Secret Stairwell Concert

>>*Bike tires skid to a sudden halt*<<
"You guys are from Detroit? Great! I'll be DJing your afterparty. But it's *highly illegal*, so tell everybody."
<<*Rides off into the night*>>
-Berlin DJ during our 2017 UNESCO City of Design visit as guests of honor in Saint-Etienne

In that spirit:
>Improvised, original + traditional world folk/and other violin (+maybe viola) music
>A participatory experiment involving cellphones from the audience and audio feedback to play along with
>A stairwell that sounds almost as good as or better than an auditorium
>All tucked away in an unsuspecting downtown Detroit building.
>Possible improv game/coaching exercise [Party Like it's 2021!!!] with dancing to random office music may ensue after
But it's a secret, so tell everybody? ; )

We'll convene at Campus Martius and walk in when the time is right.

Let me know if you want to help out.
Don't have money but want to join? RSVP if you can and show up anyhow.
Tickets/RSVP are mostly for headcount.

• Music
• Concert
• Avant-garde music
• Experimental music
• Volunteering

Photo credit to @Mari_visualz
See Bryce Detroit's commentary on why cultural representation matters and how the work that comes with uplifting healthy behaviors that are attributable to them beyond settler narratives that we often see from the music industry add to what he likes to call "entertainment justice" attached to an album from the event this photo was taken at:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B17RXy1lm3z/?igshid=1vgoh0pp1o5ug


PROMO+LOGISTICS:

###
Fri. January 24th ~2:24pm

Ian D. Tran More excitement?!? Why yes, of course! Tony Paris (who happens to be a trained legal observer) + Michael Brumo of Tony Paris and the Sugar Burn and Efe Bes of iBm [intelligent Buti music]+Synergistic Mythologies will be joining us.(!!!)

>What else could* sweeten the deal--fortified with 22+ essential vitamins and minerals?<

How about a mediocre selection of dessert-like breakfast cereals and your choice of dairy or non-dairy milk after the stairwell segment? (*courtesy of the office we'll be adjacent to in performance, assuming there's still some left by Saturday)

><>>Have friends (or maybe you yourself) who can't join in person but want to join contribute and hear some of the ruckus for the experimental participatory music segment at 7:45pm?

Here's the conference call line that we'll be using at 7:45pm too!
Call in for the musical magic making: (425) 436-6385
Access code: 789059

You might even hear Sacramento Knoxx call in from Ann Arbor during one of his events, during our experimental participatory segment too. So we might have the ability to be with people in not two, but three places at once!<<><

See you at the statue on the Woodward side of Campus Martius Park between 7pm-~7:25ish!

And when we're all done, we'll probably head up to the North End to join Tony Nova at Northern lights lounge to dance with house music later in the evening.

 ###

27 January ·

Between the 14 folks who joined in person, plus the callers-in, we had a total of 21 knowing* participants (not counting the random guests and staff) in last night's performance--thank you to all of you, including those who couldn't make it but expressed their enthusiasm, support, encouragement, and interest in other ways!
Gennifer Brumo made a montage that captures the spirit of the evening's performance well in so many ways.
Thank you also to Michael Joseph Brumo for adding his musical touches on guitar (often quite percussively!) and shout out to Norm for capturing the toilet flushes and faucet flows in the audio mix too--what a way to top off the night!

