Osler's Razor

The photo above is by an excellent Detroit photographer, Kevin Bauman. You can see more of his work (and you should) here.

Being from Detroit is like being in love with someone who breaks your heart the same way over and over again. Yesterday in the barbershop the barbers were talking about the customers they have lost in the past year, and their own plans to move somewhere else, anywhere, and close the doors like many of the other stores in the area. This morning, in the Free Press, the lead article in the Real Estate section was about how to deal with abandoned homes on your block, accompanied by a photo of a house on Harvard Road in Detroit; the house looked ok, but the owner had given up on selling it, and the yard was becoming a jungle like others nearby. Until age 6, I lived on that street.

The music from Detroit, too, tracks the way that people react to that particular strain of heartbreak. The bold determination of the White Stripes, the anger and fury of the MC5, the alienation of the house music people, the sentimentality and retreat to romance of soul and R & B, seeking the respite of God in gospel— one ray of light refracts many ways through a prism.