Cities Made of Smoke, People Made of Song

I’m sending a reminder that tomorrow night (i.e. 5 March) Clocks in Motion are performing at the Interlochen Center for the Arts at 8pm in the H. Lewis Dance building.  I’m terribly excited to listen to another performance of my Percussion Duo on a concert that will also feature Marc Mellits’s Gravity, Paul Lansky’s Threads, and John Luther Adams’s Drums of Winter from Earth and the Great Weather.

Also on this trip, following the concert, I’m going to explore the city of Detroit, and my plan as it stands will either be to write a post on each of the days of my trip or to write one, massive post when I’ve returned.

As a foreword, I’ve long wanted to visit this city, as it has always fascinated me: from its rich history in various industries from salt to bricks to rail to–naturally–automobiles to its patronage towards the arts with the ever sublime Detroit Institute of Art and the ever prodigious Motown record label who gifted us those brilliant sounds.

But, the sadness of this city, its fall, fascinates, too: from the unfortunate Pruitt-Igoe housing project, the rise and fall of its automobile industry, to its recent bankruptcy.  Swaths of once vibrant areas abandoned, huge sections of this city now urban prairies, crumbling brick.

Most of the reactions I receive when I tell people I’m going on vacation to Detroit are usually: “You’re going where?  Why would you ever want to go there?  Be careful!  Don’t get killed!”

While there are undeniable facts that Detroit is a dangerous city, this is a city of America, a city of the Earth, an invention of us.  This is where real people are, where real history has happened, and it deserves our attention and respect.

I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer a trip to Detroit over a cruise through the Bahamas any day.  I don’t want to live the human experience through the tint of a rose glass.  There is beauty in the world and there is ugly in the world, with lots of colors in between.  Give me more than rose.  Give me grey and white, too.

Indeed, show me your tired, your poor, your masses seeking freedom, to remind me that we’ve all got lots of work to do.