Eins

a glow yesterday -past--passed---FLEE-T-I-N-

let me -please- hold onto the memory of that -G--low

when today was -just- like yesterday -past--passed.

Perfect.

What is?

You are.

I am?

Yes. You are because I am.

Which is?

past-- --passing--

waking, doing, glowing,

FLEET (present) -Let me -please-

can I? may I? hold onto that-- I.N.

G.

Maya, Age 8

Karen, age 23

For S

Yesterday I told my third grade students that we write because we exist and because we must value our thoughts as we live. This line elicited unanimous looks of confusion. At eight years old, they're only just beginning to realize what it means be alive.

I sought to clarify: How many of you have lost someone who was close to you? A flood of hands filled the air. The day after someone passes is never the same--A new fissure in the way we once understood the world. 

Hypothetically, a new world. Meanings of words evolve. To miss, to love, to know, to control, to be nostalgic, to be confused. We're connected to something uncertain, a chase after the wind that sweeps our tears into yesterday. But, today, you want to understand more. You want to know what this means and why and how and when? You're 8 years old with sad, happy, and mad painted within you. With these hands and your pencil, sculpt your thoughts and your emotions to understand the reasons for why.

One of my girls, contemplative eyes under those crooked glasses, smart because she needs to be, raised her hand: "Ms. JS, when I write, my heart feels better. When I read my books and I have conversations with the authors, my world feels better." 

Amelia, age 24

Hear Us

Every person has a voice. Everyone person has a story. A potential impact. A communication. Transmission. Touch.

We have the potential to share lifestyles, hardships, inspirations. With a few soft utterances, we can transport stationary listeners to community gardens, schools, and festivals that might have otherwise remain unknown and uncelebrated. Within every person is the ability to share a poignant history of successes and failures - personal triumphs and public disgraces. These memories are our own, but our audience is fleeting, ephemeral and often, not even ours at all. Money = Speech. The more money you have, the more you get to say. And the more your audience will listen.

Where does that leave us?

Probably we are nothing special. We are a city that sparkled magnificently once, and has now burned down to a smoldering few radicals and smattering of the disenfranchised ashes. Every city has its vestiges, its memories of greater times (and the even greatest times). Every city has that two or maybe three seconds where everyone and everything was perfect, everyone was listening and they - THEY - were doing something special, something that no one - NO ONE - has ever done before. Something that will change EVERYTHING. A communication to end all communications, and idea to end ALL IDEAS. THIS IS IT, they scream, WE HAVE THE ANSWER. STOP. LOOK AT US. LISTEN.

Listen? To what? Even if we held the microphone what would we say? Henry Ford? DIEGO RIVERA? Would we speak it or scream it? Or maybe we would whisper it. race riots. tanks. guns. gas. blood. death. babies crawling over broken glass. american citizens - AMERICAN CITIZENS - throwing things through windows and demanding on national television what had been promised to them and the United States National Guard invading an American city....

And then what?

Silence. You are a part of what Detroit is and as been for the last 40 years. You are a part of the problem and what has and will become the solution. If you are reputable you move. If you're still here people WILL ask you why. disreputable - they will whisper about you. poor. idealist. lost. You are both a primary source, a historian of Detroit and a liar. No one will believe you. You must like to paint things with sugar and dreams, they think. You must like to play pretend, make-believe, you must be lazy - or CRAZY. They nod smiling as you protest, as you tell them why you are here, why you love to get up every morning, about your passion fueled on optimism and just maybe the fact that your car didn't get broken into last night - but no one is really listening. They already heard it. Don Lemon told them all about it.

Who is writing Detroit’s narrative? Who is recording your history? OUR history? Not you. Ha. Maybe the Tigers? The Lions?

Those Lions. Is that what you want them to see? The Lions? That's the best we've done in FORTY YEARS. But still, someone is watching - finally! THEY ARE WATCHING. QUICK! SHOW them something - SOMETHING. ANYTHING! Throw a parade! Sing a song, paint a mural, erect a statue, look quick while the light is still on us and the camera will pan around briefly before pregame - look quick while the streets have been cleaned up and the crowd is middle class and the broken glass is gone - look quick before you see the lay-offs and the crumbling unions and the hungry and the poor and the beaten - look quick before dirt blows into lens. look quick. look at us. listen.

What we are trying to bring you is are the voices of those who would otherwise be mute. Those who do not speak because they are not listened to. Those who have something to say but believe that because of who they are and where they are that they can not and should not be heard. Hear us. We have something to tell you.