The evening was a great experience and lesson for me in considerate inclusion:
>what we did together, by phone and by our presence
>finding and being in a warm "public" space where we could convene to /play/ with one another during a cold day
>carrying forward city history and hearkening back to its raves
>who we could see represented whether by age, appearance, ability, opportunities
>who wasn't able to or might not have been in a comfortable position to join us based on how the event description may have been interpreted
Thank you to everyone who both considered and took the risk of entering the new lunar year together by experimenting with creativity in a challenging place with open hearts, eyes, and ears. Here's to creating more spaces for claiming moments of wonder, appreciation, and awareness for us to grow--together.
"#secretstaircase #doyouhavearoomhere"
https://www.facebook.com/gennifer.dawson/videos/2584320268360020/?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARDKtbOBUdB7TlgBhzJYhNYMYYw0ufsuc3M_GLdL46PVmxd5N5iuA2QUyRQdh_m7RyLq1lxgn6ywVtnPZ4r0gImEt-pQJhXoNRuih8Xapii2obW1R_tFNDnomiX4We2Ma9Lfp_zGJ7s6gIKrWA3cBp1p9P4KuQqLPhXNhITNwfpeHfqRsngh5ODOLVFJu0VBHussR-LDkx3WPv2qnPD7SY7KvIPUkFRtVxTpG2EAez7bPSUbIZaMojDgUzjYphJGFNAGyIHmHxpBoIo&__tn__=-R

 ###

Friends and fellow adventurers, wow! Thank you to everyone who's RSVPd (and shared!?) the event with your interest.
Unlike most concerts involving violins, bringing a cell phone, and a friend/acquaintance whom you're willing to call while at the event is encouraged (but not necessary--and no, as much as I do appreciate your calls, it can't be me : ).
Cell phones will be instrumental to some of the piece and we'll have the option to call each other or a conference line to get the best effect for a participatory segment of pieces or several.
Tentative schedule:
~7:00pm Meet at the statue on the Woodward Side of Campus Martius toward the EY Building and Galaxy Solutions/WeWork Building -- I'll likely be the only person around wearing the hat pictured on the right.
7:25pm we enter the sort-of-secret building, proceed to floor 5 and enter the stairway (requires keycard access thus we must assemble outside before entering)
7:30 Music + Musical Experiments ensue (Solo + w/ special guest[s])
~9:00pm music might continue, or we bring it into an actual office commonspace for activities (Condensed version of Party like it's 2021!!! improv game) + mingling
Due to a momentary lapse in calendar-awareness, it turns out we'll be celebrating the Lunar New Year as well!
So that calls for something special. If folks are interested I'll facilitate an improv personal/organizational development game called Party Like it's 2021! (!!!)
..
~10:30pm all invited to the "Afterglow" joining DJ Tony Nova at Northern Lights Lounge
Looking forward to seeing you there!



###

Linda Swanson is attending Secret Stairwell Concert: Detroit I 2019 with Kim Casteel and Chris Casteel.

25 January ·

This tickled my curiosity to experience the unexpected.
Old school techno ravers will recognize echos from 30 years ago. The map point. The secret location. Experimental music. Audience participation. And, ultimately, getting busted by authorities.
Oh, and an excerpt from the event description:
">>*Bike tires skid to a sudden halt*<<
"You guys are from Detroit? Great! I'll be DJing your afterparty. But it's *highly illegal*, so tell everybody."
<<*Rides off into the night*>>
-Berlin DJ during our 2017 UNESCO City of Design visit as guests of honor in Saint-Etienne"

Linda Swanson Some more photos: https://www.facebook.com/Linda.A.Swanson/posts/10219974946702748

Do you have the one group shot that the guy from Beacon Park took in the mirror?

...

The Map Point.
Campus Martius, unwittingly 2 blocks from a common raver map point at Farmer & Grand River.



...

Thanks, Linda! Without saying too much here--glad to see you found the experience notable and enjoyable as chronicled! : )

 

Dreams*(?) and Development

​A three part dream that happened this morning before I woke up to take out the trash and recycling with post-slumber commentary:
1. I'm in a new [or maybe rather more appropriately capitalized, New] Detroit neighborhood restaurant/cafe watching a s​kit​/presentation akin to Goldilocks and the three bears between the owners and employees during its preliminary grand opening.

Goldilocks, a young ​caucasian girl, pours and presents a big bowl of hot chocolate as she narrates the origins of the cafe and what it values ​in balancing its business aspirations ​as part of the community. She sweetly closes her story punctuating it with a casual "that'll be $40 bucks, hun." For the bowl of hot chocolate as the punchline to the community and up-and coming city entrepreneurship story.

