Why Detroit?

Vacancy has always been as important to me as air. In an abstract sense, I do my best in the spaces between emotions. The times where I can hold my emotions in my hand and observe them for a short time before they hit me again are by far the most important times in my life. But as much as I need those vacant spaces in my heart, it is the tightness of the city that allows it all. The anonymity of the urban experience does something that is indescribable by prose or essay. Here, I try to portray that feeling through phrases of thought and images of the only city, the only place, that feels home to me--Detroit.

As far as cities go, Detroit is as vacant as it gets. The aftermath of the race riots in 1967 has left it a ghost of its former self. It is by no means a great cosmopolitan city. For most, it evokes fear and disgust in its abandoned factories and crumbling avenues. While I recognize that, I am also endlessly in love with the city. Every broken window and pothole in the pavement emanates such a raw sense of urgency and sincerity that I think is too commonly dismissed in society, in favor of careful precision and calculated elegance.

When I was a senior in high school, I was driving around Detroit with my mom, who lived in Detroit for a long period of time when she first married my dad (who is from the city). We were driving through Mexicantown, the Hispanic neighborhood, and I was gushing about my love for the city. I am continuously struck by what my mom said to me then: “Don’t romanticize this city. Don’t turn it into something it’s not.” At the time I was angry; I felt like she had invalidated my emotions. Now, though, the differing thoughts between us propose a new thesis (for with time comes that distance from emotion that I so strongly need): Romanticizing the city can be just as valid a reaction to it as a more rational view, because the city is so subjective. The city is what we make of it, and I have made Detroit into my home. Romanticizing Detroit has allowed me to render it a legible space, one that I can move around in without feeling overwhelmed or confused.