Detroit never left my mind, all those years, and the return to the city three years ago was a sort of necessity. I have a feeling toward this city unlike any other, I am defensive, like a leopard mother, I am protective, I am jealous and I care more than I should. I had been living on european soil for seven years prior to my retutn to Detroit. Forming myself into the other of others. I lived in amsterdam, between cultures, between politcal and social identities, passing through. Amsterdam was my home. I intended never to return to the USA.
I sit here in Autumn, the fourth blood moon has passed, and with it the ecplipse. the last of the seasons travelers had left, and my heart fills with an autumn melancholy.
I never would have expected the lessons the city has taught me, how terrifyingly hard they were, and yet beautiful.
If I have learnt one thing over the years it is to love, and the love rund deep, trenchlike, perhaps a catacomb. I have learnt to filter people, pushing those away as they break my illusions, as they do not stand up to my standards of morality, of feeling, of truth, and those who remain sparkle like diamonds, they fill me, and they fill the city. My friends always tend to be the other, the outsider, for how could you ever understand the beautey of detroit had you never been an other
Detrloit is the only major city in America with a majority black population. It is the town of motown, of J Dilla, of drexciya, and Underground resistance. It is the town where when I was 16 I first met David Blair, a friend and poet, a man who lived his life with courage and conviction, a man who ten years after meeting him, helped me to heal enough so that I could open my mouth and finally get the words out to SING. Blair died at 42 of a heat stroke, the ill effects of years of poverty, the coins bad throw. Blair was black and gay, neither of which helped his career.......yet his light saved many a life.
the real detroit, we hide in corridors, darkened spaces, we live for love in the face of a city left to rot ( why was it left to rot..... oh energetic core.....o fuck you amerikkka for you wait like vultures, you do not care for those black lives, those black lives, that black culture, We are a city of cars, the gas guzzling greed of the american dream of capitalism. Would your version of saving detroit involve removing all those undesireables......the people who suffered for years in a city with no infastructure.
we gentrify. the hipsters make me vomit. all you fuck faces who come here with dreams of being an artist, with dreams of your cheap house, of a freedom long gone marketed to you as dan gilberts all seeing eye stares down at you.
detroit I love you. I love the stretch of oakland avenue on summer days, as I ride my bike past bbqs and muscle cars, detroit I love you as I experience so deeply that those who are poor would always throw a hand to another in need, detroit I love you just like my neighnboor steve shouts all the time "I love you man" even in the midst of a fight one night, I could hear his affirmations above the drunken blind rage of those who uttered only words of hate.
Sometimes I am lonely, fearfull on the edge of nowhere. It's hard to talk to people these days....... not everyone wants to open their eyes.
I sit with djs and musicians outside of secret clubs, we talk about race, we talk about music, we talk about frequencies and power. We talk about real things. the white men will never say,
and fuck you white dudes. Im exhausted from you. You never take me serious, you want power and have been trained in power holding techniques, tenticles deep in your subconcious. You try to appropriate me. did not slaveholding and woman keeping go hand in hand. I have tried and tried to work with you, sometimes mistaking that I could trust you,m when all you want is to appropriate me, my ideas, my energy, the fact that I am sexy and vibrant and concious. I dont play your power games. I am here to heal and to love. you have poiwer why would you give it up. dance hipster throngs, dance your corktown nights, I am playing a different game, that of universal frequencies and love. love of detroit. love of the other.
I am a fucking lioness, I ride the frequencies of our city, and I well know as Fela Kuti said, that music is a spiritual force.