The customer (not identifiable to the audience/nor heard) implicitly complies and requests for something additional to which the matron of the cafe quickly gathers the other local employees, gets on the phone and discusses in Zulu or some other language heard in South Africa with all the staff huddled around, before she confidently hangs up the phone to declare to the imaginary customer: "I have good news, you're eligible for an additional $0.30 per hour sitting fee too!"

We (the audience) laugh and ​as I turn away ​I ​​start figuring out how to make a sliding scale menu cost structure for non-locals and locals that can accommodate more people with less outrageous prices while still accounting for the higher I come demographic who wouldn't hesitate to buy a $40 bowl of hot cocoa (or in real life, pay more than $40 for a hair cut).

2. My dream transitions to sitting at the counter of another cafe/diner that bears a less monied air to it: imagine a classic 1950s hamburger joint  converted into a general diner/cafe that hadn't been updated since the 50's that's in a Downriver (low-income labor town) community like River Rouge or Wyandotte. It's now under the ownership and operation of an immigrant Indian woman and she's working to serve us friends as her guests before it officially opens.

I ask if there's any local favorite juice available as she opens and closes a basic household refrigerator that's nestled on the wall facing the counter and register. "All I have for drinks is in that fridge." And I note that A box of wine was the only fruit beverage available. A classmate from second grade, Vijay [Vijay!? What are you doung here in my subconscious bro? Still got that cool San Jose Sharks winter coat too], smiles and sarcastically proclaims "Ecorse' s finest!" And gestures with a culinary kiss to the air. I laugh [his sense of himor is still on point].

I'm now outside the restaurant with my friend Onyx, pouring two glasses from that boxed wine as we "celebrate" "Ecorse's finest" -- and the fact that we both witnessed French hosts serve us boxed wine [yes, in real waking life during our time as guests in southern France while performing on tour]. Onyx smiles agreeing with that tone of voice you get at the end of sharing a memory in the way a fire burns down to smoldering coals, and mentions that "having some music from the 90s playing would be great right now." I mention if WiFi is available we might be able to pull something up and quietly ponder what kind of music could constitute the best of the 90s.

3. My dream transitions again and I'm inside a neighborhood salon+barbershop where one of my former employers, Mrs. Michele Loveberry --who in real life owned a salon while briefly leading a non-profit-- is working with a customer already after promptly arriving at 6:00am on one side while a barber works with someone else toward the front on the other side of the room. My friend Jemeer and another guy tells me how important barbershops are for the community (true, and we've had a conversation like this in waking life before) as well.

Post-Slumber Commentary

So here's what I think we can learn (or at least be reminded of) from the dream above among other things: 

1) there's a point when a well-grounded and intentional price policy becomes outrageous to the average person and yet entirely acceptable for a new target audience--I.e. the $40 haircut yuppie or in the case of my dream, the gentrified who pays $40 for a ridiculously large bowl of hot chocolate.

Speaking with my friend Ulysses, this is exactly how countries like Finland operate--

2) The $0.30 per hour sitting fee sounds like something (a terrible something) that a crowded New York or San Francisco kind of city actually would do, except they'd charge you even more for just being there. For [dystopic neoliberal urbanization/gentrification​/colonialism​] comedic purposes, $0.30 is ​"​reasonable​"​--just small enough to be petty, but the real offense comes from its mere existence​ ​​and audacity to charge people for their mere existence​.

3) I still work even in my dreams to figure out things like equitable cost strategies and price points.

4) Zulu (though I don't know the language well) and South Africa are a very interesting parallel--in waking life I met a journalist who focused on apartheid and how similar patterns manifest in Detroit last year. For those unfamiliar with the city, Detroit is approximately 83% black, ~89% "minority", and highly segregated as a city still. The economic development patterns also tend to reflect this too with most investment underway in majority white downtown core financial and cultural districts. Meanwhile, most of the neighborhoods remain overlooked unless they're ripe for ["market"] exploitation [or straight-up exploitation in itself] according to the downtown administration and deep pocket developers.

