Keeping Quiet in Nashville

"It's not about you." That is the amazing message reinforced everywhere you look in Nashville's Bluebird Cafe. "Shhh!" It's their trademark. It's not only posted everywhere around the room, we learned it the moment we walked in the door of this haven for singer/songwriters who audition for the chance to try out their material. We started to tell the hostess we didn't have a reservation when she put her finger to her lips and hissed, "Shhhh!." She motioned us to follow her to a couple of seats and an evening of charades ensued to order , to ask for a refill -- anything that happened to come up. Sign language. Pointing. Nodding. Anything that would work. Because it wasn't about us.

What's "going on" is the music, and patrons -- while obviously welcome -- are there to listen. This, according to their own description, is a listening room," where "quiet is requested at all times during a performance - which is why our slogan has become "Shhh!" You are welcome to drink and eat with us at any time, but if you are looking for an evening of conversation there are more appropriate places in Nashville."

It's almost shocking in this self-serving, self-absorbed culture that such a place could survive. Everything, after all, is always about us. Me, my needs, my desires, my convenience, my rights. If I want to talk on my cell phone while standing in line behind you, get used to it. If I want to change lanes where you happen to be driving, move over. If I want to talk...

...well, not at the Bluebird Cafe. This is about music and those who make it -- or at least trying to. Some, over the course of the two evenings we left our conversation at the door, were better than others. Some I can't wait to follow their careers. Others are not quite ready to give up their day job. But all of them deserved -- and received -- our listening ears. They are what it is all about: imagination and emotions and poetic turns of phrase; putting ideas together and melding them into melody, threading the mixture through a voice and a guitar and finessing what comes out. I envied their courage, their determination, their lack of inhibition, and their discipline.

And if I didn't enjoy every song, I nonetheless stayed quiet. It wasn't, after all, about me. It was about music and dreams in the making. And if we had had another night to spend in Nashville, this is where I would choose to be quiet.