The things I want to remember about my trip to Detroit for AAJA:
The things I want to remember about my trip to Detroit for AAJA:
The dark plane, the monitors glowing in every seat. Reading William Gibson. Sharp, careful, cold, like a scalpel.
The D. Warm, cool air. The cavernous belly of the Marriot. The pixelated Cobo Center. Motown. The broad swaths of road. Motor City. The People Mover. The swarm of Asians, the skirts and makeup, ties and jackets. The chatter of networking, nicetoseeyous, letschatlaters. The receptions and mixers. The broadcast girls. The exchange of business cards, emails, Twitter handles. The surreal experience of being surrounded by ageless, immortal Asian women. Which paper are you with? A house party off East Jefferson. The empty lots surrounding, the lushness of the apartment. An empty jazz club. The beauty of two black women moving with eyes closed. The bouncer telling us his name, where he’s from. He has a cousin from the city one of us is from. Waiting for a cab in the dark.
The casino. The smell of smoke. The rattle and jangle of the machines. The tight grip of old fingers on clay chips. The bright flash of lights, everywhere, pulsing and throbbing to multiple vague rhythms. Leaving the casino to go out alone. The cab driver, Otis. He has lived in Detroit for 62 years. San Francisco, yeah. I been there.
The emptiness of the first club, except for a few breakdancing teens and an exhausted bartender. The familiar thundering boom of bass echoing from a rooftop bar. The sound echoing around buildings, audible for blocks. The feeling of walking around in a deserted city. The way fat black women can dance. The way drunk frat boys can’t. The sad smallness of the guy, Drew, who says he doesn’t know how to recommend anything, anything at all to a Californian. D’Mongos, The Roast. The crowd gathering together to do the hustle. The anthemic intensity of Pursuit of Happiness blaring across the city. Dancing until last call. The girl and her mom, stumbling home. The cinematic timing of a cab pulling up, headlights flashing. Otis, smiling.
The marquees for Kid Rock. Welcome Home Kid. The smiling and hellos of strangers on the street. The walk from Downtown Detroit through Midtown. The big deco buildings, the feeling of Gotham. The buildings suddenly evaporating into empty lots and bare streets. The strangeness of being able to walk out of a city. The buzz of insects in the summer, mixing with Kid Rock’s sound check in the distance. The skeleton of a swing set. The calming realization — looking at all the vines crawling up the empty buildings, pulling off planks of wood, tossing bricks onto the ground — that nature isn’t dead, just patiently waiting for us to leave.
Hitching a ride with a couple to the Heidelberg project. Walking among the houses encrusted with trash, furniture, toys, paint. Random arrangements of stuffed animals. Shopping carts topping the sawn off limbs of trees. Burnt planks of wood, standing in a lawn. A house painted with huge numbers. Meeting a girl named Rita, from Brooklyn. Hitching a ride to the DIA. The strange composition of a piano being tuned. A placard explaining what Pop Art is. Going back to the hotel, then the airport.
The plane rocking, a gentle midwestern sort of turbulence. The feeling of sailing, with the clouds some soft and weightless kind of sea.
s
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