5) There's an interesting contradiction to connecting boxed wine with the expression "Ecorse's finest" --the river that makes "downriver" communities was called the Rouge River by the French settlers (and still called that today by residents) because of all the grapes that would grow in the region. It's hard to say what the soil and air quality would be for growing grapes for wine there today as it's somewhat an industrial labor town now, but if we of the region were to begin making wine there again, I wouldn't be surprised if boxed wine would the way to start as the expertise, "market audience", and taste palate for most people in southeast Michigan would probably take time to develop before we skip ahead to fine wines. Alcoholism in Michigan is a major problem, and it happens to be, at least during some point within the past 5 years, among one of the most common Google searches in our state.

6) The Salon/Barber Shop dream builds directly from a conversation I had last night realizing how continuity for employing and owning a business in Detroit remains by the person, and often ends at the entrepreneur rather than continuing with the team/a community to support the training and workers beyond the founder. I also think the gender roles (one side salon, another side barber) is something to note though I haven't got much insight for it beyond observation. Mrs. Loveberry's mother opened and owned a historic salon business, one of the first in Detroit, and the legacy of her entrepreneurship remains under celebrated except for those who may have known her directly or through the family stories like my friend Jemeer and Mrs. Loveberry. Mrs. Loveberry recently retired and left the state. 

I now realize she was part of the 93% businesses in Detroit that are black, and of them, 90% are/were run with 1-4 employees. The continuity between owner to new generations differs from places in Japan or even Vietnam where businesses survived for centuries--even surviving colonialism and world wars--with artisans and other people who continue the line and legacy.

In my waking life, I know/know of an interesting cross section of the cosmetic industry. I also connected [albeit briefly] with someone from outside Detroit focused on using barber shops as places to address mental health in the black community. They all have important elements, and the opportunity to convene and discuss how workforce development + business ownership advances in the city's neighborhoods is important and feasible to implement with someone like Chase Cantrell of Building Community Value and the folks who put on Hair Wars.


References

Toward the end of this sketch, Trevor Noah speaks in Zulu--deep in the comment section of the original clip on youtube someone gave a translation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwT-2KdK894

EXTRAordinary & Inward Empathy

Extraordinary people inspire empathy. Intuition brings our attention to what astonishes us first, then what distinguishes an extraordinary individual from everyone else. By most merits, that's how we often interpret it. Yet when we look beyond all bedazzlement, something deeper calls us to the extraordinary.

Art is a special form of communication. Art compels us to heed that calling, to explore with a sense of wonder and seek to understand. We identify our own aspirations in relation to the extraordinary, whether we strive to live them in modesty or overtly as exemplars in our ordinary lives.

In that sense, extraordinary feats, works, people and places elicit deep empathy from their presence and actions. A trick for making your own life extraordinary?

Whenever you encounter the extraordinary, use the encounter as a reminder for who you are. Remember to look into yourself, as there's more to the ordinary found within that can inspire others us to bridge the gap between remarkable and mundane.

By doing so, chances are you'll find something about yourself worth cultivating and sharing as well. Your wisdom for discerning the extraordinary originates from bridging life's experience with inward learning.

When living life fully and honestly, even in making your own mistakes, your life becomes too extraordinary for anyone to reproduce. That's perfection for heartful humans, an irreplaceable art of living.

Photo credit to Margaret __ in Ann Arbor, MI

.  .  .


The Detroit Institute of the Arts has an exhibit on ordinary people by extraordinary artists. Check it out, the typecast for the exhibit sparked the above thought. Whomever the graphic artist was has my appreciation--I hadn't parsed "extra" and "ordinary" until looking at the pamphlet for the exhibition.

As displayed, it made me think (ineloquently): "what if extraordinary people are remarkable because they make something MORE ordinary, more identifiable for those who encounter them?"  thus, it makes us think of the more ordinary and inspires us to bridge the gap between remarkable and mundane.

