fence more of a representation of who we are than a fence riddled with story and dirt?”

“Whatever, the activist is doing a good thing if he is painting over graffiti that is hurting someone’s livelihood somehow. I’m all for it. Paint those store fronts up.”

“I just—look at me dude—I’ll stop ranting in a minute. Remember this. That bridge you saw there? It’s public property. When I die and all the people my age die, it will belong to all of you youngsters. I want to live in a society that preserves public discourse. As long as you can go to the darkest corners of our cities and find art bleeding at the seams, you know there is still beauty in our world. When I die I need you to find the underside of some bridge where vandals tell stories… and you add to that story.”

A Fuller Story

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.
-Simon & Garfunkel, Sound of Silence

Ok, so what other angle would make this a fuller story?

 

Room in The Inn after Flooding in Nashville

I teach a class on Fridays at Room In the Inn. Today no one showed up for class.

After major flooding in Nashville, things aren’t back to normal for Nashville’s homeless—whatever that means.

I was hoping to ask folks to share stories about how the flood has impacted them so their viewpoints aren’t lost in the shuffle. We may have to wait on that.

All I have is one: According to someone I spoke with, a resident of Tent City shared that during the storms, the individual woke up inside of their sleeping bag, which was floating in water.

Thankfully there’s a homeless newspaper in Nashville. I’m sure their April issue will fill in some gaps for us and tell the stories that may otherwise be lost.

By the way, when you see one, buy a Contributor. A vendor told me since the flooding, there are less pedestrians and less sales.

During the time I usually spend teaching, I’m going to give an update on the state of homelessness in Nashville, at least from the angle of Room in The Inn, where I stopped by today.

Now about the empty classroom: This will happen from time to time, especially if the weather is extra nice or if something else of interest is going on at the same time.

The great room seemed a little more sparse than your average “It’s sunny and more people are outside” kind of days though.

After talking with some staff members, here may be some the largest contributing factors to my empty classroom.

1. Folks are volunteering with the relief efforts or are taking advantage of the influx in temporary work. (Someone passed out flyers at or near Room in The Inn. The flyers gave information for immediate temporary work.)
2. Folks are at different shelters. For instance, some residents from Tent City will stop by Room in The Inn for classes or to collect mail. Since the flooding, less Tent City residents have picked up mail. Staff believe it may be because bus routes have not been consistent. I’m told many Tent City residents are staying at the Lipscomb University temporary shelter.
3. It’s sunny. Why would you want to be inside?

A few updates on Room in The Inn:

1. Overall the Campus for Human Development building looks good. There was flooding upstairs and they lost some things. I don’t know the details.
2. Construction on the expanded building is largely unaffected. Construction crews were at work today. It’s great to see rebuilding continue in the literal sense.

Hopefully the students I teach are safe. I look forward to a full classroom again. Maybe next week. Maybe later.

Here are ways you can help residents of Tent City. Be sure to support Room in The Inn in this time as well. They are rooted and they are doing great work.