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We
stayed on the 60th floor of the Renaissance Center, the big ugly
building on the Detroit River waterfront. It's the General Motors
HQ, but it also houses a hotel in the middle tower. Despite the
rug that said "Have a Nice Saturday," swapped over by some minion
from yesterday's "Have a Nice Friday" version, I felt giddy in the
lift; tall buildings make me think about planes and crashes these
days.
From our room we could see the city spread out below us, like a central nervous system. From up there Downtown could have been toytown. There are many derelict buildings in Detroit, but the skyline looks rich. It's only when you stare hard at the broken windows, like looking deeply into the eyes of a liar, that you notice the true fucked-up nature of the buildings. A woman at the post office asked me what I liked best about Detroit. I wanted to say "the sea of dereliction," but thought that that might be considered rude. Instead I said without blinking: "The Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of the Arts". Right answer. But the truth is that I love those broken buildings. I look at them and I ask myself "How can a building so grand, built with so much hope and arrogance, have become this worn out shell?" The level of destitution is astounding, it's like a bizarro wonder of the world. I'm talking about abandoned skyscrapers, and not one, but many. Some are being renovated, some have been knocked down but the scale of it would take decades to reverse, maybe it isn't even possible. The waste, the loss, it makes your brain hurt trying to process it. Did you go and see '8-Mile'? The Eminem film? A lot of it was shot downtown. Do you remember the scene where they're in a car park that looks as though it's inside a grand old theatre? That place is real. It's called The Michigan Theater. It's a car park inside the grandest theatre in the state. Maybe at some point the discussion went like this: "People have stopped coming to the theatre, the building must pay for itself, what to do?" "Let's gut it and turn it into a car park." "Okay, great idea." We went inside, we saw the ornate plaster roof, and shreds of curtains still hanging where the stage used to be. We couldn't speak. It was _________. Next door another building has been taken over by artists. Each window has a painting. It's beautiful. |
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