It's a New Year

Recommended reading: Detroit Free Press - Rising from the Wreckage series

(oh, and...when I started out this piece, I felt compelled to rehash all the top-albums-list-type stuff...or reflect on the arts of 2009 - but you can see most of my lists over at eatthiscity)

anyhow...
~

Ed. [Recently found this encouraging quote of William Faulkner brought to my attention from a recent column by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham - from an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature - thoughts on man's perceived immortality (and the arts) -

"He (man) is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

So then - back to the year-end - essay-rambling]

We humans love to put things in boxes. Label it. Mount it. Point to it victoriously and assure our comprehension. Flex our philosophic reflection.

So why do I feel compelled each year to rant about the year that has just passed? Can you smell the apocalypse in the air? Are you completely apathetic yet? When's the last time you hugged somebody? When's the last time a piece of music gave you goosebumps?

I don't know about you, but those moments still find me, every week, without fail, despite the deterioration of our society into a bubbled pool of egg yolk squished, swished and sloshed against the metal bowel of our living rooms by the ever-edifying beater of television, twitter or blogs or phone apps or whatever the hell the new thing to buy, or to be into--is, at that moment...

This year we elected a black president, and white pundits on republican-leaning news-networks said he was the racist one.

This year we saw the guaranteed continuation of an 8-year-war to assuredly last at least until the 11- or 12-year mark.

This year we saw first-time homelessness hit new highs in the Detroit area, while the United Auto Workers' numbers were cut in half, while unemployment benefits had to be extended from 9 months to 15 months, where sensationalized headlines jettisoned out in newspapers and on radio--the second Michigan's unemployment rate dipped below 15%...(but still rested above 14.5)...

The year we saw our hope-spurring president push for healthcare overhaul, then run up against the republican party who didn't want abortion to be covered, who didn't want medicare for 55-year-olds-and-up, (let alone, gasp, a simulated medicare-for-everybody) and who didn't want a public option that could inspire big insurance companies to lower their rates... and now...where does healthcare stand? No public option - no real effect until 2013 - just the same broken system, only with 30 million more applicants. Hmm...

We saw the bricks peeled from the Detroit Public School system to reveal a muddied mess, a rotting infrastructure, failing woodbeams and mold-like corruption.

And that's barely a months worth...

Wall Street is far from recovery, and the US is still "meh" on cutting it's carbon emissions in the future.

And we all worry...

This, middle-to-late December, is a holy time of year, regardless of your religious identification. But, somewhere around hearing "O Holy Night" for the third time in a week, and Andy Williams belting out "fall on your knees" before the manger, below that star, with the angel rising...well, that shit doesn't make me reverent.

Allow me this scmaltz, my friends - but, if you're reading this - I'm reverent for you. I'd rather not look to a porcelain figurine of a baby-Jesus in a manger, or the adult-version on a cross with a gash on his belly - for guidance... I'd rather not wait for the state legislature, for Barack Obama, for a Bono, a Bjork or a Thom Yorke to help me find what to think or what to believe in...

You're what I'm thankful for...

So here's to us and our own abilities - particularly the vitality of our artistic community. As this blog often documents the works and performances of local artists, it should be no secret that we hold such reverence for their efforts - but we also see their role in keeping this city alive in a way that no other leader or corporation could...

Art keeps Michigan a vibrant place to live - hopefully...

How else can we contend with those hip-hubs like Portland, or Athens, or Austin or New York... Why didn't I leave Detroit when I graduated for some assured job in journalism? Because of all you bands...because of all you artists.

So here's to the DIA, the DSO, the Kresge Foundation, to the CAID, the MOCAD, to 1610 AM The Station, to Scrummage University, to the Silent Giants, to X! Records, SubSprawl, Leroy Street, Quack!Media, to The Few, to Bellyache, to LocoGnosis, to Gangplank, to The Sounds and Spirits, to DIY Street Fair, to the Blowout and the Magic Stick even...

To every single band...Remember why you're here, or maybe why you can't yet leave - because you feed off of every one else's energy. I get drunk on your energy every week - and then I write about it here.

How do we save Detroit? Save Michigan? Maybe we don't.

Maybe we just hold together and keep on creating and continue collaborating and helping each other out - and a new Michigan becomes defined...defined by your works.

As Drew Bardo said to me long ago, artists are the true historians...

Where there is no art...there is no life...(and not life as walking humans who drink water and breath, but a certain kind of necessary life,) livliness... Where there is no life, you have machines...you have block-shaped skyscrapers of perceived efficiency...you have the machines that replaced the humans on the Big 3's assembly lines through the 60's and 70's... Machines do not replicate and they eventually break down... Machines follow systems and systems crash.

Art follows no system. Thus, it is always able to nurture the community with ceaseless energy and agility, no matter what the times...

So don't stop...and stick together.

Have you seen The Road yet? Or, hopefully read the book? Even in the face of armageddon, what becomes the most vital to survival is our friends, our family, our relationships, our closeness. So, rather than thank God or the Government for their greak works, however illusory or overblown... I'll thank YOU for your work...and your friendship.

It's a new year...
I'm glad to be here...

~

More essays on the way... including thoughts on what lies ahead for this already-rattled, weary and disoriented Generation Y and reflections on the so-different lives we will lead, compared to our babyboomer parents...

next year on Deep Cutz
Interviews:
The Questions
The Juliets
The Sights
Miss Alex White (White Mystery)
and more...