"To me, perfection is honesty--live your life as honestly as possible, even your mistakes. That's perfection."
- Danny Perez (paraphrased?)

"Study you. After you've studied everything in the world, I want you to study you." -Stuart Mitchell (transient man in Lansing, MI)

Editing note:
I initially wrote: "Your wisdom for discerning the extraordinary originates from bridging life with learning." and realized I was pulling nice sounding words from thin air without really thinking about what it means. Still sounds like a nice line, but it doesn't really register.

Emotive Mechanics in East Detroit

Yesterday I met with an East Detroit school principal at his school. Few things ground human relationships like concern for the safety of people who have been harmed, and you could see it in his face as he spoke about the number one thing his students ask for help with: safety from violence in and outside of school.

You can read about that in the news or a policy report. Hearing it directly from Detroit youth, or taste gunpowder in the air from a recent shooting, and see it momentarily tug at a grown man's composure takes the experience to a different level.

The issue moves him and his staff, he's doing things to cultivate a culture of empathy and appreciation to help the most "at risk" youth in the school move forward from within and beyond the city. I call that emotive mechanics. We aim to change the way people look and feel about the world with tangible actions, but we're guided by a judicious mix of our own emotions and tools for making sense of the world. In that sense, we're emotive mechanics too.

Windows in Michigan Central Station?

"Detroit's iconic eyesore: the windowless, 18-story Michigan Central Station"-via http://www.fastcompany.com/3007840/creative-conversations/how-young-community-entrepreneurs-rebuilding-detroit

Windowless?

The writer must not have been around since February.

The windows were still there when I went by two weeks ago.  Those are some fine windows too, they're looking really fresh even from Michigan Avenue almost half a year later.  To whomever installed them, bravo.  That's one of the best creative pranks I've seen yet.
http://youtu.be/XS1n7Q84dP0

Last week I briefly attended an event held at the N'Namdi gallery by artist ____ fleur, who discussed how the future of Detroit's aesthetic will likely move from a grungy/gritty presentation to something brilliant and colorful--she pointed to traditional African aesthetics, and even the diversity of existing architecture in Detroit.  I used to think about parallels between abuse and the Detroit aesthetic--its music, a lot of its art, the stories in the news.  There's something about some people who experienced deep and sustained harms where we find an attitude that's a mix of resilience and a weary-worn frankness.  Sometimes, an element of guarded shame stands as a likely possibility.  It's often comfortable to recognize it.  You know you're at peace in their company but there's a certain darkness to how they live--unanswered or seldom explored questions remain like mysterious gashes:  no one can tell whether they're still wounds to be healed or closed scars, and we've either developed habits for moving in ways that don't aggravate them, or are too afraid to move any further.  Knowing that a lot of media and negative imagery already exists for both, I never expressed it to anyone before.

However, I happen to know several people who endured sustained abuse, sometimes terrifying in its truest sense, who can embody the most vibrant aspects of life.  They often define what's possible for living in a better world, or demonstrate how to carry on by living amid its realities.  In spite of misfortune, they continue, we live well.  I also had the privilege to know so many brilliant people who know Detroit as their home do brilliant things.  Their actions and the communities they create exist as the tinder and fuel aflame--the growing feathers of a phoenix--through which the city finds itself amid its ashes.  While I've been through gunshots on the East side, I've also been to the Alkebu-Lan Village which soon celebrates a 35 years of exceptional karate in Detroit and sustained community enrichment that's drawn the attention and admiration of companies known for their mid-town investment presence like Quicken Loans.

Stigma in mental health and Detroit in the media

Spurred by comments on this: https://www.facebook.com/LiteraryDetroit/posts/446844592058214

Going back to the idea of parallels in mental illness and community: In a lot of ways, the negative media and identity stigma that many Detroiters loath mirrors the same imposition of identity a person undergoing mental health challenges meets when labeled with a certain disorder/illness.  Identity becomes objectified by another, opportunity for change is denied in the reality constructed by those who impose/accept it as such.

