Detroit | day one (that is: initial thoughts)

Detroit is absolutely everything I had imagined. I wish I had come sooner, maybe, but am also glad I came as soon as I did. I am sure, incidentally, that I will be back many more times.

There are so many moments when I feel intellectually stiffled - when I feel utterly alone in my position on an issue and furthermore, in staking it, utterly alone against everyone else's opposing views.

Detroit was one of those things.
People can be so shortsighted; so literal.
"Why Detroit? Don't go - you won't like it."
"Yes. I will." I countered time and time again.
I knew I would.
And I do.

"But it's so... sad." They would say, binding the place up in words poorly suited to it.
"No." I would correct. "It is fascinating. Don't you think it's fascinating?" Always, though, I knew: the answer was no.

It fascinates me how we can build out a city - put so much love into creating these architectural gems - and then watch them collapse in economic hardship. These are not, after all, ordinary buildings. Detroit was expected to be (was?) something incredible - a source of substantial pride in the United States - and, for the first part of the Century, it was. And they built it accordingly. But then the economy collapses and, with it, their physical landscape. That is utterly fascinating - the evolution of a built environment as a reflection and manifestation of her people. It's even more interesting when it suffers a slow demise.

Of course, there were not so many words. I sound too preachy - or too heady, maybe - and I always get cut off.

Detroit is, unsurprisingly, utterly everything I had imagined... it is, I think, absolutely my favorite city

(more to come...)

Detroit | Michigan Building

Not enough has been written about the Michigan Building. Even the name itself implies a degree of anonymity; far less specification or importance than is warranted, given the story.

It is, I think, the most magnificently heartbreaking building I have even seen.

The entire structure is a manifestation of Eros and Thanatos - a true symbol of the sheer amount of love (energy; resources) a city can pour into her landscape, only to later lay out snares; to entrap herself, gut herself, lay her own skin stretched flat under the sun - inside out - to dry, before using it as a rug.

Such is what has happened here.
With the Michigan Building.
And nobody talks enough about it.

It is baffling - and fascinating - to me that we can come together and create something of this magnitude, as a reflection of our achievement; a testament to our capabilities; a reward for our collective success; an object of enjoyment - and then, in a single lifetime - in our own - together slay the creation; rip it apart.

They left the plaster molding intact.
It is a crude appendage of an era barely remembered - an era that has been lost, her artifacts destroyed. Everyone who enters the space is immediately aware of its barbaric reuse: the evidence of the destruction everywhere.
Everywhere.

Even the beams at one far end of the incredible, yawning, hollow space are still, after all these decades, clutching desperately to the heavy, dark burgundy fabric that hung over what was once the stage.
It is a ribbon, most surely from the pigtail of a child long gone missing, found weathered and tattered, tangled and caught, in a chain link fence.

To say that moment is marked in "heartbreak" is, you can understand, an understatement.

It is a gruesome reminder of what it once was, and what we have done.
Such is the Michigan Building.

Detroit | a cherished landscape

I love Detroit.

I am captivated by it; consumed by its poetry. There is no other place quite so mesmerizing, as far as the accidental art of an urban landscape goes, as Detroit.

And, to be clear, that is the real merit: "accidental."

It is not nearly so interesting to see something that was intended for your consumption, positioned in such a way so as to seem more beautiful to a passerby than it truly is - everybody loves the frosted windows; nobody considers the trash dragged out the back.

In Detroit, nothing is hidden. Everything is raw and honest. It has to be. It has no other choice but to stand, bare breasted, with stretch marks and scars outlining the lines as they really fall, drawing hashes over our airbrushed mental image. She stands, with blemishes and burns across the body; all the while with her face turned upwards into the hot, hot summer sun.

I love her for that. I am captivated by her sincerity - the simplicity and circumstantial display of everything that we are taught is ugly. While everywhere else, we see things nipped and tucked and tanned and toned and then turned, in just such a way, so as to dazzle and taunt; mislead and manipulate, here, in Detroit, we see only what it is - what is real, straightforward, "unpretty." And yet, as we look, she is also unmoving - accepting our gaze, unapologetic, as we stand there feeling very much as though we, too, are staring at the sun.

There is so much beauty in the grittiness of things - so much more aesthetic depth and richness to a landscape that evolves exactly as it was meant to, without pretending that it didn't. Here: the textures of broken glass and falling brick; the cacophony of a city's fabric tearing apart at the seams; dozens of textiles, strewn about in the streets or stood up along their edges.

One scarcely has to point and click, and the photo turns out beautiful.
I said that about Santorini, too.
I mean it more with Detroit.

Aesthetically speaking, never before have I seen such an interesting subject in a city. Where every other city's photos have been captured a million times, every story a regurgitation of another, here I feel that the images go on forever - I could stay for weeks and still discover more; turn a corner, widen my focus or narrow it, and see something new or different. I feel as though it is a fresh story - one just now being written and (unlike horrific Vegas) one that will not - cannot - be scripted, but must rather be written organically.

Perhaps I'm glamorizing - romanticizing.
Or, perhaps not.

From a study of The City as a reflection and manifestation of her people, Detroit is my favorite.
And I want, somehow, to be one of them.