Hope before peace

Drawing from the public's attention on the violence of recent events (particularly talk of escalation between Israel and Palestine, the shootings at Sandy Hooke, and a shooting I was in), I wrote a note to colleagues encouraging them to familiarize themselves with the emergency procedures, and to begin developing a department-specific emergency plan.  However, I still think the best thing we can do comes from being kind and sincere in our encounters with people.

This year I've been around malicious gunfire that was so close I could taste the gunpowder shortly after the aroma reached my nose.  The incident I was in happened between extended family members, and it didn't surprise me to see and hear it happen.  Violence swiftly escalated from language into physical pushing, shoving, and punching which eventually turned into gunshots and a brutal beating in response to the shooter.

I suspect the notion of love is antithetical to this situation.  I understand compassion, it's been illustrated in tremendous experiences for me this year.  Yet what if people don't know love?  I appreciate peace, but similarly, what if most people actually don't know peace?

Despite popular assertions that they can be found in simple expressions, peace and love are complicated concepts to substantiate, and it's almost inconceivable for those who lived much of their lives with an oppressive and abusive environment.  If anything, we human beings fundamentally understand the notion of hope before we understand the nature of peace and love.

I'll say it again: More people probably understand hope better than they do love.

Truly, not everyone knows what love is or grew up with meaningful exposure to it and therefore, more people lack meaningful understanding of it than we’d assume or wish. People do, however, recognize compassion and reprieve from hostile situations on a more frequent basis.

Look at international relations as an example of a similar misunderstanding between war (analogous to hate) and peace (analogous to love):

Reprieve from dire hostility (i.e. war/sectarian violence, etc.) becomes labeled improperly (and thereby assumed/presumed understood) as “peace”; similarly, peace-keeping forces (actually security forces) designated by the UN aren’t actually an authentic indication of peace, they provide a crucial opportunity for fostering authentic peace by creating a more secure environment.

Hostility, and hatred, both still allow for hope—a special kind of opportunity with positive possibilities, at least for a particular individual or group of entities who carry the same hope(s).

Hatred is a choice to engage in certain behaviors present within our nature, but does not constitute our nature in its entirety. Hatred operates upon unreasonable hostility, and a deep inclination for humans (and other species) to reciprocate perceived behaviors tit-for-tat.

[War: communication and artificial environment (creates structure)
Hatred: unreasonable consciousness/mindset/worldview that perpetuates the circumstances necessary for war.]
For local examples of environments and histories that have strong influence over how an individual perceives their choices and behaviors:

A few friends of mine confessed to me that they had seriously considered suicide in the past, or present.  One of them considered it out of shame,  the other out of frustration in knowing that his intimate partner only wants the relationship to satisfy her physical desires. The first lived in a neighborhood of Detroit where the average lifespan of his friends and family was about 35 years old due to systemic violence. The other also grew up in Detroit, and has a family history of suicide, bipolar disorder, and/or manic depression. Those are real questions: will I need to accept the legacy of the place I grew up in or family I come from as the trajectory of my own life?

In retrospect, both of them are the first in their families in several generations to leave the area they grew up in, graduate high school or earn a G.E.D., they're also the first of their families to attend a University.

I considered the same and share the same question too, though I know I'm about 8 steps ahead thanks to a few friends who've astutely pointed out that: you are not your family. Similarly, we, as individuals, aren't our cities or communities. We have choices and new opportunities 

While I'm not vigorously trained in the physical aspects of the martial art known as aikido, I strive to live its principles.  In aikido, one acknowledges and embraces an assailant's momentum to direct it elsewhere for a mutually favorable outcome. It's a profound alternative to traditional thinking in fighting and conflict resolution: normally the only way to end a fight is to prevent it or combat power with power to win. That's how war and most fights start to devolve until threats are eliminated.

We have choices and new opportunities now. Let's start with the hope we'll create peace for everyone involved.